Documenting history
Trip Start
Mar 17, 2012
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68
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Trip End
Jun 26, 2012
Where I stayed
Munich, Bavaria, Germany
Wednesday, June 13, 2012
Today's planned visit to the Eagle's Nest - a project of Martin Bormann's and presented to Adolf Hitler for his 50th birthday, would have to be put on another itinerary for a future time.
Instead, we would revert to plan B and visit a salt mine in the Berchtesgaden region and the Dokumentation Obersalzberg.
After a tasty Bavarian breakfast, we bid our hosts "Auf wiedersehen" and head out towards Berchtesgaden. We are close to the salt mines when there appears to be quite a few school children walking on their way to school. As we approach the mine attraction entry point the volume of children has greatly increased and tour buses are now lining the streets and filling the car parks.
Plan C is now invoked, and we continue driving past the mines and turn left up a steep mountain road called SalzbergstraBe, which had a pointer sign denoting "Dokumentation".
The Obersalzberg Dokumentation is the only permanent exhibition worldwide to cover all essential aspects of the Nazi period. Whilst the time for one to do a self tour is indicated as around 2 to 3 hours, we found that even 4 hours was not enough and in fact one could spend the best part of a full day here just hearing, reading and seeing what the true and complex historically dark events were of the German National Socialist Movement.
Upon exiting the exhibition, the clouds were still languishing around the hills of Obersalzberg and whilst we may have had just enough time to continue up the Eagle's Nest road, the view from the Eagle's Nest, at over 6000 feet, would have been severely restricted, so we chose instead to drive directly to Munich and observe what changes had taken place since our last visit some 30 plus years ago.
Munich is a different city from how we knew it (or maybe we just forgot), but it is typically European and specifically German as we wander around in the late afternoon.
We have a meal in a fabulous Thai restaurant called Yum Thai (just near theViktualienmarket)
Prior to returning to our hotel for the night, we spend some very worthwhile time locating our rental car hire depot near the Munich train station and planning the logistics for tomorrow's hire return and transfer (with our now bulging luggage) to the station for the rail journey to Bolzano Italy.
Comments
It was good fortune in my view you missed those salt mines! I remember going in those 37 years ago and the memory still haunts me of jumping on this little train, ducking my head as we decended down a tiny tunnel into the bowels of the mine. It was then the dreaded claustraphobia set in. Ugh!