Blogs from Reutte, Tyrol, Austria, Europe

Sunday and Monday, Beautiful weather and great location makes for a happy couple. This blog covers two very fun days. After lots of rain in Vienna and Hallstatt, we got lucky. We drove from Hallstatt to Reutte in about three hours. The drive itself was wonderful. The scenary is out of a storybook or movie. We arrived about 1pm to our nice hotel in the center of this little town. As an aside, we discovered that our great rocket scientist, Werner von Braun, joined America at the end of WWII in this town. We loved the hotel and its owner, Hans. After a short rest we went out to see what we could do on our first afternoon here. The owner recommended that we ride a local cable car to the top of a nearby mountain ... read more

Reutte has probably been one of the prettiest places we have been far. As we drove into Austria we were constantly driving past beautiful fields and meadows, farmlands with cows and horses, and many forest covered mountains. Our cute little hotel was right at the bottom of a long trail that led up a mountain to the Ehrenburg castle ruins. Our first day we hiked up halfway to the Medieval Museum and had a blast learning about the Crusades and other fun facts about the Middle Ages. We also got to try on armor, chain male and helmets! The best part though was probably playing with the cross bows in the gift shop ( which we later learned, was not allowed). Other than that, our time in Reutte was very laid back and relaxed. It was ... read more

We spotted ruins of Ehrenberg Schloβ when we were driving towards Innsbruck. We finally decided to visit there. At present Ehrenberg Schloβ saved as ruins. In past that was pretty important power centre and it was known as Ehrenberger Klause. That castle had build in narrow pass that divided local area and separated Lech valley from district Zwischentoren. First castle had been built at 13th century. Afterwards is was enlarged and developed and it allowed for local ruler based there and lawmade. Local authorities moved eventually to nearby Reutte in 16th century. From that time Ehrenberg served as fortress and roughly 1k soldiers based inside its walls. Soldiers based there until the fortress was seriously damager during French invasion of the Tyrol at the beginn... read more

We set out for Austria with a few modest goals in mind: a picture at the border, some chocolate for Horst at a local grocery store, a snack of traditional Kaiserschmarrn (a sweet, eggy, fluffy pancake with raisins), dinner at a chicken restaurant, and cheap diesel. One out of five ain't bad? For some reason, the attractive EU signage for the Austrian border is like a kilometer back in Germany, i.e., not at the border, so we missed it. We settled for the actual sign at the actual border, which does say Österreich but Ramona was quite upset that it was uglier than the EU sign. The grocery store was geschlossen (closed)! By this time, owing to the extremely long wait we had before our Neuschwanstein tour, it was really too late for Kaiserschmarrn especially considering ... read more

The rain caught up with us again today. Perfect for touring a castle. We were fortunate that we went luging yesterday as you can't do that in the rain. Castle touring however is an all weather activity. Neuschwenstein Castle was a fairtytale like structure rising from the top of a mountain. It was never completed as a functioning castle as King Ludwig (it's creator) died before it was completed. It was stormed by tourists within six weeks of his death in the 1800's and it has belonged to the tourists ever since. The bavarian folks work hard to bleed every Euro out of this disorganized lot of invaders but alas they have succumbed to the invasion and now welcome them with open arms and open tills. The castle itself although very beautiful is still a sad ... read more