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Published: August 19th 2018
It gets better
There was a bit of an early morning haze when we woke up in Maria Gern. The Watzmann mountains are barely visible in the distance.Breakfast was great. What else could it be in Germany? What made it remarkable was the view from the breakfast room. Stunning scenery all around us. We were being blessed with another ideal weather day.
We've been visiting this, my absolute favorite, place every few years since 1978. Most of our visits have taken place in the winter months for economic and scheduling reasons. The few times we've been to Salzburg in the summer it was only for a few hours. On our winter visits we often drove by signs for Hellbrunn Palace on the city's outskirts. We learned that the palace was famous for its whimsical trick fountains that operated during the warmer months. So before leaving for this trip I contacted the Hellbrunn office and booked reservations for the first English speaking tour of the day.
Salzburg is only a short drive away from Berchtesgaden so we arrived at Hellbrunn Palace early. We checked in at the ticket office and were soon in line waiting for the first English tour of the day to start.
None of the others in our tour group seemed to be American or even British.
Last night we were watched over by a saint
I might not have slept so soundly had I known this was just outside our door. That's the hill I tried driving up the night before. I thought our car would flip over on its back as we headed up that way, I think other Europeans that didn't speak German went on the English tour since they could at least understand
some of the commentary. I knew none of the kids in the group were American because they didn't misbehave around the fountains.
The trick fountains were worth waiting 40 years to see. It's amazing that they were able to accomplish some of these engineering feats 400 years ago. The Prince-archbishop that built this palace did o with the most advance technology of the time. And what extravagance and total unconcern for the plight of the common folk living nearby! You'd have to have been rather self-absorbed to spend all that money collected from taxpayers and church goers on such frivolity. Very reminiscent of today's culture. The only difference is that today
everyone is egocentric.
Our tour took place in beautiful sunny weather. Fortunately we were able to avoid getting soaked or even slightly wet. On a warmer day I might have allowed myself to get sprayed by the waterworks but even old folks like ourselves were able to stay dry. We learned that Prince-archbishop Markus Sittikus had this summer palace and the gardens built in
The view from our breakfast room
Could it be any prettier or more tranquil? The early morning fog totally disappeared shortly afterwards. a mere three years. He did it to demonstrate his power and wealth just as the Venetians had done with the Doge's Palace in Italy. These Renaissance guys loved bringing visitor's to their places simply to intimidate and at the same time Impress them. Showing off one's art gallery and immense homes let your rivals know what kind of power they were dealing with.
The tour took about an hour as we walked through the rear gardens of the palace past maybe ten different amusing little fountains. Our guide was a bit dry (no pun intended) but his face would light up when someone got caught in a fountain's spray. We finished our walking tour near the middle of the huge floral gardens. While most of those in our tour group decided to walk through the gardens I had no interest. Flowers just don't interest me.
Instead we went inside the actual palace building. It was more a museum than a restored home yet it was really quite interesting. We spent a good hour and a half walking through using the free audio guides provided at the entrance. Those prince-archbishops led some
interesting and very secular lives. When they did run afoul of the locals they were treated like politicians more than religious figures.
Archbishop Wolf Dietrich was a Renaissance man steeped in the political philosophy of Machiavelli. He was an absolute ruler and far more ruthless than one would expect of a religious man. In 1589 he expelled all Protestants from Salzburg. He was a patron of the arts having a huge collection of paintings and encouraging the building of Baroque churches in the Italianate style. Best of all, he had a mistress who gave him 15 children. In return he built her a nice little home -Mirabell Palace whose picturesque gardens are featured in “The Sound of Music” movie. Alas, Wolf finally met his match in Maximilian I of Bavaria. He was deposed and imprisoned for the rest of his life in Salzburg's Hohensalzburg castle.
I was also amused by the stuffed animal collection on display in the building. The “unicorn” was pretty convincing. It was interesting that the palace is now available for weddings and business bookings. Even I would think this was a pretty romantic spot to get married. But the weather
Better her than me
The climb up to our third floor hotel room was as much exercise as I needed so Gail headed uphill to demonstrate just how steep this road was. in Salzburg is so unpredictable. We had a perfect day but most times when we visit it is dreary and miserable. Just what you want when you're getting married in a place that charges 2100 Euros plus 20% tax for a party less than 80 people.
When we finished touring the main building we made a very brief visit to the souvenir shop. I was aghast when Gail walked out without buying anything. She was truly sticking to her vow not to buy any more memorabilia.
As we headed down the long dirt road alley between the yellow palace walls back to the parking lot I spotted a sign directing visitor's to the “Sound of Music” gazebo. Years ago we had seen it on the grounds of a villa where Bob's Sound of Music Tours would stop. Now it sits at the edge of the immense palace gardens. It seemed out of place there. Of course it was locked so we couldn't do our dancing reenactment from “I am Sixteen Going on Seventeen”.
Even though we had spent almost three hours at Hellbrunn I had nothing else scheduled for our day.
Parking was a bit of an issue last night
Since there were no parking spaces at the hotel itself we had to park a short distance away, both vertically and horizontally. These serpentine roads are quite common in the Alps. They follow the natural contours of the valley. We got back into the car and decided to spend the rest of the time in the old city of Salzburg. My Garmin GPS that I had brought from home was not working right. I had stored our favorite parking lot in its memory but not in my own brain. Using the BMW's NAV system was fruitless because we didn't know the name of the lot we wanted. By persistence and some luck we found the Altstadt parking garages.
This is the ideal place to park when visiting the Getreidegasse and the rest of the pedestrian zone. It's a short walk through the huge nuclear blast doors and into the town. Since it was a Saturday the Getreidegasse was wall to wall people. All were tourists and all totally unaware of others around them as they stopped short in front of us, jostled us, stood in front of our photo ops and did other annoying things.
This wasn't our first rodeo in Salzburg so we knew enough to get off that tourist route and explore the side alleys. JWe ended up walking into one of the Sternbrau's Biergartens. It didn't take much convincing to
The opposite view
After hiking down to our car I turned around to catch this shot of our hotel standing next to Maria Gern church. get me to walk upstairs to the Sternbrau's snackbar where we both ordered Bosna.
Obviously you need something to wash down the Bosna so I was delegated with the task of getting us a pair of beers. The beer was sold in a different location – a cart at the front of the beer garden. When I dropped my Bosna sandwich off at an open table in the center of the outdoor dining area no one stood at the beer wagon. By the time I got to the stand I was behind four people. The place was getting busy.
We both got Weizenbiers. They tasted especially refreshing sitting in the warm sun. The Bosna was ok, but a little undersized so I was still hungry. After getting us a second round of beers I walked to the little Balkan cafe across from Sternbrau and got another Bosna. It was superb. Half the price of the Sternbrau's and ten times as good. I will not make that mistake next time we visit Salzburg. And based on our past performance another trip there won't be long in coming.
We spent a good while
Arriving at Hellbrunn Palace
We were finally getting to visit the palatial estate we had passed so often in the past. sitting there watching the kids playing with the tiny jets of water that randomly erupted from below the sidewalk next to us. At first it was sweet and innocent but as the kids got wetter and wetter they started harassing passersby by directing the water jets at all those strolling by. No parents around to reprimand them. This was kind of shocking to see in Austria where the kids are usually well-disciplined and respectful.
We couldn't sit there forever although Gail might have preferred to stay and soak up more sunshine. We went back to the Getreidegasse which was much less crowded now. We looked in a few shops, took a lot of pictures and watched the Fiakers (horse carriages) line up waiting for tourists just outside Salzburg's Dom (cathedral). For maybe the first time ever we walked right past the Saturday farmer's market in the Domplatz.
It was about this time when we started hearing the faint beat of drums in the air. We couldn't really tell where it was coming from but as we left the produce section of the farmer's market and approached the souvenir and junk food stalls I started
hearing brass and woodwinds. At one of these stands I got my mother a rather unique musical Salzburg calculator that I knew she would use.
Now we were hearing not only a band playing but a semi-professional singer singing a popular and sappy Whitney Hosuton song. We followed our ears to the performance taking place in the wide open Kapitalplatz. Only today it wasn't a vast empty plaza. There beneath the walls of the towering Hohensalzburg fortress stood hundreds of people. We were unable to count all of them but there were at least 21 different musical bands in the square. Each with their own unique uniforms. A couple of these musical groups represented the salt miners in the area judging by the crossed pick-axes emblems on their hats. We stood outside the phalanx formed by the various musical groups trying to determine just what they were celebrating. We never learned what was going on. As we stood watching a number of local dignitaries took the stage to deliver their homilies, serving wenches that were affiliated with particular bands came walking by with small wooden barrels of Schnapps they would dispense to those needing medication to get
"Hellbrunn" means :clear spring"
The palace is situated on a major underground spring. These waters are used to power the wacky machinery/toys of the palace. through the ceremony.
The high point for me was when the group of military re-enactors standing near us were called to attention and shouldered their arms. They looked like Tyrolean mountain troops from the Napoleonic Wars but I'm not sure what look they were going for with their contingent of troops ranging from their teen years up into their eighties. But they seemed to be having a great time, especially when they got to shoot off their flintlock guns.
We seemed to have arrived at the tail end of the festivities. As soon as the military salute sounded the bands reformed their ranks and began to march out of the plaza. We were quick enough to realize the direction they were headed and sprinted over to get a good vantage point. The march out of the square took a good half hour. A Germanophobe would have had problems with the neat military uniforms, precise marching, the banners held high and the martial music, but we loved it. It seemed like some of the bands were made up of the entire population of the small villages they hailed from.
After the show
Looking at the side of the actual palace
It took a few minutes for our guide to gather up our multi-national group so we spent time observing the fish swimming in the big placid pool. had ended we walked through more of the back alleys of old Salzburg and visited the graveyard that served as the model for the one in “Sound of Music”. We walked through the university and past the huge concert hall before returning to the parking lot for our car.
Even though it wasn't quite dinner time and I wasn't thirsting for a beer (believe it or not) we decided to head over to the immense Augustinerbrau beer hall. Rick Steves had turned us on to the existence of this place and we find it much more authentic and entertaining than Munich's Hofbrauhaus. I wanted to get there early because even though the complex is huge with this being a weekend and the weather being perfect I knew it might be hard to find a table if we got there any later.
As is our way, we got lost driving the few blocks across town to the brewery. Previously we had found free parking but that was in February. We went straight into the big pay lot. It was almost full but we found a safe place to park our scratched car. I remembered to
A nice setting for a summer soiree
This would've been what visitors to the palace would have seen as they arrived for parties at the Prince-archbishop's place. Imagine it under torchlights. bring the parking ticket with me.
The last time we came here most of the activities were taking place inside the huge hall. As we walked into the complex we saw that the garden area which in February had only consisted of a handful of table with nearby gas heaters set-up was greatly expanded and packed. There were over two hundred tables set-up and the Gemütlichkeit was in full evidence.
Since the outdoor Platzl appeared rather full we headed up the steps into the brewery. The individual beer halls were all closed and signs directed visitors back outside to purchase their beers. Even the indoor bathrooms were locked. The corridor full of food stalls was the only indoor area operating.
So...back outside. We walked through the 1400 seat outdoor garden Platz where it seemed every table was occupied. In the back corner, farthest away from the beer taps, we found an unoccupied table. Gail grabbed it and made herself at home while I took the long walk back to the beer dispensing zone. There was a bit of a line forming in front of the cashiers but Austrians follow the rules
The dining area
And this is where the unsuspecting guests would come to have a sit down meal with the Prince-archbishop. Little did they know what fun he had in store for them. so there was no line jumping when a second cashier opened. I forgot how this had worked but watching the locals in front of me I recalled that you first order a large or small mug, pay the cashier, she issues you token coins and then you continue in line to the wall rack full of empty and (hopefully) clean mugs, after that you move along to the barkeep who silently takes your tokens and mugs, then unceremoniously fills them sloshing beer all over the mug and counter. When he fills your mug maybe ¾ full he slides it down the stainless steel counter toward you where another generous sip of beer slides out of the mug. It reminded me so much of “Seinfeld's” Soup Nazi. You don't talk or even make eye contact. The feeling is “here's your damn beer, now go”. Everyone gets the same treatment so I didn't feel singled out, but it's probably the only rude reception we experienced during the entire trip. I guess they just want to keep things moving so nonsense is not tolerated.
Somehow I sashayed my way through the tables of revelers back into that far corner somehow
And this is where the Prince-archbishop gets his jollies
It may have seemed like a ludicrous folly at the time and a joke that you could only pull off a couple of times at most, but this extravagance has paid for itself over the years as tourists come from all over the world to see these wacky waterworks. avoiding spilling any more beer. It was worth it. The beer was wonderful – cold, refreshing, somewhat light with no bitter after taste. We studied the folks around us. Some were members of the bands we had seen marching in the Kapitalplatz. Others were dressed as if they were coming to or leaving a wedding or church. Some sat alone. Next to us 4 large picnic tables were put together and a gathering of more than twenty guys sat carrying on. On the opposite side a table of four kids who looked to be 15 or younger took their places with their first round of the night. Across from me a foursome of college age girls sat with their beers spending more time texting on their phones than with addressing each other.
We were afraid to get up and abandon our table so I went up and got us a second round. The lines were shorter this time. I saw the guy in front of me pull out his parking ticket and the cashier validated it with a stamp. I didn't know exactly what that meant but I had mine stamped. It turned out that parking was
An interesting mosaic
Completely comprised of locally found stones totally free for the duration of our visit. Great deal.
After that round was finished I got up to look for food. It was a little hard to make a decision. Most of the food stalls were selling fish. Fine for Gail but not me. I debated between a number of different heavily breaded meat sandwiches. I couldn't believe Bosna wasn't on the menu. I could've happily had my third one of the day. I settled on a California hamburger with fries. Blasphemy but nothing particularly appealed to me. Then I got an order of the heavily salted white radish slices. They were delightful.
When I returned to the table Gail decided she was feeling a bit peckish and headed off to one of the many fish stands. She was gone awhile but I wasn't surprised since the line for the fish-on-a-stick stand was long. She came back with chicken. Apparently she opted out on the fish because she didn't want her meal looking back at her as she chewed.
Soon the adolescents at the next table started getting a little crazy. They didn't bother us in any way
The weeping buck
This fake deer trophy sprays unsuspecting passersby when they get too near. but they started smoking smelly cigars and got louder and louder. This reminded me that back in the olden days when we visited Europe it seemed like everyone smoked. There were hardly any smokers to be found on this visit. By the time we sat down with our final beers of the night the lads at the rowdy table were starting to sing out of tune and laugh hysterically. Time to go. We were considering the idea of going to Bad Reichenhall to enjoy the thermal waters and pool. But we would have to hustle.
We drove back to our hotel on the backroad B305 instead of using the Autobahn. I absolutely love driving down this road. It's never crowded and you pass through a couple of cool tiny towns. There are dozens of really quaint little Gasthofs and inns on the route. They look like they were designed to be featured on a travel poster. Yet whenever we visit the area none of these striking places ever seem to appear in my online searches for accommodations in the area. There are thick aerial tram wires crossing the road here near the Austrian-German border so I assume
Pretty in pink
Just one of the many methodologically themed fountains we encountered. there's a ski area up on the Untersburg. Perhaps these hotels cater to that crowd.
The sun was setting as we passed through Market Schellenberg and the Salzbergwerk on the outskirts of Berchtesgaden. It was still light out as we climbed back through Berchtesgaden and up that precarious hanging road that had no right to be there. The town was surprisingly quiet and no one impeded our serpentine run up to Maria Gern.
Back at the hotel things were also very subdued and we quietly went to our room. We spent some time doing the usual night time Facebook and Twitter updates to friends and family before turning on the tube to watch “Friends” in German. Thoughts of going swimming that night were totally forgotten. Next time we need to stay even longer.
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