Eagle's Nest Tour (i.e. went to Hitler's house, got snowed on)

For our second day in Salzburg we had organised a full day tour including "The Eagle's Nest", a salt mine tour, and the mountain town of Berchtesgaden .

First stop was "The Eagle's Nest", or "Kehlsteinhaus" as it is known in German, or "Eagle Hawk's Nest" as Fee had been constantly incorrectly calling it.

I was really excited to be visiting The Eagle's Nest. The history of the place is amazing. Here goes my wikipedia entry: It was constructed by the National socialist party as a 50th birthday pressent for Hitler, who used it for showing off to important guests. 8 people lost their lives constructing it, but I doubt that bothered old mate too much. Hitler apparently only ever visited it about 15 times, as he was scared of heights. The vast majority of buildings like it that belonged to the Nazis were destroyed by the allies at the end of the war, but the Eagle's Nest survived, with the British RAF claiming that they chose not to bomb it, and other sources saying that they simply couldn't hit it.

Right, so back to the tour: The weather wasn't good, it had been raining all morning and this made the bus ride up the mountain, around crazy corners with no real guard rails to speak of, that bit more interesting. It was of course worth it when we reached the top and laid eyes upon the incredible structure above.

So, after walking through Hitler's tunnel, and riding in Hitler's brass elevator, we had finally reached Hitler's tea house. We started by taking the path outside the bulding, leading up to the mountain summit, which provided excellent views of the building exterior. It would normally provide even better views of the landscape below, to a distance of around 200kms, but visibility was fairly limited due to the weather. However we did get some glimpses of the town below and the surrounding mountains.

It then started snowing, a lot, so we headed inside to have a look around. The most impressive part of the interior, in my opinion, is the Italian red marble fireplace, which was a gift to Hitler from Benito Musselini, and was complete with chip marks from allied soldiers looking for souveniers back in 1945.

It was soon time to head back down Hitler's elevator, through Hitler's tunnel, onto the bus, and back down the mountain. Further down the mountain towards the town of Berktesgarten, were the former residences of many high ranking members of the Nazi party, inlcuding Hermann Göring , Albert Speer, and Adolf himself. You might remember some of these names from the Quentin Tarantino documentary "Inglourious Basterds".