Day 14 (Wednesday)Our tiny camping spot:
Back up the hill again. Nice and early. There are about 4 people in the queue ahead of us for bus tickets.
The documentation centre / visitor centre is on a small flat-ish area half way up the mountain from where a narrow road winds up to the entrance tunnel for the Eagle's nest. They wisely don't allow people to drive up there, there is not enough parking space and it would be chaos. They operate a system of groups of buses. One group of buses head up at the same time as another group head down and they pass at a passing place half way. At this early time in the morning they are operating 3 buses and we get on the first.
It is lovely being driven up these switchbacks and being able to look at the view rather than concentrating on not crashing. When we reach the top we have to queue and select a return journey time - this avoids everyone trying to get on the last bus of the day. Everyone else on the three buses hangs around looking at the view, but Sally and I decide to seize the opportunity of going straight for the tunnel:
About 100 yds town the tunnel you reach a large elevator. About 6 of us get into this elevator before the operator closes the doors and we are whisked silently and quickly up to the Eagle's nest.
Again, on arriving some people hang around the building, but we head off up the path further up the mountain - this gives a better view and allows us to see the structure with almost no-one there:
We spend some time up there, then as all the others from the buses arrive at our spot we head back down to the building. Sally wants to buy a coffee in a paper cup from the souvenir kiosk. I refuse and instead drag her onto the terrace where we can order proper coffee and ice cream or cake while enjoying the view. Sally is the one on the right:
These days this is a lovely, dictator-free zone. Nice to think that his private luxury retreat is now enjoyed by people from around the world, including people of races and religions he despised and tried to destroy.
We returned to the elevator; by now it was packed with people ascending, so we planned our tour at just the right time. We and a few others descended together - a tiny number compared to those ascending, and on reaching the bottom we found they were queued along the tunnel waiting to get into the elevator.
Outside we saw they had increased the number of buses in each convoy from 3 to 5 to cope with the numbers. It was clear there was going to be space for us, even though we had booked to return on a later bus. In fact everyone returning at this time was able to fit onto one bus, even though they had to run all 5 down the hill in convoy.
Back at the visitors centre we went to the documentation centre we had passed so many times. All the exhibits were in German, but they were easy enough to make out. They did provide one of those audio guides in English though. It provided a lot of information about nazi party atrocities, though most of it was nothing new. At the end of the building was a gangway leading to the entrance to part of an underground bunker complex:
We took a brief look around this depressing structure, and then headed back to our camper.
We tackled the hill for the 5th time, and then circled around to the west and crossed back into Austria, powering along their highways across the width of the country.
Before reaching the Swiss border we turned north. There were a couple of campgrounds by a lake, so I thought one of these would be suitable for the night. Again it appeared to be full of static trailer homes and more biased to families with children. Sally wasn't impressed, so I suggested we try the other campground. As we returned to the main road Sally again spotted a collection of campers in the distance, so we drove around to have a look. It turned out to be a restaurant that offered camping for a small fee. This was more like our type of campground:
One of the residents looked like he was going to be there a while - notice the cat ramps heading to the camper's bedroom window:
