This alpine ski town, just across the border from Salzburg in a finger of German territory that pokes south into Austria, is famous for its fjord-like lake and its mountaintop Nazi retreat. Long before its association with Hitler, Berchtesgaden (BERKH-tehs-gah-dehn) was one of the classic Romantic corners of Germany. In fact, Hitler’s propagandists capitalized on the Führer’s love of this region to establish the notion that the native Austrian was truly German at heart. Today visitors cruise up the romantic Königssee to get in touch with the soul of Bavarian Romanticism; ride a bus up to Hitler’s mountain retreat (5,500 feet); see the remains of the Nazis’ elaborate last-ditch bunkers; and ride an old miners’ train into the mountain to learn all about salt mining in the region.
Berchtesgaden is only 15 miles from Salzburg. The quickest way there from Salzburg is by bus #840 from the Salzburg train station (runs almost hourly Mon-Fri, 6/day Sat-Sun, usually at :15 past the hour, 45 minutes, buy tickets from driver, €9.80 Tageskarte day pass covers your round trip plus most local buses in Berchtesgaden—except bus #849 up to the Eagle’s Nest, last bus back leaves Berchtesgaden Mon-Fri at 18:15, Sat-Sun at 19:15; check schedules at www.svv-info.at—click “Route Planner and Pricing,” under “Find a timetable” select “Timetable book page,” then enter “840”). On my last visit, bus #840 left from platform G across the street from the Salzburg train station (beyond the bike racks). You can also catch bus #840 from the middle of Salzburg—after leaving the station, it stops a few minutes later on Mirabellplatz, and then in Salzburg’s old town (on Rudolfskai, near Mozartplatz).
The Nazi and Hitler-related sites outside Berchtesgaden are the town’s main draw. Berchtesgaden also has salt mines (similar to the Hallein salt mine tour) and a romantic, pristine lake called Königssee (extremely popular with less-adventurous Germans). Plan on a full day from Salzburg, including the drive or bus ride there and back. Drivers and those taking bus tours from Salzburg can do everything in one busy day trip; otherwise I’d skip the salt mines (which take about two hours to visit) and possibly the lake trip. If you’re visiting Berchtesgaden on your way between Salzburg and points in Germany, you can leave luggage in lockers at the Berchtesgaden train station during your visit.
Remote little Berchtesgaden (pop. 7,500) can be inundated with Germans during peak season, when you may find yourself in a traffic jam of tourists desperately trying to turn their money into fun.
Buses from Salzburg to Berchtesgaden stop in front of the town’s train station, which—though sorely dilapidated—is worth a stop for its luggage lockers (along the train platform), WC (free, also near platform), and history (specifically, its vintage 1937 Nazi architecture and the murals in the main hall). The oversized station was built to accommodate (and intimidate) the hordes of Hitler fans who flocked here in hopes of seeing the Führer. The building next to the station, just beyond the round tower, was Hitler’s own V.I.P. reception area.
The TI is across from the train station, in the yellow building with green shutters (mid-June-Sept Mon-Fri 8:30-18:00, Sat 9:00-17:00, Sun 9:00-15:00; Oct-mid-June Mon-Fri 8:30-17:00, Sat 9:00-12:00, closed Sun; German tel. 08652/9670, from Austria call 00-49-8652-9670, www.berchtesgadener-land.info). Pick up a local map, and consider the 30-page local-bus schedule (Fahrplan) if you’ll be hopping more than one bus.
None of the sights I list are within easy walking distance from the station, but they’re all connected by convenient local buses, which use the station as a hub (all these buses—except shuttle bus #849 between the Obersalzberg Documentation Center and the Eagle’s Nest chalet—are free with the Tageskarte day pass from Salzburg; timetables at www.rvo-bus.de, or call 08652/94480). You’ll want to note departure times and frequencies while still at the station, or pick up a schedule at the TI.
From the train station, buses #840 (the same line as the bus from Salzburg) and #837 go to the salt mines (a 20-minute walk otherwise). Bus #838 goes to the Obersalzberg Documentation Center, and bus #841 goes to the Königssee.
Eagle’s Nest Historical Tours—For 20 years, David and Christine Harper—who rightly consider this visit more an educational opportunity than simple sightseeing—have organized thoughtful tours of the Hitler-related sites near Berchtesgaden. Their bus tours, always led by native English speakers, depart from the TI, opposite the Berchtesgaden train station. Tours start by driving through the remains of the Nazis’ Obersalzberg complex, then visit the bunkers underneath the Documentation Center, and end with a guided visit to the Eagle’s Nest (€50/person, €1 discount with this book, English only, daily at 13:15 mid-May-late Oct, 4 hours, 30 people maximum, reservations strongly recommended, private tours available, German tel. 08652/64971, from Austria call 00-49-8652-64971, www.eagles-nest-tours.com). While the price is €50, your actual cost for the guiding is only about €23, as the tour takes care of your transport and admissions, not to mention relieving you of having to figure out the local buses up to Obersalzberg. Coming from Salzburg, you can take the 10:15 or 11:15 bus to Berchtesgaden, eat a picnic lunch, take the tour, then return on the 18:15 bus from Berchtesgaden (Sat-Sun at 19:15), which gets you back to Salzburg 45 minutes later. If you’re visiting near the beginning or end of the season, be aware that tours will be cancelled if it’s snowing at the Eagle’s Nest (as that makes the twisty, precipitous mountain roads too dangerous to drive). David and Christine also arrange off-season tours, though the Eagle’s Nest isn’t open for visitors in winter (€100/up to 4 people; see website for details).
Bus Tours from Salzburg—Bob’s Special Tours, based in Salzburg, bring you to (but not into) all the sights described here (Eagle’s Nest, Obersalzberg Documentation Center, salt mines, Königssee) on one busy full-day trip in a minibus (€90, doesn’t include €15.50 bus up to the Eagle’s Nest, €10 discount with this book, half-day Eagle’s Nest-only options available, tel. 0662/849-511, mobile 0664-541-7492, www.bobstours.com). Panorama Tours, which usually runs larger buses, also offers half-day excursions to the Eagle’s Nest (€50, €5 discount with this book, tel. 0662/874-029 or 0662/883-2110, www.panoramatours.com). While these tours offer all-in-one convenience, the experience is more rushed than you would be on your own, and they don’t visit the bunkers.
▲▲▲ Nazi Sites near Berchtesgaden Early in his career as a wannabe tyrant, Adolf Hitler had a radical friend who liked to vacation in Berchtesgaden, and through him Hitler came to know and love this dramatic corner of Bavaria. Berchtesgaden’s part-Bavarian, part-Austrian character held a special appeal to the Austrian-German Hitler. In the 1920s, just out of prison, he checked into an alpine hotel in Obersalzberg, three miles uphill from Berchtesgaden, to finish work on his memoir and Nazi primer, Mein Kampf. Because it was here that he claimed to be inspired and laid out his vision, some call Obersalzberg the “cradle of the Third Reich.”
In the 1930s, after becoming the German Chancellor, Hitler chose Obersalzberg to build his mountain retreat, a supersized alpine farmhouse called the Berghof. His handlers crafted Hitler’s image here—surrounded by nature, gently receiving alpine flowers from adoring little children, lounging around with farmers in lederhosen...no modern arms industry, no big-time industrialists, no ugly extermination camps. In reality, Obersalzberg was home to much more than Hitler’s alpine chalet. It was a huge compound of 80 buildings—built largely by forced labor and fenced off from the public after 1936—where the major decisions leading up to World War II were hatched. Hitler himself spent about a third of his time at the Berghof, hosted world leaders in the compound, and later had it prepared for his last stand.
Some mistakenly call the entire area “Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest.” But that name actually belongs only to the Kehlsteinhaus, a small mountaintop chalet on a 6,000-foot peak that juts up two miles south of Obersalzberg. (A visiting diplomat humorously dubbed it the “Eagle’s Nest,” and the name stuck.) In 1939, it was given to the Führer for his 50th birthday. While a fortune was spent building this perch and the road up to it, Hitler, who was afraid of heights, visited only 14 times. Hitler’s mistress, Eva Braun, though, liked to hike up to the Eagle’s Nest to sunbathe.
In April of 1945, Britain’s Royal Air Force bombed the Obersalzberg compound nearly flat, but missed the difficult-to-target Eagle’s Nest entirely. In 1952, the Allies blew up almost all of what had survived the bombing at Obersalzberg; before turning the site over to the German government, they wanted to destroy anything that might attract future neo-Nazi pilgrims. The most extensive surviving remains are of the Nazis’ bunker system, intended to serve as a last resort for the regime as the Allies closed in. In the 1990s, a museum, the Obersalzberg Documentation Center, was built on top of one of the bunkers. The museum and bunker, plus the never-destroyed Eagle’s Nest, are the two Nazi sites worth seeing near Berchtesgaden.
Obersalzberg Documentation Center and Bunker—To reach the most interesting part of this site, walk through the museum and down the stairs into the vast and complex bunker system. Construction began in 1943, after the Battle of Stalingrad ended the Nazi aura of invincibility. This is a professionally engineered underground town, which held meeting rooms, offices, archives for the government, and lavish living quarters for Hitler—all connected by four miles of tunnels cut through solid rock by slave labor. You can’t visit all of it, and what you can see was stripped and looted bare after the war. But enough is left that you can wander among the concrete and marvel at megalomania gone mad.
The museum above, which has almost no actual artifacts, is designed primarily for German students and others who want to learn and understand their still-recent history. There’s little English, but you can rent the €2 English audioguide.
Cost and Hours: €3 covers both museum and bunker; April-Oct daily 9:00-17:00; Nov-March Tue-Sun 10:00-15:00, closed Mon; last entry one hour before closing, allow 1.5 hours for visit, German tel. 08652/947-960, from Austria tel. 00-49-8652-947-960, www.obersalzberg.de.
Getting There: Hop on bus #838 from Berchtesgaden’s train station (Mon-Fri almost hourly, Sat-Sun 6/day, 12 minutes, 5-minute walk from Obersalzberg stop).
Eagle’s Nest (Kehlsteinhaus)—Today, the chalet that Hitler ignored is basically a three-room, reasonably priced restaurant with a scenic terrace, 100 yards below the summit of a mountain. You could say it’s like any alpine hiking hut, just more massively built. On a nice day, the views are magnificent. If it’s fogged in (which it often is), most people won’t find it worth coming up here (except on David and Christine Harper’s tours—described earlier—which can make the building come to life even without a view). Bring a jacket, and prepare for crowds in summer (less crowded if you go early or late in the day).
From the upper bus stop, a finely crafted tunnel (which will have you humming the Get Smart TV theme song) leads to the original polished brass elevator, which takes you the last 400 feet up to the Eagle’s Nest. Wander into the fancy back dining room (the best-preserved from Hitler’s time), where you can see the once-sleek marble fireplace chipped up by souvenir-seeking troops in 1945.
Cost and Hours: Free, generally open mid-May-late Oct, snowfall sometimes forces a later opening or earlier closing.
Getting There: The only way to reach the Eagle’s Nest—even if you have your own car—is by specially equipped bus #849, which leaves from the Documentation Center and climbs steeply up the one-way, private road—Germany’s highest (every 25 minutes, 15 minutes, €15.50 round-trip, Tageskarte day passes not valid, buy ticket from windows, last bus up 16:00, last bus down 16:50, free parking at Documentation Center).
At the Berchtesgaden salt mines, you put on traditional miners’ outfits, get on funny little trains, and zip deep into the mountain. For two hours (which includes time to get into and back out of your miner’s gear), you’ll cruise subterranean lakes; slide speedily down two long, slick, wooden banisters; and learn how they mined salt so long ago. Call ahead for crowd-avoidance advice; when the weather gets bad, this place is mobbed. You can buy a ticket early and browse through the town until your appointed tour time. Tours are in German, while English-speakers get audioguides.
Cost and Hours: €15.50, daily May-Oct 9:00-17:00, Nov-April 11:00-15:00—these are last-entry times, German tel. 08652/600-220, from Austria dial 00-49-8652-600-220, www.salzzeitreise.de.
Getting There: The mines are a 20-minute walk or quick bus ride (#837 or #840) from the Berchtesgaden station; ask the driver to let you off at the Salzbergwerk stop. (Since buses coming from Salzburg pass here on the way into Berchtesgaden, you can also simply hop off at the mines before getting into town, instead of backtracking from the station.)
Three miles south of Berchtesgaden, the idyllic Königssee stretches like a fjord through pristine mountain scenery to the dramatically situated Church of St. Bartholomä and beyond. To get to the lake from Berchtesgaden, hop on bus #841 (about hourly from train station to boat dock), or take the scenically woodsy, reasonably flat 1.25-hour walk (well-signed). Drivers pay €3 to park.
Most visitors simply glide for 35 minutes on the silent, electronically propelled boat to the church, enjoy that peaceful setting, then glide back. Boats, going at a sedate Bavarian speed and filled with Germans chuckling at the captain’s commentary, leave with demand—generally 2-4 per hour (late April-mid-Oct, no boats off-season, €13.30 round-trip, German tel. 08652/96360, from Austria dial 00-49-8652-96360, www.seenschifffahrt.de). At a rock cliff midway through the journey, your captain stops, and the first mate pulls out a trumpet to demonstrate the fine echo.
The remote, red-onion-domed Church of St. Bartholomä (once home of a monastery, then a hunting lodge of the Bavarian royal family) is surrounded by a fine beer garden, rustic fishermen’s pub, and inviting lakeside trails. The family next to St. Bartholomä’s lives in the middle of this national park and has a license to fish—so very fresh trout is the lunchtime favorite.