CHAPTER 24: CHIEMSEE, GERMANY
Tuesday, November 9

Things are going well here in Germany. We've gotten a lot of business taken care of, seen a movie (“The Thomas Crown Affair” … Rene Russo is a pretty hot babe, but the storyline is lame) and have done some more sightseeing. Our spirits are lifting and we're enjoying ourselves.

Weather, however, sucks. We've had a lot of rain over the past week. We sure hope it clears up soon. Temperature has dropped significantly and we can see snow in the mountains not far above us. Winter has just about hit Bavaria.

Despite the weather, yesterday we took a road trip to Berchtesgaden. This is a resort area in the southeast corner of Germany. Hitler's “Eagle's Nest” is there (it closed last week for the winter). Berchtesgaden is a hiking area in summer and big-time ski resort in winter. We hit it right between the two seasons so despite the size of the town (about as big as Vail, Colorado, it seems), we were two of maybe 25 tourists in the whole place. That was fine with me. American ski resorts try hard to make themselves look like Bavarian villages, but Berchtesgaden is the real thing. It's an old town with lots of neat buildings and a lot of character. We saw one pub that's celebrating its 350th anniversary in the town! We wandered and window-shopped (most everything was closed) and had a great lunch.

The drives in and out of town were awesome. Imagine the Rockies, only a bit steeper, shorter, and covered with trees. Everywhere you look are alpine meadows with Bavarian houses set in them. The road was called the “Alpenstrasse”, meaning “Alpine Road”, and it wound up and down and around like a snake. Great for a sports car fan like me. Our old Range Rover isn't exactly a sports car (heck, I was even holding up a huge touring bus at one point) but give me a winding road in good condition and lots of stuff to look at and I'm happy. (Janis kept me legal by yelling “SLOW DOWN” at fairly regular intervals, in contrast to the Germans in their BMW's behind me who were all yelling "SPEED THE HELL UP").

Yesterday we took a road trip to see the Neuschwanstein castle (pronounced "noy-shvan-shtine"). This is the castle that Walt Disney used as the basis for his Disneyland castle, and must be one of the most photographed castles in the world. It's certainly one of the most beautifully designed and beautifully situated ones. You drive down this Alpine valley that gradually gets narrower and steeper, and suddenly when you come around a corner, there it is, dramatically situated on a steep rock outcropping off an almost vertical mountainside that rises several thousand feet above it. When we were there, it was cloudy and rainy; the snow came down to within a couple hundred feet of the castle, and the effect was quite spectacular. We took the tour, which was okay but not great. It appears that King Ludwig was a bit bonkers: he spent huge amounts of the country's money building Neuschwanstein and several other castles. Finally the leadership of Bavaria had enough and arranged to have somebody find the King floating "drowned" in 18 inches of water. Well, that's one way of getting rid of your CEO and his bad habits. After King Ludwig's ... uh, "accident", all construction stopped and only 16 of the 65 rooms were completed. It was opened as a tourist attraction about two weeks later and has been one ever since. We certainly enjoyed our day as tourists.

We've explored the town of Prien, where our hotel is situated. It's a resort town and has lots of shops and restaurants. Right now they're gearing up for the ski season. We stumbled across an open-air flea market in the city center. It looks like the Germans buy and sell the exact same stuff at their flea markets that Americans do. That evening we ate at a Chinese restaurant that is the best we've found during this entire trip. Outstanding food and excellent service.

I think I mentioned that our hotel only has German TV channels, except for one CNN channel. We've seen a number of interesting things on German TV:
- Lots of old American shows dubbed into German, including The Nanny (Fran Drescher's whine doesn't carry over into German, though), Tool Time, and (inexplicably) Hogan's Heroes. I know notheeeeeng!
- Right now they're showing a German version of Who Wants To Be A Millionaire? They even have the same music and dramatic pauses and everything.
- They're not the least bit shy about full-frontal nudity and strong-R-rated late-night shows and commercials. Hey, I almost look forward to getting insomnia!

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