And speaking of Castles... Fussen

As we drove from Hallstatt to Fussen we passed many fields with numerous small buildings scattered over them, as can be seen in this image. Apparently, these many buildings are for storing hay.

Fussen is famous for its castles - Hohoenswchwangau and Neuschwanstein. Here is a picture of Hohoenschwangau from one of the parking lots that have been build to accomodate tourists to the area.




Here is a view of the famous Neuschwanstein castle, which was build during the early 1800's by the "Mad King" Ludwig II Konig of Bavaria. The castle was incomplete when he was declared insane by a royal commission, and he was found dead the next day in Munich, along with his personal doctor, under mysterious circumstances which have never been fully explained to this day.


Here is the view of Neuschwanstein from the parking lot...

...And here is a view of the entrance to Neuschwanstein. This image has been stitched together from several photographs since my camera could not take it all in in one shot using a normal lens.

Of course, you would expect swans near castles called Hohoenschwangau and Neuschwanstein. Here is a family of swans doing thier bit for tourism in the charming lake below the castles.

Of course, Audrey had to make a new friend!

And how could we resist having our picture taken with the lovely mountain lake in the background?

After the day touring the castles, it was time for a nice meal in a themed resturant.

Tomorrow, we tackle the Stevio Pass...

Swarovski Crystal

Here is a castle on a hill on the way from Hallstatt to Fussen. The thing about this part of Europe and castles is this - after a while you have seen so many of them you stop taking pictures of them and you even stop mentioning them to other people in the car unless they are really spectacular. However, when this picture was taken they were still something a bit novel for us.

In due course, we arrived at Wattens Austria, home of Swarovski Crystal Works. Audrey really, really likes this kind of crystal. Apparently, there are so many people like her that they actually have this really amazing museum of modern art centered around a Swarovski Crystal theme. In the courtyard for this museum there is a snake wrapped around a pole. A little something about woman and snake and temptation, perhaps?


Audrey at the unique entrance to the Swarovski museum. This fountain has crystal eyes and is a herald of the art inside!

Notice Audrey's smile as she stands in front of the "Wall of Crystal"....

Here Audrey and I pose inside the "Crystal Dome". It is an experience something like what I imagine it would be like to be trapped inside a disco ball on steroids!

Audrey bought some crystal at the museum in Wattens, but they also gave her a brochure about a crystal store in Innsbruck - apparently the largest store of its type in the world. She did not read about it until we got to Fussen, but when she did we had to make a backtrack trip and stop to Innsbruck. You just know that this had to be expensive, don't you? I am afraid that you will simply have to wait until we get home to see how much new crystal we own now - but does the phrase "I need another suitcase" send chills up your spine the way it does for me?

The Hallstatt Period

Hallstatt is a very scenic lakeside tourist town in Austria. It is famous for the lakeside view, the paleolithic, bronze age, and iron age archeological sites in the area - including the site that generated the recognized archeological artifact epoch known as the "Hallstatt Period", and it's Salt Mine, which is the oldest active mining operation in the world.


Hallstatt is also famous for its "Charnal House" where the skulls and long bones of deceased residents are exhumed after 10 years of burial, cleaned of flesh, decorated with painted names and symbols (such as flowers), and displayed. This practice ended some time ago, but as recently as 1992 a skull was added to the collection at the request of the deceased. It must be mentioned that this is a venerated crypt associated with and located on the grounds of the local church.

The swans in the lake are very tame, and apparently used to being fed by passers by. This one was just begging to have his picture taken!

To get to the Salt Mines, which are high up on the mountain above the town, the most convenient means of transport is the funicular. It is sort of a cross between an elevator, a cable car, and a railway. It works very well, and you get to enjoy great views on your ride up and down the mountain. It certainly beats climbing! We used funiculars many times during our trip.

Once at the salt mine, we put on coveralls and took a tour of the mine. They have a number of interesting displays that tell you all about salt mining, and a theme of the tour is the circumstances of the discovery of an ancient miner who had been killed in a mining accident some unknown time in the past, and rediscovered by miners in the 17th century. The body was carried out of the mine by the miners and taken to the priest, who assumed that the man had been killed relatively recently (only a couple of hundred years before or so) and gave him a good christian burial. Unfortunately, to this day no one knows exactly where he was buried.

One of the interesting things that we saw while we were up the mountain was this helicopter delivering wet concrete to men who were working on one of the buildings there. As expensive as this process must have been, it seems to have been the only reasonable alternative to trying to mix it on the spot, with raw materials that had been transported up the mountain!

A Visit to Eagles Nest

There was light rain as we drove away from Saltzburg, heading toward Hallstatt. We decided to stop in at Eagles Nest on our way. Here is a view of the countryside as we drove back into Germany from Austria.


In order to get to Eagles Nest we had to take buses from the parking lot at the bottom of the mountain. The buses drove up narrow mountain roads that were only wide enough for one bus at a time. It looked like a long way down to me...

The last little bit of the way up to the Eagles nest is down a tunnel into the mountain, and then up an elevator. I guess this was supposed to give it even more of a controlled access in Hitler's day.

At the top of the mountain there is this cross, which was erected after the war.

Looking down from the cross monument one sees the well known view of Hitlers' mountain fortress/retreat.

Here is a nice shot of Graham, on the mountain at Eagles Nest. The terrain was too tough for Barb, so she had wine in the resturant while she waited.

We had a nice lunch in the "Tea Room". Audrey ordered two pastries for her lunch - while I had a healthy vegetable soup with sausage. And a beer, of course...

After lunch, Audrey and I posed to reproduce the image (inset) of Adolf Hitler and Eva Braun at Eagles Nest, taken I think sometime during WWII. They have made a number of renovations to the outside of the building to accomodate tourists (such as ourselves!) but I think we found the right spot. History comes alive when you find yourself standing in pretty much the same place as where historical figures are known to have been...

A short walk took us below the building for a perspective from the other side.

And we again had to walk down the tunnel on our way out of the Eagles Nest.

Next stop - Hallstatt, Austria!

At Saltzburg

Audrey was enjoying herself in Saltzburg.


Our hotel in Saltzburg was located in the very center of the most interesting part of the city. Here you can see Graham, with our hotel to the left and the Fortress of Saltzburg on the top of the hill above us.

The castle that overlooks Saltzburg is called the Hohensaltzburg. It is the place where the Bishop of Saltzburg and a few hundred of his closest friends took refuge whenever they felt at risk - like during peasant revolts or the 30-years war and such. The fortress was never taken. Now it is a major tourist attraction and museum that helps to keep the economy of the city going...

Here Audrey is admiring the city from the fortress.

One of the must-see places in Saltzburg is the Maribel Gardens. Here is a nice shot of Audrey in one of her new favorite places!

And here is Audrey having some fun posing in Mirabel Gardens. For the most part, the resemblance is quite striking!

As in most tourist hot spots, there were a lot of artists hawking their pictures. We decided to by a couple of acrylic paintings of the city from this artist.

A recurring theme in most of the places that we are visiting is the spectacular churches, filled with excellent art works. The architecture and expert craftsmanship on display in these many churches are exceptional!

Saltzburg is the birthplace Mozart and the center of all that is Mozart. The Skjenna's and the Bogner's enjoyed a very elegant experience attending the famous Mozart Dinner Concert, complete with a live Mozart Quintet, a pair of Opera Singers, and authentic 17th century menu!

After the concert we wandered Saltzburg by moonlight.

Trockau, and the Hunt for Bogner Relations.

As we drove to Trockau from Rothenburg, we stopped at a farmers market. We picked up some stuff for our lunch and Audrey found a little something as well!


For lunch, we stopped at one of the roadside picnic places that the have by all the roads in Germany. What a great idea! This is something we should do better in Canada. We stopped just across the road from an ancient castle fortress on a hillside.

Along the way we came through a town where the buildings were built right onto the rocks over the town. Of course we had to stop to take a picture. As it turns out, this very picture is famous all over the region, and can be found on many postcards of this area.

As we approached Trockau, we found a tower that overlooks the whole area. Naturally, we had to climb it! It was from here that we got our first look at the village of Trockau, the old world home of the Bogner's.

In no time at all, we found ourselves at the outskirts of the village....

And checked into the Gasthof Stockel, where we stayed overnight and enjoyed excellent hospitality (and shared much refreshment) with some of the local residents, including the parish priest!

Here is a street scene from Trockau, with the Schloss (summer palace) in the background. It seems to be a very tidy and well ordered village, as is typical for this part of Germany.

About 4 km from Trockau is the village of Buchenbach, where the Bogner's also came from. The church here is spectacular! The church itself is over 800 years old, and the priest tells me that some of the artifacts within the church are over 1000 years old. I have never seen a church that compares to it, for its size and congregation. It was simply stunning! Our host, Barbara Foerester was kind enough to play the pipe organ for us, which really made Audrey's day for her.

An item of particular interest to me was this confessional, which was dated 1783, and was made by my distant grandfather Johann Georg Bogner. It was an odd feeling for me to run my hands over the very wood that this man had worked so many years ago!

Our hosts in Buchenbach were the Heinrich Foerester family. Heinrich is a distant cousin of the Johann Baptist Bogner family through Barbara Bogner Foerester.

The Foeresters were able to show is the monument/alter that Johann Baptist Bogner built in Trockau in about 1885, before emigrating to the United States. It was good that they knew where it was, because the area is becoming overgrown and we would have been unlikely to have found it on our own. Unfortunately, the monument is deteriorating and will not last too much longer without renovations. There are no longer any Bogner's in Trockau or Buchenbach who know the significance of the monument and would have an interest in preserving it. Perhaps the decendents of Johann Baptist Bogner will rally and rescue it before it disappears....

We were fortunate enough to recieve permission to enter the chapel of the Schloss from the Gross family, who still live there. Inside we found this confessional, dated 1792, which was also almost certainly made by my ancestor Johann Georg Bogner. As you can see, it is very similiar in style and fabrication to the confessional in the Buchenbach church, and it seems to me to be most unlikely that there were two carpenters doing such pieces in this small area and time. But there is no providence for this piece so far as I know, as there is for the Buchenbach piece.

Our search for Bogner relations led us to follow a tip from one of the Trockau locals who was drinking with us at the local hotel, that their mother had spoken only the day before with a Mr. Bogner in the town of Gossweinstein, who had told her that his family had originally come from Trockau. To follow up on this tip, our host/translator/guide Ute Hummer (secretary to the parish priest in Trockau) and her husband drove us the 20 km to Gossweinstein. The first place that we looked was the local cathedral - which was spectacular to say the least. After some inquiries, we were able to get an address for Walter Bogner.

As we drove toward the address that we had been given, I took this picture of a local street scene, featuring the large house on the hill. By coincidence, guess who was walking down the street at the time. We stopped him to ask for directions....

And Johann Walter Bogner invited us to his home!

After some wonderful discussion of family trees and viewing a few pictures (and many comments about various family resemblances!) it was time to take our leave. Here Audrey and I pose with Walter and Guertrude Bogner, together with their son Stefan (one of 9 children) who happened to visit while we were talking. Stefan and Stephen were both born in 1960.

A very special "Thank You!" to the Hummer and Foerster families for their wonderful hospitality and efforts "above and beyond" to help us make this family connection!