Winter Holiday 2011 @ Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, Germany [ entry 4 of 5 ]

event :: Winter Holiday 2011 @ Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, Germany
date :: 16 - 22 December 2011
locatio :: Berchtesgaden, Bavaria, Germany
theme :: red.

[1] The Berchtesgaden National Park has been on the list of places we want to go since I planned our Hohe Tauern National Park Austria trip last year. But because the route we chose then were limited to Austrian border, that was probably why we missed it. Plus the lack of time too, since it was just a three days trip.




[2] The Berchtesgaden National Park is situated at the border of Germany and Austria. From Rothenburg, it took about 5 hours drive. Going from Munich-Rothenburg-Berchtesgaden was not a very cost-friendly way to plan your route. This is because from Rothenburg, we were in fact heading back into Munich before we can reach Berchtesgaden. The correct route would have been Berchtesgaden-Munich-Rothenburg. But because we started out from Munich, there wasn't much we could do ;)




[3] Somehow the 5 hour drive didnt  felt that long then. It was probably because  hubbykun was driving super fast!  I have never seen him drove this fast all my life! He was going at 140km/h on average, when we were running at the middle lane. Sometimes when he was at the fastest lane, he was going at 180km/h. And that was nothing to be proud of, because quite a number of people are going at 200 km/h without a care in the world. Hubbykun told me that some parts of the German autobahn (motorway) has no speed limit. How cool is that? huhu. My sis-in-law (Arlung) would have loved driving in Germany ;)




[4] We made a stop at the petrol pump to fill up the petrol and do our Zohor/Asar prayers.  The WC is quite high tech: when u press the flush, the toilet seat will spin while it was being cleaned. Although it is not on the same par, it reminded me of Japan's toilet bowls which are state-of-the-art! They're equipped with many options buttons such as air blower, water that was be sprayed different directions, and even heater on the seat :P had fun when I was playing around with one when we were staying at Nadiah Hanim's. It was a girls trip back during my single days with my Zafzulk and Nozie. That was a really fun trip! ;)




[5] We also made another stop to the petrol pump when we started seeing signs saying we are heading into Salzburg. Hubbykun asked the petrol pump personnel whether we need to purchase the border ticket. I read online that you need to purchase some display sticker which only cost a couple Euros if you're going into Austria. If you dont, there'll be a huge fine. He told us that we don't need to because we won't be going into Austria, but just to be careful not to miss the turn or we'll be in trouble :P The sticker can be purchased or a duration of 1 week, 1 month etc. Since we'll only be in Berchtesgaden for 2 days and we are not interested to go into Austria, we didn't buy one.




[6] Apparently, the exit that we are heading to was just the next exit after the petrol pump. As soon as we left the motorway into the national park, it started snowing rather heavily. Hubbykun needed some time to adjust the speed he was going before. I was reciting prayers the whole time because the road was really slippery and the car skidded a few times too. We went at a really low speed. Alhamdulillah we arrived at the guesthouse safe and sound.




[7] After checking in, it was only about 7pm. Since the night was still early, we asked Alfred (the guesthouse owner) how we can get to the city centre and if there were any xmas markets around. Alfred explained to us the direction but I was finding it hard keeping track with the explanation :P So before we headed out, i asked him to give the address so I can key it in the GPS. He said he don't know how to use the GPS even though he owned one. aiyark!




[8] I then browse through the nearby POIs with him and he pointed out that the Schlossplatz is the location of the xmas market. He asked us to park the car near the Rathaus (city hall) which was free during weekends and after 6pm. He also told us to avoid underground car park because they have an expensive hourly rate.




[9] The Schlossplatz was just about 10 min drive (~2.4miles)  from the guesthouse and pretty easy to find too because the xmas market was brightly lit. Even from the road, you can see the huge xmas tree at the square ;) We arrived at the Schlossplatz at 7.15pm. On normal days, there should be another 1 hour to go before the xmas market supposed closing time. However, because it was snowing rather heavily and the xmas market was quite deserted, a number of stalls had already closed for business. Only a couple of teenagers can be seen around throwing snowballs at each other and targetting the market signage too.




[10] We enjoyed the fact that there wasn't many people around. This made taking photos so much easier.  There was a small covered stage at the side of the Schlossplatz Square that was being used for a restaurant I reckon. We used this as the shade to get away from the snow while hubbykun took some photos and video. Taking photos while it was snowing heavily can be quite a challenge. This because the snowflakes would keep going onto the lens, so hubbykun had to clear them quite often. Therefore, keeping to the shaded-area can be a huge time-saving. Don't want to go spending so much time in the cold weather right? :P




[11] We headed back to the guesthouse at 9pm. The first thing we did when reaching our room was took a shower because Alfred told us to not take a shower after 10pm for fear of disturbing the other guests. I must say the guesthouse has quite strict rules eh? :P After that, we had dinner which was leftover fried rice i made in the morning in Rothenburg. Even though the guest house have a kitchen, it didnt allow guests to cook. Eating in the room was not permitted too because Alfred said they do not want the room to smell of food. Since they have a nice and huge dining area, we do not mind much. A table in the corner has also been reserved for us for any meals. hot water and dinnerware are also provided. Luckily they allowed us to use the kettle for making hot tea and stuff. This was perfect since we have plenty of leftover instant noodles as dinner menu for the next night.  Right after dinner, we went straight to bed. We had a very fitful sleep probably because we were tired from the long drive. The next day, we reserved the whole day to explore the Konigssee area.




[12] On Monday 19th December morning, we woke up very early ~5am because it was the day we checked out and I only started packing all our stuff that morning. However, there weren't that much to pack either because we were wearing almost all the clothing items we brought as insulation to the cold weather :P I think I was wearing 5 layers of clothes hehe. Didn't want to go through the same pain as we did when we went to Niagara Falls, NY :P




[13] Hubbykun also said that he wanted to check out early as he had plenty of plans and sightseeing left to do. We finished getting ready at 7am and there was 30 minutes left to breakfast time. I spent the time working on recording travelogue of our trip and synching new music on our ipod. Meanwhile, hubbykun my man did the heavy-lifting i.e. transferring our luggage to the car ;)




[14] Before having breakfast, we paid the room rent and asked permission to left one of luggage at the reception as it contained valuables such as laptops that we didnt want to leave in the car when we were in town. We also asked that he loaned us the guesthouse card until the time when we collect our luggage. He reminded us almost 5 times to make sure to rememeber returning the card :P Turned out we didn't even use it at all huhu.




[15] The plan of the day was to spend about 2-3hours in Berchtesgaden Town and then head to Konigssee again. Also, I don't know why but the car park ticketing automatically issue ticket with the first coin you put in. Luckily it was a €2 coin that I put in :P We had the car park until 12 noon and we thought that was sufficient as we plan to head to Konigssee next.




[16] We first headed to the tourist information that has been closed over the weekend to get some English brochures and advice on recommended walk. She receptionist gave us the town map with 12 recommended checkpoints (4 of which are marked as view points). The first checkpoint was the cemetery and the 2nd checkpoint was a small church right next to it. The cemetery was especially beautiful because it was located on the hills, with a steep descend next to it, so you can see the mountains view straight ahead. The white snow makes the cemetery looked especially peaceful too. I noticed some graves were from during the WWII time and some were even older that then.




[17] After that we came across the National Park Centre, which was marked as the next checkpoint.  We went inside partly due to the fact that it was snowing heavily again and hubbykun had to clean his lens. While we were there, we saw some nice postcards and decided to buy some. Saw some nice brochures too, so I picked up a few interesting ones that caught my eyes.




[18] We also took the chance to ask the National Park staff on some recommended walks besides the town centre if we have around 4-5 hours. He said due to snow everywhere, it won't be that much enjoyable to walk. Since we've been to Konigssee, he recommended Hintersee. Hubbykun changed his mind then to go to Hintersee instead of Konigssee. I remembered thinking to myself then that the plan seemed rather ambitious :P




[19] Just then, the snow stopped and we quickly continued out walk to the next checkpoint, which was a footpath at the side of the hills where you can see the valley of houses and the river below, as well as the mountains. The view was breathtaking! Turned out that this was the 1st of the viewpoint marked in the map. We ended up  taking so many pictures here and spending more than 1 hour here alone!




[20] Hubykun also wanted to spend some time to take his favourite panoramic shots here. But as soon as he started doing this, it suddenly heavy snow and the visibility was so bad that you can't see the mountains at all. Hubbykun changed his mind to take macro shots of the snowflakes, but right after that the snow  suddenly stopped! Hahaha! By then, we noticed that the parking ticket was almost exceeded. We went back to the car park and added another 2 hours to continue the town centre walk.




[21] The walk was actually a ring route. This time around, we went in the other direction that the one we did in the morning. Somehow I think we took a slightly wrong route that we missed 2 checkpoints. The road we took was rather suspicious and didn't look like a tourist attraction either because it was going through residential houses. We saw a small shop that was opened and I decided it was time to ask for directions. He told us that we were now on the right route and if we continue straight ahead towards a junction on the right, we will find the next checkpoint.




[22] The next checkpoint at the junction was an old hospital, but the building didn't look like one. So I tried to read the signboard posted there, but since it was all in German, it didn't get me anywhere :P While I was figuring this out, hubbykun decided  to explore the area surrounding that and he came came across a very beautiful open field that was covered in snow that was marked as a viewpoint.




[23] So I guess the building at the junction was indeed the old hospital, but we didn't take any picture of since it didn't look particularly interesting. We also found out that we were on a rather high altitude, and the walking path at the back of the building was heading to the mountains covered with pine trees. Alhamdulillah, suddenly the sun came out too that made the view extremely breathtaking here!




[24] Hubbykun said that he might as well cancelled the Konigsee or Hintersee plan because this was exactly the kind of view he was looking for. We never imagined that we can get this kind of view just a brief walk away from the town centre!




[25] While waiting for hubbykun to be done, it was actually lunch time. Luckily I brought our packed lunch with me, so there was something to keep our stomachs  happy. Else, we would need to spend some time looking for food and we didn't want this, because we had very limited time left to spend until 3pm (the time we promised to pick up our luggage at the guesthouse).




[26] It snowed lightly every now and then but that didn't hinder us from spending another hour here alone ;) Hubbykun tried to take some macro shots of the snowflakes again, but he wasn't successful at that either. We were very thankful that we decided to complete this route! We would have loved to stay here a bit longer.




[27] We walked further along the recommended route and the view from here on was beautiful all the way. There was a small restaurant at the top of hill that offered a breathtaking view of Berchtesgaden that was marked as optional (probably because it was extremely hilly? :P). I would have loved to do the climb but we were running extremely low on time and quite a bit of walk left to do before we reached the city centre again. So, we decided to forego the climb and just took a zoomed picture from below :(




[28] The next check point was a panorama of city from a high altitude as seen in the postcard. I was wondering how the postcard that we bought managed to get that view and now we know from where it was. It was on a hilly road next to the main road that we usually took to get to the town centre, heading towards the Rathaus. A short walk from here, we reached back at the car park.




[29] The next recommended checkpoints were around the Marktplatz and Schlossplatz which thankfully we have covered the day/night before, so we don't need to spend so much time here. We then went to the last viewpoint which was Park Luipold. But we found that the park next to the tourist information centre was much beautiful that Park Liupold. We took photos at this park instead.




[30] We then went to the WC for ablution. By then it was 2.45pm, and we decided we better hurry back to the guesthouse and will do our prayers right after that. I wore my gloves just to be sure that I won't lose my wudu' should in case Alfred offered to shake my hands. I miscalculated when Alfred instead wanted to kiss my cheek! I felt bad because I acted rather rude and I gave him the side of my head so he kissed my scarf instead, very awkward! :P We then did our prayers and head to our next destination.




[31] finally the video during our trip, [ checkout the white trees while we were driving! ]









next on our final entry of this trip; the making of snowman + snowangel!