New and exciting excursion to the Untersberg

Wednesday - after a fierce storm and thunderstorm at night (which showed to have big effects on our train trip back home later) it hadn't really cooled down, but we had a mix of sun and clouds in the morning when we took the bus from the main railroad station nearby to the Untersberg. Salzburg has its city hills ("Stadtberge") - Kapuzinerberg, Mönchsberg, Rainberg, Nonnberg, Festungsberg - and its mountains in the surroundings, the so-called Salzburger Becken. Favorite viewpoints and recreational destinations are especially two of them: the Untersberg (1972 m/6470 ft. - photo) and the Gaisberg (1288 m/4225 ft.).  

We made the 30 min trip by bus to the Untersberg, south of Salzburg, almost on the border to Germany. A modern mountain funicular south of the little town of Grödig brings visitors up to the top of the hill in a couple of minutes. Corresponding to mythology, the Untersberg is home of Kaiser Karl d. Große (shown on the wall of the station building on the left photo), who is waiting for his resurrection. Every 100 years he wakes up, checks on ravens flying around the mountain still, and, if so, continues to sleep. He is well taken care of by little mountain dwarfs.

 

As to be seen in the photos: First, up there, it's high alpine "mountain atmosphere" and great panoramas, as on the photo above, showing the summit funicular station and views towards the north and Bavaria. Second, many hikers overestimate themselves, the hiking trails are mostly demanding and the right equipment, weather and condition are needed. On the summit the wind was blowing and, unfortunately, clouds all over the place - which made the views, on the other hand, pretty "dramatic".

At least, we walked the short trail to the Geiereck, one of the summits of the mountain chain, passing two mountain cabins/hostels. Then, we caught another train back down, because there was danger that they would shut down the train because of thunderstorms or strong winds, which would have cost us time. 

The abbreviated visit was a good thing, too, since it gave us more time for the surrounding area, around Grödig. Thanks to our highly knowledgeable guide Maria, representing tourism in the region, we drove to another unusual sight: "Kugelmühle", where we got a demonstration of what was (and is) done here: Producing stone balls (marbles) from local stone with hydro power (delivered by a redirected creek coming from a waterfall). Old documents from end of the 18th century already mention 14 "marble mills" along a waterfall. One is still fully operative thanks to Martin Leitner, and, it's a complicated mechanism to form the little balls. In the past, left-overs from the quarries were used, roughly shaped manually with tools. In the mill they were then ground perfectly round and, eventually, polished. These little balls were used as ship ballast, as ammunition or as toy-marbles.  

More about the technique of the mills, the products and their use, the importance of stone and water for the region, and, about local mythology and sagas, we learned in the nearby Untersbergmuseum in Grödig-Fürstenbrunn - modern and nicely arranged exhibitions of all kinds! Especially unique is one room with the elaborate costumes for the "Wilde Jagd" (wild hunt), really scary, and used one night in December for a scary/secret/mystic rite (right photo).

Passing the large chocolate factory "Salzburg Schokolade", famous for producing the Echte Salzburger Mozartkugel von Mirabell we made a final, fantastic stop at Gruell's fish & seafood store & bistro. Walter Grüll started to work in this field of work in 1981, first did fish farming, then opened a fish/deli store in 1992 and added a bistro in 2012. Worldwide there are only approx. 30 sturgeon farmers producing highly-valued caviar. Gruell does that, but is especially famous for White Albino Sturgeon and  caviar. The family operation gets extra saltwater fish and seafood from trusted traders in Italy and their fish assortment - fresh and refined/prepared - is enormous! We had a sample platter of cold fish/seafood delicacies (photo) to check it out in person.

What a great treat before we headed back to the city to catch a train back home, which showed to become an odyssey! Salzburg to Munich was an easy-peasy trip (ca. 1.5 hours), but Munich to Augsburg (originally: a 40 min. train trip) showed to become a real nuisance: Because of objects on the tracks and other damages from previous night's thunderstorms, the complete (main) route was shut down. We had to detour, change trains twice - information was scarce and confusing or non-existant, trains hot and packed. To make a long story short: we arrived at home with a delay of 3 hours!