As far as offensive titles go, my trip up to Eagles Nest in Berchtesgaden forced me to hang out in Hiltler’s shadow.  At first the shadow was all we thought we’d get.  It was supposed to look like this, but all we saw was fog.  Eventually I found the panorama map so I could tell what I was looking at. Feeling a little ripped off at the 30 Euros it took to get up here, Aaron and I set off to climb amongst the rocks.

It took a little waiting, but the sky managed to break through and I was able to start taking quite a few good pictures. After a couple hours at the top and a few beers with a view, Aaron and I decided to hike the five miles down, while Kenneth and Brandon were headed off to see some lake nearby.  The hike was a steep decent covered in orange fall leaves and trees; it left the bottom of Aarons feet (in his Vans) a little bruised.

Exhausted we made our way back to Salzburg for Aarons last night with me, which ended up being relatively quiet, a train ticket purchase for him at 4:30am tomorrow, dinner and another beer.

Copious amounts of beer lead to the need for relaxation, unfortunately when that form of relaxation comes in the form of copious amounts of beer in another country, it doesn’t really help. The Point of this tale…

This morning my eyes creaked open and glanced at my watch, 9:19am, Good, if I pay by 10 we are get another night here. I blink a few times and decide to head down and take care of business before going back to sleep.

“Yeeaahh… uhh.. Can I pay for another night for everyone in room 102?” I ask to the overwhelmed girl at the counter.

She looks at me stunned. “We are full tonight.”

My mind reals back to check in yesterday “But..? I was told if we pay by 10am we could stay another night?”

She glanced at her watch “It’s 11:03am”

Fuck

Those were long blinks…

“You don’t have anything?” I asked as meekly as my hungover ass could.

“Hhhhh” she huffed at me and looked at here spreadsheet. “maybe… umm…FINE. You can stay there, Ill move some people around.”

“Danke” I replied in my horrible German. She just glared at me as I slithered back to bed.

From then on I proposed that I would attempt to avoid any international confrontations for the rest of the day. No Iraq discussion, no talks of the values of American Capitalism, no religion and no angry receptionists (just had to sneak out past her).

Once we did finally wake up from the late nighter last night; some showers and tooth brushing, and we were headed off to the grocery store for a picnic breakfast (lunch), passing assorted statues and local color on our way to the giant castle on the hill.

We followed that up with a visit to the Salzburg Modern Art Museum (where I needed a photo pass), with a fantastic exhibit on modern Chinese art (which made vastly more sense to me in light of my recent trip to China). My favorite part was the disclaimer outside the room where a woman had made a variety of photographs of her vagina bleeding during her period, once a month for an entire year. Its called “Twelve Flower Months” or something like that.
The rest of the night was a (non confrontational) visit to the wurst vendor, back to the hostel for some blogging and a couple more beers in the hostel bar before I called it an early night and everyone else went prowling the Austrian streets for some form of food.