Bavaria and Salzburg (Flooding and Sun)

We drove to Bamburg in the pouring rain and on arrival it took some mustering of courage and some lunch to get us out into the rain as we had about a 2km walk to the centre city.  In the end we were pleased we made the effort Bamburg was indeed a very pretty city with lots of interesting things to see and for some of the time the rain even let up.

 Bamburg

Rain pretty much all through the night and the next day! We went to the Nazi Rally Grounds in Nuremburg, where they have a museum.  They were trying to build a very grand and elaborate complex for the sole purpose of holding their annual or biannual conference.  We tried to walk around a bit (the whole site is 11km2) but were rather driven back but the cold and rain.  This evening I had a currywurst which is a German sausage with hot tomato sauce and curry powder.

More rain followed as we moved on to Regensburg, we arrived to find significant activity to fight the flooding, which by now was getting fairly significant.  Again a fairly attractive town which I'm sure shows itself off better on a nice day, but we were rather driven around by the rain.  The old town is a world heritage site and we visited the UNESCO centre for this.  Our second stop of the day was the site of the Dachau Concentration Camp, which was the first one and was used as a model for others.  It was Monday and the museum was closed and as we arrived at 5pm the visitor centre also closed, but we read the panels and walked around.  Just can't describe how cold and wet it was though especially for summer.

Regensburg

The water boiler in the van has been playing up pretty much since we got the van and recently it has been worse which isn't helpful because we need it.  So I went to one place and they were too busy and they mentioned that Truma (the manufacturer) were just outside Munich and another said because Truma was near no-one came to them so they don't have parts.  So we drove the nearly 60kms and the Truma people found that we had a faulty electrical board which meant the ignition for the gas wasn't going.  So we are all patched up again and on our way to Salzburg.

The sun finally arrived, but the best of the day, after a promising start, was ruined in a traffic jam on the autobhan. It took us 2.5 hours to go a 25min drive.  We couldn't get off because it took 2 hours to get to the exit.  We were pleased for the change in weather and the area was nice but we moved on to Salzburg, which we have discovered has very expensive parking and not that much of it (if your a high-sided vehicle), they tend to have parking buildings.  This aside during another superb day of sun we visited the Red Bull Hanger at Salzburg Airport and then we went into town so Nicky could visit The Sound of Music sites.

Traffic Jam

Red Bull Hanger

We did a second day in Salzburg before heading out on the Deutsche Alpenstrasse, a scenic route through the Bavaria Alps.  The scenery has been great and the weather very good until about 10 mins ago when a thunder storm came in with the biggest heaviest hail I've ever seen.  We are currently stopped at the base of Germanys highest peak the Zugspitze nearly 3000m.  We will continue on this Alpenstrasse route for a few more days, coming up is Neuschwanstein Castle (Disney Castle).