The beauty about living in a place like Udine is that by car you’re in nearby Austria in about 1 hour. From there, another 2 hours (almost) and you’re in Germany, but it’s actually right next to Salzburg, Mozart’s hometown, which is in Austria and only 20 kms away!
So you’re basically in and out from one country to the other in less than 3 hours by car. Cool, eh?
The area in Germany, the Bavarian Alps, is also home to Hitler’s Eagle’s Nest, a mountain resort located some 2,000 meters up in the mountains. It was a gift by his right hand man, Martin Bormann, for Hitler’s 50th b.day. Apparently, Hitler himself only went up there 4 times. The tunnel to the 120 meter elevator which takes you up to the nest itself is some 400 meters long.
I don’t know how true this is but they say that the area is patrolled by German secret services as they obviously don’t want the place to become some haven or pilgrimage for every neo-Nazi out there. It takes 3 hours from the parking lot if you’re going to hike up or a 20 minute bus ride up the 6.5 km road. Some 800 people worked on building that road 70 years ago. The chimney, which is in the dining room and is now a restaurant for tourists, was instead a gift by Mussolini to his buddy Adolf. Three U.S. generals eventually made it up there right after the war: Eisenhower, Clarke (who rode into a liberated Rome in June, 1944) and Bradley (I believe a tank is named after him).
We had trouble finding Hitler’s residence in the area, the Berghof, or whatever is left of it as it was destroyed by the German government in 1955. Many people there are rather hush-hush about it as they don’t want the place to become a shrine for neo-Nazi groups out there. Indeed a pity because from the pics it certainly was rather nice, especially the large terrace which gave out onto the mountains. The likes of Mussolini, Italo Balbo and Wally Simpson were guests there, not to mention all of Hitler’s top brass like Himmler, Goebbels, Goering, Speer and others. The SS also had it’s hqs in the area, naturally to protect their boss, Hitler himself. Apparently, Hitler in 1941 made some pretty important decisions on the Holocaust at the Berghof.
The area is also near Lake Koningsee, which is Germany’s highest. You can take a 55-minute boat ride which takes you to a nice chapel, St. Bartholomew, which has already appeared several times in movies. Interesting too as at one point the boat stops and one of the crew people takes out a bugle and begins to play it. The positioning of the boat sends the echo around the entire lake! Very nationalistic the folks there as the description was only in German too, no English (or Italian, French, Spanish…)!
