Winter and architecture

We've had winter turned on and off recently; here it's the area heating plant next to river Salzach, in the background Gaisberg in biting frost …

Prize winning architecture, most locals hate it for all the raw concrete.

St. Blasius & Mönchsbergwand

Flach?gau-Wanderung

The Alpine foreland mostly north of Salzburg city has a traditional name: Flachgau.

The flat county. During that recent spring interlude in the middle of winter we hiked one of the highest peaks of those flat lands; Große Plaike, 1,033 meters above sea leave, from our starting point a relative altitude of some 500 meters. A beautiful hike in warm weather, only just that little bit of mud on the way …

Near the peak some of the spring storms of recent years seem to have devastated big stretches of forest; I guess clever foresters seem to be waiting for natural regrowth.

There's a moon over St. Julien street

Winter returning

Residenzplatz, before

... and after

Fortress in the mist

"Well, you know, in them days of old, there were those prince archbishops and them built that castle up there in the mist and it was meant to keep us humble town folks way down, kinda low-life, ya see?"

One more gripping statement from Salzburg town folk

Winter's Day in Salzburg

Remember Frank Zappa? – "… but I got a crystal ball …!!"?

"Well, this is Salzburg city, and us locals we got golden balls. Some call it art, for us regular folks it's just basics: what's a man gonna stand on if a man's gonna do what a man's gotta do?"

Thanks for that deep insight into human nature!

This is Mr. Dr. Hammerhead coming to you live from Salzburg, Austria, Europe, on a warm, rainy day in January 2011

November sky

It's too darn hot

so let it rain …

Where have all the flowers gone?

Somewhere along the way, wemo went missing.

A rainy spring turned into a bloody hot premature summer, 35°C / 95F the last few days, wemo nowhere around, no permission to upload anything for the rest of the Blog-team.

On strike?

He's been around somewhere, photographs where found around his desktop.

Any problems with practical life?

Spring rain

Winter road

Lucky moment: an unusually empty Pinzgauer Bundesstraße on the way to a pickup in Saalbach-Hinterglemm, and a dramatic sky, time for a photograph while driving …

What the f***?!

There we are: yet another picture with date and time. "Es kann ja doch nicht sein, dass ..." a member of the blog team was quoted. He might qualify for politics, but the date is still there. No, not another discussion about photoshop elements! In an emergency meeting of the team a decision was found: rather than kicking out the fictitious camera assistant who would have fiddled with the settings wemo will learn to check and adjust his camera settings, if needed consulting the hand-book. – Omygawd! wemo

Winter out of focus

It's become rare to really have a lot of fresh snow in Salzburg city over night, so for once date and time in the photograph may be acceptable.

At the moment it is -5° C / 23° F, and people start complaining about the cold. Well it is winter after all, isn't it? We've just gotten out of practice.

Season's greetings

Once again, it was not a white Christmas in Salzburg city, but it was not as bad as this: heavy rain on New Year's Eve 2007. Today it's slightly freezing, and sunshine to be expected during daytime.

Off season

Maybe there's something wrong with that photograph selector? Outside I hear people shoveling snow, it's the shortest day of the year – and what comes up here? An August sunset, shot at 19:42:47, just for the record.

Fog and freezing

The fog at Intercont Berchtesgaden was in June, now it's freezing cold down here, -8.3° C, and probably -15° up there (1,000m or 3,000ft. above sea level), around one foot of snow, and a bright blue sky to be expected once sun comes up.

Beautiful place to have a hotel built, yet if it were not for the dark past, see below, this is just in the middle of nowhere. Just mountains around and great views, plus the documentation centre at Obersalzberg, and – from May through October – the bus departure to the Eagle's Nest on top of Kehlstein mountain.

Obersalzberg documentation (reportedly the largest permanent exhibition on the Nazi period, and a very good one), in the background Untersberg.

In 1928, when Hitler first rented a chalet not far from here, one of his reasons was the view of Untersberg, a myth-laden mountain. Legend has it that in one of the huge caves of this limestone mountain there is eather emperor Charlemagne or Frederick I, Hohenstaufen emperor in the 12th century, sitting at a stone table in a death-like sleep. Only when the ravens quit circling the mountain and his beard has grown seven times around the stone table the emperor will awake, gather his army and in a huge battle at Walserfeld (a plain in the area around Salzburg airport) will erect a realm of Christ on earth.

A myth that goes back to the late middle ages when Christians were still awaiting a return of Christ and a 1000 year empire on earth before doomsday. It was not a dangerous one before the Nazis grabbed hold of it to legitimate their own "Thousand year empire".

In hiding

Intercontinental Resort Berchtesgaden, the hotel built on a location that was called "Göring Hill" in dark ages: Göring had his chalet there, not far from Hitler's Obersalzberg house; the whole structure grew over the years with additions to the houses of Nazi greats, SS-barracks, a parade ground, and a tunnel system inside the rock, used as bomb shelters and as dungeons for convicts.

Hiding in the clouds above the building: The "Eagle's Nest", high outpost of this mountain retreat for the Nazis. Not far behind the location where the mountain escape of the Trapp family was filmed. Not a good way into Switzerland, then.