Burghausen

As the finale of our stay with the Bavarian cousins, we took a trip to Burghausen, a very old town on the river Salzach (remember Salzburg) and the home town of Hellen. Burghausen is about 2 hours east of Munich on the border to Austria. Hellen's parents were so nice to invite us into their home and were lovely hosts. I am two weeks late with my entry, which bothers me, but for some reason I never found the time while being in Frankonia and then in Prague, I sure hope to catch up a bit before we leave and post enough to catch up before we return home.


Burghausen is a small town, but was very rich due to the salt trade and has a spectacular castle, hence the name Burghausen. This castle is so special, because it is the longest castle in all of Europe, being 1043 meters long, over a kilometer. It has all these different court yards, the most outer one being the least important and the inner one the most important. Nobody was ever able to reach the important part.

Unfortunately the light was not cooperating and it was a very overcast and gray sky and therefore my pictures are missing their typical luster. Even though it is not necessary to have blue skies and sunny light - it can make it hard - bright white can be very annoying.


A very interesting style of defense were these round stone balls, that people pushed down the mountain. I think it must have been an aweful job to make these obviously labor intensive balls and see them all go so fast in a fight.


The town lies down in the shadow of the castle, which is sitting high atop a mountain ridge. On the other side of the Salzach is Austria. There are some interesting stories with the castle, like the one when Napoleon came riding towards Burghausen, but since I am already about 2 weeks behind with the blog, I think I might have to add them at a later time and just show pictures.


There is a well known dress maker for dirndl dresses, the traditional alpine dresses which Johanna absolutely adores and we went and bought some fabric and a pattern book, so don’t be surprised if you see us looking like we jumped out of Sound of Music. Even without a dress, Johanna did a nice 'model shot' for us.


It was a bit strange to leave, because the little ones stayed with their grandparents and so we had to say goodbye to the Bavarian cousins. Johanna left in a very mixed mood, she had been very sad for days to leave the children, but she was also looking forward to see Maja and Lena, such an emotional zig zag is hard for a girl with preteen mood swings.