The next day we woke up to rain. After the delicious buffet breakfast and coffee, the rain stopped, but it was still pleasantly cool and gloomy. After 9 o'clock we were already at the village square and many tourists were waiting for the start of the boat tour.
Königssee is part of the Berchtesgaden National Park and is completely surrounded by towering rock walls. The beautiful emerald-green lake is 8 km long, 1250 m wide and 200 m deep in places.
The water is crystal clear, one of the cleanest lakes in Germany, and its water has been classified as drinking water and is classified as highly protected, which is why electric powered boats have been sailing on it since 1909. The boat traffic is considerable, 17 boats serve the tourist traffic and a new boat departs almost every 10-20 minutes.
It is worth starting the boat tour in the morning, especially if you want to take a trekking at the two stations. One option is to travel to the end of the lake, which is called Salet, or stop 3/4 of the way and admire St. Bartholomä, or see both. The price of the entire boat trip there and back is approx. 29 euros.
The boat tour was with a guide, and it was in German, but all the sights that were talked about are foreign-language brochures at the ticket booth...now I'm using the Hungarian-language paper.
Each mountain has a special name, e.g.: Falkensteinwand, which is the first stop, as there is a cross here that reminds of the 71 pilgrims who lost their lives in a shipwreck in 1688 when a storm occurred.
We could see the Malerwinkel, which is called "painter's bay", from where we can see the famous St. Bartholomew's church from a distance of 5 km..since the weather was gloomy, we could not see much from there.
The other mountain, called Steinerne Meer, is the natural border - mountain between Germany and Austria and is 2653 m high and climbable. We can admire the Jenner mountains and the "sleeping witch" rock formation.
Also here is the Kehlsteinhaus (Eagle's Nest), a house on the Kehlstein hill that was used to receive diplomats during Hitler's time. Today it operates as a restaurant and can be reached on foot or by cable car.
One of the most popular mountain blocks here is the famous Watzmann, the 2nd highest mountain in Germany and the highest peak at 2713 m. This is one of the most dangerous mountains, because more than 100 climbers have lost their lives on it.
The highlight of the boat tour was the Echowand - echo wall. In such a case, all ships that are there and returning back being stop their engines so as not to interfere with the performance. Even to this day, when I look back on it, I get goosebumps, it was so "touching" and "wonderful". The ship's guide, took out a trumpet and started playing a song line by line and the mountain played back the tune. It is said that long ago ship captains fired shots from pistols filled with gunpowder, which were reflected seven times by the rock walls. In good weather, the melodies can be heard 2-3 times. We heard it once but it was still a beautiful symphony between man and nature. After the performance, we gave the guide a huge round of applause and congratulations.
It is worthwhile to travel to Salet, since approx. after a 15-minute walk, you can come across another lake in the valley, under the protection of the Hagen mountain range, which is called Obersee. It is also crystal clear, and to make the panorama even more beautiful, the Rötbach waterfall rushes down from 400 meters in the distance. The waterfall from here is approx. 2 hours on foot along the lake in the forest. We walked for a while, but since it started to rain and I didn't trust my sports shoes or the wet stone, and my knee started become painful, I gave up at a rock wall.
By the way, there is also a mountain hut at the Salet terminus, where you can buy dairy products from the farmer.
On the way back, we stopped at St. Bartholomä, the Roman Catholic pilgrimage church located on this peninsula and built in 1134 and in 1697 it was rebuilt in a Baroque style. It is named after Saint Bartholomew the Apostle (Bartholomäus in German), patron of alpine farmers and dairymen.
We took a walk along the shore of the lake, then a 20-30 minute walk around the peninsula, and then we discovered that with a 30-45 minute walk we can admire a small chapel next to a stream. We didn't get to the Eiskapelle (Ice Chapel), which is at the foot of the Watzmann and the interesting thing is that nature has created a cave-like cavity in the ice layer, which does not melt even in summer.
Next to the church there was a restaurant and a small pub where you could buy fried fish dishes. By the time we saw what we wanted to see and got back to the village, it was already 5 in the afternoon. We quickly went over to the town of Berchtesgaden to one of the supermarkets to shop for dinner, so we tend to save money and eat way more cheaper than eating in a restaurant.
Out of curiosity, we went to the village square in the evening to see what the evening life was like and it wasn't there. To our surprise, even most of the restaurants were empty. All in all the village life is quite.
On our last full day, it rained again in the morning. In addition, the lady serving breakfast forgot my order, for which I waited 15 minutes. I get triggered, I almost cried, because, she hit a sore point, since for months people have either forgotten about me or completely ghosted me. I wasn't angry at all, we are people, it's morning, there are many people, but then I got my scrambled eggs very quickly.
For that day, the mountains were the destination. Before that, we went into the village to fill up the water supply, and since my knee unfortunately started to hurt again, I thought that the walking stick would help, because I didn't want to miss seeing the mountains because of it. It was on sale at the sports store, and what I saved on the trekking jackets, I now spent on a hiking stick. The funny thing is that I had a trekking stick and good hiking shoes at home, but that's what happens if I don't check the places I'm going.
At the ticket office of the Jennerbahn (mountain lift) you can choose from many options, we bought a ticket up to the top station and back - it's 43 euros per person, but since our hotel provided a card, we saved 4 euros per person with it.
The mountain lift goes up and down automatically, clean and comfortable. As we moved up, we could often hardly see anything from the clouds, but even so, a beautiful sight unfolded in front of us as we moved higher and higher. Cows grazed on the slopes of the mountain, cowbell around their necks and those voices accompanied us to the second station, which was at 1200 meters. We didn't get off, we went straight to the top station, which is at an altitude of 1800 m.
It was a bit windy and cold there, not many people were up there. The clouds came and went, often obscuring the beautiful view, then drifted away until the next cloud came. You could walk around the station 360° and from there a path led even higher, from where there was a vantage point for the Königssee below. As the weather was overcast, I did not choose that route, on the one hand because of my legs, and also because when I got there I would not be able to see anything because of the clouds.
Rather, we walked further down to a lookout point, and by the time we got there we could see nothing of the newly arrived cloud. Anyway, I enjoyed being able to walk above, below and in the clouds.
The road is covered with crushed stones, but it is still often very steep and even though I had my trekking pole with me, the pain in my knee did not stop. Guided by a sudden idea, I turned around and started walking backwards. The pain stopped and it was even funny and fun, but I often looked behind my back to avoid getting into something. When we reached a section where the slope of the road did not cause pain, I turned around again and walked down normally.
We had already walked for a while, until the idea came to walk down to the central station, because it is only an hour and a half away.
There are always signposts at intersections and I limped down, somehow it always showed 45 minutes to the middle station, we walked again quite a lot and the next one still showed 45 minutes. We met a couple of walkers, but everyone was trying to go up, maybe 1-2 people went down like us. The weather on the mountain was quite changeable - overcast, we walked in clouds, rainy, and finally at one point we saw the beautiful blue sky and the bright sun for the first time since Monday - then suddenly it became very hot and later again easy rainy.
Sometimes you could barely see the surrounding areas in the fog, but we could hear the cowbells. There were hardly any benches on the road where you could sit down to rest, and when we found one, a couple of cows were sitting quietly grazing around it. We had to pay attention to where we were going, because in such areas the road was mined with cow poop.
We rested a little in the middle station, I rewarded myself with an ice coffee (coffee, 1-2 ice cubs, 2 scoop of vanilla ice-cream, whipped cream, a little chocolate souse and a wafer - yummy) and I received one of the fastest services of my life. I guess the "Universe" evened out what happened in the morning.
At the middle station, you could take a tour of about 45 minutes, where you could see two small lakes and the beautiful valley area was revealed there.
As we came down with the cabin, I felt that the wind was getting stronger and by the time we got to our hotel room, it started to rain very hard, only the silhouette of the surrounding mountains could be seen. When we decided to go to a nearby restaurant for dinner, the rain stopped, but as we sat down in an outdoor but covered part of the restaurant, it suddenly started to rain again and continued throughout the evening. I got the 2nd fastest service that day and I was amazed.
On the day of departure, we woke up to sunshine, it was pleasant weather and finally I was able to see this wonderful region in new colors with the sunshine. This place gave me peace and tranquil, both mentally and spiritually (finally something when both agree on) I felt its effect even a few days later - a kind of zen state without meditation. I have always wanted to live in the mountains with beautiful crystal clear waters and with such a wonderful panorama, to walk and look at nature, and to live in such a way that all my being is at such peace that nothing external or internal can disturb it. This feeling is priceless in this modern world and in my life - maybe I really just want love, peace and beautiful nature.
If you are in Germany or Austria and love nature and such places, I warmly recommend Königssee and the surrounding mountains, whether in winter or summer.
I hope you enjoyed this little report and thank you very much for reading :) I wish you a very good trip, a good time, a good weather and that your soul is relaxed, healed and refreshed in the place where it feeling a bit "home".
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