schwarzenberg - erzgebirge (saxony)

how could i forget it? well, between allersberg in franconia and silesia in poland there was a night spent in schwarzenberg in the erzgebirge mountains in saxony. schwarzenberg is a really nice small ore miners (bergmann) city with the historic upper old city and its lower districts neustadt + vorstadt (=> uptown + new town + suburbia).

to be honest, my most persistent memory from erzgebirge is how difficult it was to find s.th. to eat 🍴. okay, there were only few small towns in the hlls and it was saturday evening 'between lunch and dinner time', buuuuuut we couldn't find any open / ready to serve restaurant in the city lauter-bernsbach (best know for its lautergold distillery) few km before the gates of schwarzenbach. in our hotel in schwarzenbach there were limited seats all pre-occupied by reservations due to corona restrictions. we were sooo hungry that we have decided to drive down the road and look for a restaurant. 15 minutes later and 10-12 km away we have found the village of breitenbrunn close to the chech border. our 1st trial there, the ratsstübel, was ready to close, but the 2nd trial, adners gasthof und hotel was open and not reserved for a wedding celebration or the like! unfortunatelly, that does not mean, we could eat immediately as the dinner for the hotel guests started at 6. know we had to bypass loooong 1.5 hours of our lifes. of course, we regretted a lot we did not eat in poland before the german border, but afterwards are we always more clever than before, aren't we? at least we've got some coffee + beer and it was warm there. my ready to die wife ordered an apfelstrudel in sheer despair ... if you asked me, the whole kitchen was either frozen or bewitched or both, thus her apfelstrudel with a hot vanilla sauce came maybe 10 minutes before the regular dinner time. i could not tell you what did we eat that day, but what i can tell ya for sure is their salad bar at 06:00:00 rescued my life ... #hungeristhebestcook 😅

however, i liked the erzgebirge (ore mountains) a lot. its landscape remembered me of the slovakian ore mountains (slovenske rudohorie) around einsiedel an der göllnitz, where both my parents were born.

st. georg's church + castle in schwarzenberg.

the uptown is easily accesible from the main paking via complimentary cogwheel railroad.

lauter-bernsbach

lautergold distillery

schwarzenberg neustadt

the erzgebirge (ore mountains) is really flat, isnt it?🌲

adners gasthof + hotel, breitenbrunn

back to schwarzenberg

erzgebirge - ore mountains

for the victims of stalinism & communists after 1945

georgenkirche, schwarzenberg, sachsen (saxony)

 

chime tower (glockenspiel)

freie republik schwarzenberg - after the WWII there was a small area around schwarzenberg between the u.s. and red army which survived as 'free and independent' republic for 6 weeks till it became part of the soviet zone and thus part of east germany DDR / GDR for 45 years

town hall, schwarzenberg

'glück auf' means good luck and it was and is the ore miners' salute

few memories from the past times

 

more pictures here.

trijunction DE / AT / CZ

we are quite often in the trijunction DE / AT / CZ, you know? we usually sleep in the hotel alte innbrücke (old river inn bridge) in neuhaus am inn because it is close to our final destination, cheap and they have a very good wlan connection so that i can work mobile while my wife is busy with other stuff. even if the breakfast could be much better, i feel there meanwhile so familiar that this time i even went for breakfast in my pyjama, only completed by a sweater 😄

DE / AT / CZ = germany / austria / czech republic

of course, it is for us always more and more difficult to discover new things in the area .... this time we were lucky and could visit the vornbach castle which was the former vornbach abbey till 1803, the year where bavaria confiscated clerical property. how did we find it? easy, last time i could recognize a nice old building at the flyer of the inn river cruises, so my plan was ready to become reality today.

view from our hotel room's balcony (DE) to schärding (AT)

 mobile work paradox => the car stands still and i work on my laptop in the hotel room 😄. there are not many mobile workers out there, are they?

church of the former vornbach abbey (kloster vornbach)

 vornbach castle

fire department, vornbach (DE)

 restaurant gasthof resch, vornbach

inn river used to be an important transport vein for many hundred years, today it is not. they'e have built 6 - 8 power plants in its last section before it enters the danube river in nearby passau.

 lunch in schärding, austria (AT)

bums'n? bumsn? bumsen?

schärding (AT)

skiing in the bohemian forest: schwarzenberg (AT) + reischlberg (AT) + klaffer am hochficht (AT):

ski area hochficht (AT)

reischlberg + hochficht, 1338 m

 the czech border

 zwieselberg (AT)

me (DE / CZ / SK / AT / universe 😍)

hiking tour at the moldau river (vltava) in bohemian forest (sumava) in horni vltavice (CZ):

 tepla vltava ~ warm vltava river

 horni vltavice (CZ)

a fast dinner on the way home in vilshofen (DE). we liked the city a lot and decided to visit it at some other occasion (=> enjoy more pictures & insights about vilshofen from may 2020 here)

more pictures here.