Moin! If you ever have a chance to visit Burghausen, I highly recommend it. It has a castle that you can actually live in if you want. The ownership of the Burghausen castle went back and forth between Germany, France and Austria a number of times. When Napoleon did his tear through Europe, his army could not breach the fortress. He ended up conquering everything around Burghausen, and then just waited until the forces inside the fortress got hungry enough to hand over the keys peacefully. Once inside, the first thing he did was tear down the portions that were giving him so much problem in case he had to take the castle again by force.
In modern days, the ownership of the castle was something of a political annoyance. The Austrian government finally handed it back over to the Germans since it was on German soil, and the German government placed it in the hands of the residents of the town of Burghausen. The castle is quite large, and had been sorely neglected for some years, and it was going to cost quite a bit of money to restore, so the town decided to subdivide portions of it, and rent it out to apartment dwellers and boutique owners. I saw an ad in the local paper for an apartment that was coming available, and it wasn't renting for all that much, either. The town also collected a bunch of artwork, antique furniture and old armaments and made two museums and a botanical garden to attract tourist income. I was there a couple of years ago on a very cold, rainy day, and spent nearly the entire day in the art museum. I have been to quite a few museums here in Europe, but what made this one stand apart was the fact that the museum management evidently did not have the resources to properly secure anything. Paintings and statues dating back to the 1200's were just placed in rooms with no glass or plastic coverings, and you could go right up to them and study them in great detail. There were small signs asking you not to touch anything (and I didn't, of course), but there were no visible security guards or cameras. This is quite rare in a modern day museum in a civilized country. They had huge, wall sized oil paintings depicting some of the more famous battles that were almost photorealistic. It was kind of a spooky feeling to see the life size faces of the wounded and dying soldiers, the crazed eyes of the knights' horses, and so on, in the very same place that you were standing 600 years later. The majority of the castle is unchanged. Another weird thing was that none of the rooms had fireplaces. This is in the foothills of the Alps, and I after spending one entire Winter on the shore of the Chiemsee in a tent, I can tell you that it gets pretty darn cold. I am planning another trip down to that area to see some friends in August, and Burghausen is high on my list of things to do again. It was too early in the year the last time I visited to go through the botanical garden, but I have heard that it is fantastic. The other museum holds all of the old armour and armaments that the town could find, and I want to go through that, as well. Who knows, maybe they do tours of the Wacker plant, as well! Burghausen is one of those "best kept secrets" of Europe, despite all of the efforts of the town to get people to visit. Cheers! Knuke
