Day Four - Altotting/Lake Chiemsee/Traunstein

The radio in the room of Pope Benedict's brother, George, at St. Michael's boarding school in Traunstein. Georg and Pope Benedict would sometimes relax and either play or listen to music in the room, which was next door to Benedict's quarters.

Father Markus Moderegger, director of St. Michael's boarding school in Traunstein, shows the desk that Pope Benedict used when he would visit each January prior to being elected pope. His last visit was January 2005, four months before his election.

Below: Click on this picture for the larger version. Find the church at the top center of the picture. Pope Benedict lived in a farmhouse just behind this church in Auschau am Inn (he called this home a "paradise") and sometimes served Masses at this church as a boy. This picture shows the route he would take down the hill into Traunstein to attend school.

A wide view of Ludwig II's Herrenchiemsee Castle on Herren Island at Lake Chiemsee in southeastern Bavaria.

Sorry for the delay in posting again. I will be adding pictures in a little bit, so check back again soon.

Woke up in Altotting and went for a nice tour of the downtown square, where there is literally a church on every corner. One is the diocesan parish chuch and the rest are shrines and/or churches run by orders (Franciscans). One little chapel has icons surrounding the outside walls and under the roof that are made by regular 'ol Catholics praying for the souls of departed loved ones. There were nice pictures of simply Christ and Mary but there were also touching portraits depicting how someone died -- a tractor flipping over or a man run over in the field by his horses. What was amazing is that some paintings dated back 200 years and were on the walls with no real protection from the elements. It was a beautiful, cool morning. We also saw a 103-year-old panorama painting of Jerusalem at the time of Christ's crucifixion.

From there, we popped on the bus and cruised to Lake Chiemsee, which has on one of its islands one of the amazing castles built by King Ludwig II in the late 19th century. We were told that then-Cardinal Ratzinger visited this popular holiday spot several times, mostly as a boy. The castle was unfinished, but what we saw was incredible yet a bit creepy. The entire castle was a memorial to King Louis XIV. To say Ludwig admired French King Louis XIV is underestimating things... obsession is more like it. He had several pictures of the king and had most of the finished rooms replicating rooms at the palace in Versailles, France. An interesting story for conspiracy theorists: King Ludwig and his doctor (who had previously declared Ludwig insane without ever having met him) were found dead in the lake at another of his castles and there is mystery surrounding the death. The most credible story I heard from our tour guide (off the record) had Ludwig and the doctor being assassinated (shot) by his own family (the doctor was a case of being in the wrong place in the wrong time) for nearly bankrupting the royal family with his outrageous castles all over Bavaria. To this day, our guide said, the official report and autopsy results have not been released. The most popular castle is Neuschwanstein Castle in the Bavarian Alps, from which DisneyWorld modeled its castle. Our tour will not take us there, unfortunately. Ludwig apparently lived in a dream world and was always spending crazy amounts of money to build up that world.

From the lake, we went to Traunstein, where Benedict spent his boyhood school years leading up to leaving for the seminary in munich. We spent some time at the local Catholic boarding school he attended and was still spending a week or so of vacation with his older brother each year up until his election to the papacy. We went to the room he stayed in and you could touch the desk on which he often wrote. The nuns who work there get tearful at the thought that Benedict likely won't return now that he's pope, so they keep a rose on the desk for him. His brother stayed in the room next door and, there, the two would engage in heavy theological discussions and would just pace the halls of the school. Georg's room next door has an upright piano, since he was a musician and choir director, and we got to see that up close. There are stories of Father Georg's playing echoing through the halls of the empty school, creating a nice private concert for those who were there. The school director said that both the Ratzingers sometimes played for the staff and friends. Father Georg Ratzinger continues to spend one week there when school is out and was recently there the last week of July. Tomorrow afternoon, the school is installing a huge bell on top of the school that will ring for the first time when Pope Benedict flies over Traunstein en route to the final stop of his trip (I can't remember where right now). Eveyrone is going to gather in the square and the pope's helicopter is going to fly in low over the church in the middle of the square (where he celebrated his first Mass and the 25th and 50th anniversary Masses of his priesthood. He will give his blessing and I think they are hooking up some audio/video so he can say some words. One interesting tidbit, Joseph Ratzinger and his brother Georg were ordained on the same day (Georg is two years older). Benedict's Mass was first and Georg's was second. Then they spent the next month going around Traunstein blessing people and houses ... it was a huge deal for the town to produce priests. Back to the pope's flyover... we will be gone by then, visiting two monasteries near Oberammergau, home of the legendary, once-every-10 years passion play. We have split off from the pope's itinerary, as he is visiting his brother at in Regensburg (where Benedict taught). We are also past the halfway point of our route. It makes me a bit sad already, but it has also given me an idea that hopefully will come to fruition in the next few months.

Well I have to run, as it's 10:45 a.m. here and I need to desperately get some sleep. Our schedule has been overloaded... finishing dinner and getting back to the hotel by 10:30 p.m. each night, having to transcribe and write some and then having to wake up at 6 a.m. each day. I've gotten an average of four hours of sleep each night and most of us were starting to get cranky today. You have a bunch of journalists wanting to do their thing and then you have the tour guides trying to keep us on schedule... it got a little tense before dinnertime, but I think tomorrow's 8 a.m. start will get us more sleep and make us feel better.

Final thought: Visit Traunstein. It's a very beautiful, hip little town and plays a significant role in Benedict's life. You really can just envision him walking down the streets with his brother as they talked about life and the faith and shopping for presents for the nuns at the school.