the day of the historically troubling encounter

Katherine and I have had a joke for a long time:

Q: What do you find at the top of every German mountain?
A: A restaurant serving cake.

This has proved disturbingly accurate -- extra disturbing because it even holds true for the Kehlsteinhaus, a.k.a. the Eagle's Nest, a mountaintop residence gifted to Hitler by the Nazi party in honor of his fiftieth birthday. Hitler never actually lived in the Kehlsteinhaus, though his main residence, the Berghof, was also in the area (Obersalzberg, in the mountains above Berchtesgaden, at the absolute southeastern corner of Germany). The Berghof was destroyed, but the Kehlsteinhaus still stands, and has been converted into a restaurant. On the one hand, I'm glad that you can still visit the Kehlsteinhaus, because the view from the top looking out over the lush green valleys of the Bavarian Alps is one of the most beautiful things I've ever seen; on the other hand, I'm not terribly okay with the fact that you can eat cake in a house where Hitler once used to impress diplomats, or the fact that you can buy Kehlsteinhaus fleeces. (Although, as one of my friends pointed out, at least they are not brown . . .) Our guidebook told us that if we were looking for a "less historically troubling encounter", we could take a cable car up to an also-beautiful overlook point, which might be the way I go next time*; I'm just not sure what exactly I was supporting with my 15,- euro bus + entry fee. The upkeep of Hitler's gilded elevator?

*I'm almost certainly going to head back to that area of the Alps -- I cannot say enough about how beautiful it was. I'd also like to check out the Königsee.