Expensive, touristy Berchtesgaden has an HI hostel -- Jugendherberge Berchtesgaden. Gee, but it is far from town. Be prepared to wait long for the (few) hourly (and expensive) buses available or to walk about forty minutes along a beautiful alpine creek from the train station to the hostel. In the evening, last bus leaves the station at 6:15.
The hostel is a big building, with two stories and plenty of room. It often receives big school groups with their teachers. The groups are usually located separately from individual travelers and, as they have their own program of activities and schedules, they do not bother much.
The rooms are very large and comfortable, with good comfortable beds, and the bathrooms are too, with excellent showers. Room lockers work with coins that are returned when you open them again. Some rooms have nice vistas to the snowy peaks that surround town. The country landscape around the hostel is magnificent.
A huge help-yourself breakfast is available, where you can find fruit juice, several kinds of bread, and ham. There is also abundant coffee, tea, and chocolate as well as fruit salad and yogurt. The hostel serves dinner at a fairly good price, but there is a kitchen in the basement where you can also cook your food at ease. Pots and dishes are available.
The reception personnel are very good and they speak excellent English. Reception is open all day long and they're at your disposal to inform about bus schedules, hiking activities, and every tourist information. This is great because the tourism information office downtown is located inside a private hotel and there are not always people to attend to you.
The hostel has a large outside recreation area, indoor meeting and playing rooms, and table tennis and table soccer games. It is closed from midnight to 6 a.m. and no alcoholic beverages are allowed.
There are a lot of attractions to see in Berchtesgaden (and also in nearby Salzburg, which is forty minutes by bus). But you should allow plenty of time, because bus schedules never fit when you must change and it might take you a whole day to visit but one attraction.
— Exklusive Hostelz.com Übersicht
January 2007
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