Okay, here's one that knocked me out. It's the tower at the top of the Merkur Berg in the Merkur Wald, in the Black Forest, something like 1200 meters above Baden Baden Germany. When we were there, they were working on it, so it was closed, but it's pretty awesome just to look at it. I think that's an observation deck around the bottom, and it's probably a broadcasting tower for something.It;s the top of a mountain, with open fields at its foot, and incredible panoramic views all around. And when you're tired of looking at the view, there's a chalet restaurant known for its hot chocolate--good because it gets a mite nippy that high up. The other neat thing is that you get to it via the Merkurbergbahn, a funicular railway that runs by cables up the mountain, in principle like San Francisco's cable cars. It climbs 1200 meters through the dark trees of the
Schwarzwald, the Black Forest, and then opens out to these incredible vistas. You can see the Rhine flowing down two valleys over, and in the other direction the towers of Sudwest Deutschland Rundfunk -- SW German Radio, whose Symphony Orchestra's records I used to listen to in college (and play on the college radio station).
That's the tower. Here's a video of a ride on the cable railway up the mountain. It's all automatic, no driver, two cars one going up and one coming down counterbalance each other. Maximum grade is 54%, you can see how slanted the cars are to go up the slope. the forest looks really primeval as you go through it. (takes a minute or so of the video for the trip to actually get under way).
And here's a short video of the train ride up andthe views from the top of the mountain
