A train journey that was first class only in name, across the low-
lands of Lombardy (“interesting,” he commented, “only for its
numerous battlefields”), brought the little group to Verona.
, (). Passing through the Porta
Nuova we had our baggage closely checked. They
think anybody arriving with a camera is a spy. Went
first to the famous ancient Roman arena. It made a
colossal impression. These gigantic monoliths, these
immense walls that threaten to collapse at any mo-
ment, the sheer scale of the amphitheater all vivid
evidence of the great Roman age...
In a German restaurant we called for some Mu-
nich Löwenbräu beer, then turned in at eleven ..;
but it was some time before we could get any sleep as a
loud altercation began between a lot of men and
women right outside our hotel, and it was conducted
with authentic Italian vigor.This youthful diary is in a U.S. Army archive in Pennsylvania. A
subsequent diary, written by Göring four months later during
the mountaineering holiday he took in the Bavarian Alps, is now
in private possession in New York.
The diary, inscribed “Hermann Goering, German-
Austrian Alpine Club, Salzburg,” describes an eight-hour climb
to the summit of Salzburg’s famous Watzmann Rock and
mountaineering exploits in the Dolomites, including his pio-
neering ascent of the twin Wild Sander peaks south of Lienz
with his two friends Barth and Rigele, probably Friedrich Rigele,
the Austrian lawyer who married Olga Göring. Several locations
that figured later in Göring’s life are featured in this diary’s
pages among them, the Bürgerbräu beerhall, Berchtesgaden,
and the Hotel Geiger. The adventure began, as did so many for
him, at Veldenstein: