I had a busy travel week earlier this month with a training program for work in Spain sandwiched between two fun trips with my friend Heidi; the first to Bavaria, Germany to see the Neuschwanstein Castle and the second to Paris to visit her in her current if temporary “home.” After another week of short nights and long workdays, I left for Munich on Friday afternoon to begin the 10 day travel tour. While we both flew into Munich, Heidi and I had planned our trip around the Neuschwanstein Castle (the basis for the design of the Disneyland castle) and the southernmost part of Germany’s lovely “Romantic Road” which winds its way north to south through the countryside and is dotted with quaint villages and farms. We had rented a car so that we would have some control of our schedule (tough to be limited by bus schedules when you’ve only got two days!) and I was excited to get behind the wheel again. While I am typically in taxis a couple times a day I haven’t actually driven myself since before I moved to Finland! I don’t like feeling restricted by transportation schedules or limited vehicle access (carryover from growing up in Idaho and wide open spaces) so this was a major adjustment.Heidi was already in Munich waiting for me and, in true American form, we both grabbed a treat at Starbucks before heading out. (Interesting fact: Finns drink more coffee per capita than any other country in the world. All the Nordics are fairly high on this list but Finland drinks twice as much as #2 Norway. These people love their coffee!) Believe it or not, there is no Starbucks in Finland so I always get excited to see them in the international airports…although more for their sugar-free syrups than for the coffee. What can I say? Europeans aren’t really into artificial sweeteners which I think is a crying shame! (I did bring $100 worth of Crystal Light with me to Finland – I was prepared for this to be a problem!)
We took our franchised, American coffee treats to go (another American-perk is that all food and drink is available to-go…funny the things you miss and appreciate when you’re gone!) and booked it to the rental car office. It was already 9pm or so and we had a couple hour drive in front of us. I was already exhausted from the week so just wanted to get to our hotel as quickly as possible.
We picked up our rental car, a Mercedes, of course. What else would you expect in Germany (except for BMW)? I should clarify that it was a little jellybean-looking Mercedes but a Mercedes nonetheless. We loaded up the GPS and took off. The German highway system only serves to confirm the German engineering and efficient design stereotype. The roads are well-maintained and signed and the drivers all follow the rules which results in very smooth, if a bit fast, sailing on German roads! Heidi was “navigator” and started fiddling with the GPS to figure out how to type in our destination city with all the German characters. She worked it out and we were set – only 150 kilometers before bed!
We drove for about 70 kilometers and caught up on the last few weeks and tried to lay out our plans for the next couple days. We were enjoying the German farmland with really rather beautiful white country churches with red roof tops popping up in every village about ever 5-10 kilometers. This was a version of Germany I had not experienced before – it was quiet, rural, and charming. As is the case all over Europe now, the day was long and we had light until about 10:30pm. It was really a nice drive and the kilometers were passing quickly. We kept getting a warning from the GPS that our destination was “closed to vehicles” and we’d have to take an alternate route. I told Heidi not to worry about it – they don’t just shut down access to towns. I was sure we could figure something out but we first needed to get to town to understand the potential issues.
Heidi said she was a little nervous about the directions…and admitted she had just picked the “closest thing” to our destination name from the GPS. Now I understood why she was a bit nervous. Whoa, whoa, whoa! Excuse me…what?! Since when do you pick similar but different city names and think you’re going to get to the right place?! When would that have ever made sense?! Thankfully, I said something much calmer than what I was thinking to the effect of, “Ok, let’s try again then with the exact city name.” She punched in “Füssen” and the GPS came back immediately with, “REROUTING. Rerouting. Prepare to exit in five kilometers….” UGH. As luck would have it, the same, same, but different city name was in the exact, 180° opposite direction from Füssen. We exited, turned around, and had to backtrack 70 km just to get to the starting point…of the 150 km drive we should have started two hours before. Heidi apologized multiple times and laughed. I wasn’t quite to the laughing point yet and was mad at myself for not checking a map. This is what happens when you blindly follow a GPS! I hadn’t even checked or paid attention to the direction we were driving…embarrassing! (I did end up laughing later that night – probably when I reached the point of exhausted delirium – and it became a joke for the rest of the weekend.) Heidi called the hotel and the clerk said that she was going home at midnight but that she’d leave the key at another hotel across the street for us if we hadn’t arrived by the time she left. I knew by the clerk’s response that I was going to like this town…small town trust and hospitality is a great sign! We pulled in around 1am, Heidi got the key from across the street (directed there by a hand-written note posted on the front door of our hotel), I set my alarm for 9am so that we’d make our castle tour, and we crashed for the night. A little hiccup but nothing lost!
I woke up the next morning…at 10:30am. Oops! How did that happen?! I blinked a few times, tried to wake up and understand what had happened, and shook Heidi, “We overslept! We have to be at the castle at 11am for our tour tickets! We’ll never make it!” We had about 20 seconds of a “Do we haul tail?” or “Do we just go late and beg forgiveness?” discussion before deciding on the latter and took our time…eating breakfast in a dining room decorated with pretzels (remember, this is Bavaria after all!) and homemade crafts made of dried pasta, yarn, and buttons. Don’t ask – we couldn’t figure it out either.
We ended up getting to the castle at noon instead of at 11am and went to the roll call line to pick up our tickets. (Heidi was the smart one and pre-bought tickets online so we wouldn’t have to wait in the long line.) It stated very clearly on the tickets that we were to be there by 11am sharp for our noon tour. Heidi asked, “Do we tell them we overslept? Maybe we should tell them that we got lost last night and got in very late?” I said, “I don’t think the Germans will have much sympathy for our ‘getting lost’ story. Plus, it’s embarrassing! I say we apologize profusely, smile, and hope that the guy is nice.” We started apologizing and telling our sob story in tandem (the sleeping through the alarm part, not the driving in the opposite direction of where we should have been going!). The guy at the desk didn’t even look up, grabbed our printed receipt and said, “You are late.” We, again in tandem, continued to apologize and asked over one another if we could change to a tour later that day. He still didn’t look up and said, “There is another English tour at 1:15pm. I can put you on that one.” Perfect! We were so afraid we’d get the third-degree from this guy and he didn’t care why we were we late; he just solved the problem. He wasn’t particularly friendly and didn’t care that we were smiling but he did solve our problem nonetheless. I’ll take it! (We never did figure out what happened with the alarm…I’m guessing that I turned it off in my sleep – yikes!)
We had a little over an hour before the tour which was great because the area is actually really beautiful with a gorgeous, bright blue lake and views of the Bavarian Alps all around with little villages in the valley. We walked to a wooden bridge back on the mountain where you can get the famous side view of the full castle and it was really impressive – much more so than I was expecting! The castle is truly in an ethereal location, propped up on what almost looks like a podium embedded in the side of the mountains. The design of the castle is also really striking with multiple Rapunzel-esque towers creating very much the fairytale castle we all would recognize. (I guess for those of us influenced by Disney this castle quite literally created our fairytale castle since it served as the “blueprint” for the one with which we grew up.) King Ludwig II of Bavaria, the infamous king who built the Neuschwanstein castle for his personal use, was both a perfectionist and a lover of beautiful design. He is thought to have been crazy which may be true, particularly given the extravagance of and investment in this castle, but his perfectionism and eye for beautiful design are certainly evident in his last masterpiece!
King Ludwig II actually only lived in the castle for 172 days before he was dethroned and then, quite suspiciously, found drowned in the lake with his doctor (also drowned). The locals who had been looking up to the castle in the mountains for years as it was being built didn’t let the ex-King's body get too cold in the grave before descending (ascending, actually) on it in droves…they opened up the castle to paying patrons only six weeks after Ludwig’s death in 1886. Don’t let the door hit you on the way out, buddy!
I wasn’t expecting much from the inside of the castle but although it was not even near complete when Ludwig died (about 15 of the around 600 planned rooms were finished), the rooms that were finished were truly incredible to see. Among other things, we toured Ludwig’s bedroom in which every surface, literally every surface, is covered in amazingly detailed wood carvings. Our guide told us that Ludwig’s relatively small bedroom took 14 artists 4 months to complete just the carvings of his bed (full frame with ornately carved posts which flow into the carved ceiling), the ceilings, and his “reading chair.” Ludwig had basically an entire floor for his personal living space and each room was seemingly, and unbelievably, more ornate than the previous. His sitting rooms and salons were covered in gorgeous paintings of scenes from his favorite operas by Richard Wagner. Ludwig apparently loved Wagner and the top floor of the castle, basically an enormous ballroom and theatre / performance hall, is dedicated to Wagner and also covered in tributes to him and his compositions.
The floor of the chapel was also unreal – a breathtakingly beautiful mosaic made of millions (literally) of tiny tiles covered the floor and the paintings, stained glass, and domed ceiling were gorgeous. Perhaps the most ridiculous room in a sea of ridiculously opulent rooms was Ludwig’s man-made “grotto” which served as a hallway from one of his personal salons. A grotto is basically a cave, typically over water, and there are many beautiful and famous ones in Europe often thought to be special places of miracles. Ludwig had loved the grottos in Italy and decided he wanted one too…and he got it! We were walking in a gold-gilded, carved, painted, tapestried, formal sitting room when one of the panels (Ludwig was also into “hidden” doors) opened and we were suddenly walking through a cave…with stunning views of the Alps out the grotto windows. Bizarre, but beautiful!
After being mesmerized and overwhelmed by Neuschwanstein, we walked back down the mountain to Ludwig’s other castle on the property called Hohenschwangau. (Why wouldn’t you have two castles?) Ludwig lived in this castle, also beautiful but not so overwhelming, while Neuschwanstein was being built. (Hohenschwangau had been Ludwig's summer home as a child.) Neuschwanstein was more impressive just because it was so insane, excessive, and massive but Heidi and I preferred Hohenschwangau as far as homes go. (Not sure why we felt we needed to make this distinction – I’m pretty sure we don’t and won’t have that option!) One theme that was fairly consistent throughout both castles was that of swans. (Did you catch the reference in both castle names?) Ludwig loved swans and they were all over Neuschwanstein, swan-shaped porcelain flower vases, swans painted on the walls, swans carved in the doors, frames, floorboards, you name it and swans were somehow designed in. We saw more swan sculptures on the grounds of the yellow castle too. Maybe this guy was a little strange. How many men do you know who are obsessed with swans? How many men do you know who would even admit to liking swans? Even just a little bit? Whatever – to each their own! (Ludwig is known now, among other things, as both the Mad King and the Swan King.)
We spent the rest of the afternoon hiking around the beautiful lake and just enjoying the weather. It was absolutely perfect weather while we were there – bright sunshine, gorgeous blue skies, and about 75°F. Castles aside, the landscape there is just stunning and it was great to be able to spend the day in such a beautiful place walking around in the sunshine. We heard later that we had really lucked out. It had rained every day for the previous three weeks and the day we toured Neuschwanstein was the first true “summer” day for the area. Lucky us!
Heidi and I asked our hotel for a good German / Bavarian dinner recommendation and they sent us a few blocks away to one of the best in town. We arrived to find our host dressed in brown tights, a baggy Robin Hood-ish white shirt with a vest, and pointy elf-looking shoes. Yikes! Our waitress had the Bavarian bar maid look going on but she was about 45, a little crusty, and neither rocking nor really enjoying the outfit. (It was pretty bad though, I have to admit.) We had fried “forest mushrooms” (a.k.a. normal white mushrooms), pork schnitzel with mushroom gravy, and “cheese noodles” which was a more adult and better, if surely less healthy, version of mac ‘n cheese. We also each had a glass of the house wine which tasted a bit like beer – I guess I should have expected this since it is kind of sin to drink wine rather than beer in Bavaria – and then decided we’d share a carafe of it including the glasses we’d already just ordered. The waitress didn’t understand what we wanted (or didn’t care after being stuffed into her silly uniform) and brought out a full carafe after we’d already each had a big glass. Needless to say, we were very happy patrons in about an hour or so and before the meal was over Heidi had put herself in the restaurant’s medieval stocks with her head and hands clamped in ready for the tomatoes to be thrown. (Check out the pictures!) It was a fun night and we continued to enjoy the weather first eating outside on a little square and then spending some time walking the cobblestone streets and exploring Füssen.
Heidi’s work plans had changed late the previous week and she had to cut her stay in Füssen pretty short, leaving by 11am on Sunday morning to catch a flight back to the US for a conference. We got up early (I didn’t turn the alarm off this time!) and took a nice walk in the surrounding meadows in more glorious sunshine. Heidi took off to make her flight and I had the rest of the day to do with as I liked. I spent another couple hours in Füssen wandering down the old streets and stopping for a lazy lunch before taking the long way back to Munich, stopping in several of the small towns along the Romantic Road and pulling over to get pictures of the gorgeously green countryside. There is a very famous church near Füssen called Wieskirche (Church of the Meadow) which is a UNESCO site as well so I decided to stop by to check it out on my way. I was having a good time bouncing between towns and I punched in Wieskirche to the GPS as my next stop. I had a map with me for a sanity check and when I got close to Wieskirche, I could see a sign up ahead pointing to the right and my GPS was telling me to turn right immediately. I shrugged and figured I may as well turn. I knew I was about 5 km away and the GPS-suggested road looked more interesting. I turned and took off on a fairly slow 5 km winding and weaving country road through the country. The road was gorgeous and besides one other car, I only saw a cyclist and a man giving a tour in a house-drawn wagon (he was dressed in full-on Bavarian, suspendered glory). I could see the church up ahead – it’s huge – and continued to follow the GPS’ instructions.
The road took me straight up the side of a hill to the very entrance of Wieskirche, to the clear displeasure and annoyance of all the tourists walking around the area. I basically couldn’t go back at this point and it was clear that something was a little off. I was driving very slowly to try to get down to the other side of the hill to the large parking lot and the old German couples walking along the road to and from the church were either jumping out of my way like they were shocked or were begrudgingly moving to the side and giving me dirty looks. I kept poking along until I got down the hill and into the parking lot. I hopped out of the car and started walking up the hill I had just come down in the car and…yep, clearly posted about 10 times in 100 meters that no cars are allowed on this road. Oops! Foiled by the GPS yet again! I was really hoping that nobody would recognize me as the obnoxious driver on the “no cars” road! Unfortunately, a few of them did and I was just glad that I didn’t speak German so that I didn’t understand what they were saying about me as I walked by. They were clearly not happy with me and gave me a new, much harsher definition for “crusty” than the one I had used for the waitress the previous night – yikes!
I did a quick tour of Wieskirche, being very careful not to draw any more attention to myself than I already had, and then got back on the road for a nice drive back to the airport. The weekend was much too short, as usual, but had been a wonderful, fresh-air, Bavarian break in the countryside with a splash of crazy prince and castles thrown in for good measure. I also learned two very important lessons from this trip: 1) Don’t be embarrassed to go to the most touristy of all tourist sites – in this case the inspiration for animated fairytales turned out to be legitimately inspiring, and 2) Almost doesn’t count in love and in GPS destination entry / directions!
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