At the Munich HBF, we bought a Bayern Day Pass (29€) to get us to the village of Füssen in southern Germany. From there, the pass still worked for the 10-minute bus ride to Schwangau, which was the hub for visiting King Ludwig II's two castles: Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein.
I'd checked the weather before we left, and it said sunny and 70...in Munich. I neglected to consider the weather would be all that different 1.5 hours south.
I was wrong. The skies were dark and overcast, and as we neared Füssen we saw people in long sleeves and pants. I had a t-shirt and shorts, and Annie wasn't much better off with a thin long sleeve.
It was only sprinkling when we got off the bus, so we hurriedly got our bearings. You could see both castles (Neuschwanstein and its predecessor Hohenschwangau) from where we stood, and they both looked very accessible by foot.
Above: Hohenschwangau Castle
We set out quickly for Neuschwanstein with hopes the real rain would hold off until afterward--our hopes were quickly crushed.
Soaked by the time we ascended the 20+ minute path and reached the castle, we huddled briefly under the front gate, then entered the courtyard to see what we could see. Tickets to actually enter the castle would have cost us the equivalent of $30 for a 15-minute tour (and the next one in English wasn't scheduled for over an hour), so we opted to spend our time enjoying the exterior.
Above: Photo from interior courtyard.
When the rain let off into more of a drizzle, we walked the perimeter of the castle in search of a spot for the best view of it--you know, the one that postcards are made of. On the way, we found a good lookout from which to gaze down on Hohenschwangau, which was Ludwig's childhood home.
Above: Hohenschwangau should be obvious, above right.
We kept climbing from there to a trail that led to a bridge called Marienbrücke. It spanned about fifty feet, with a nice little waterfall beneath it. Marienbrücke had our postcard view of Neuschwanstein in the foreground, with the villages of Schwangau and Füssen off in the distance. Too bad the wind up there was driving the rain horizontally at that point.
We waited maybe five minutes behind some boulders for the rain and wind to temper off, then tried to snap a few photos without breaking the camera.
Not pictured: Sheets of horizontal water.
We were totally soaked by hard rain on our walk back down from the bridge and castle, and didn't much feel like trying to get a closer view of Hohenschwangau, so photos from 100 yards had to do.
We had an hour or so before the next train home, so we spent it buying sweatshirts because we didn't want to catch pneumonia. We also browsed among the handmade beer steins, which were pretty sweet. King Ludwig had a thing for swans and Wagnerian operas, the former of which were adorning aspects of the castle and, thus, the souvenirs. I balked at a stein with a big swan on the lid, because it didn't look ferocious enough to inspire a round of beer drinking.
We boarded the last train out of Füssen, then excitedly changed into our dry, warm new sweatshirts. We'd been soaked, shivering, and partly numb for quite a while, so we spent the train ride home gradually thawing out.
Above: When you're hypothermic, you don't care about looking like twin goobers.
Back at Munich, we bought pizza and some Löwenbrau beer at the station, then walked home--in the rain again--to devour our dinner and bask in a warm shower.
Neuschwanstein July 17 Album:
 |
| Munich/Neuschwanstein July 17, 2011 |
- Posted using BlogPress from my iPad
Location:Schwangau, Bavaria, Germany
No comments:
Post a Comment