Schloss Neuschwanstein

Well the week just gone has been pretty good.
My room-mate Stepan finished his final exams on Tuesday and arrived back at the dormitory on Wednesday. We decided to have a few drinks to celebrate his achievements. It was pretty low key, just Stepan, Jan (guy from work), Michel (Frenchie) and myself. Had a few beers, a few whiskeys and talked crap for a while. Got to bed about 2am so it wasn't too late.

On Friday night, I was planning on having an early night... but Stepan was out celebrating once again. So I headed into town to catch up with him. Didn't do anything too exciting. I was kind of the party pooper because I couldn't walk very far without stopping for a while... wearing shoes with a sore toe is not that pleasant. We only went out until about 2am, and Stefan continued back to his home town for the weekend.

On comes Saturday morning... well late morning. I got up at 10am and got ready to head to Neuschwanstein Castle. In German they have two words for Castle: Schloss (new castle) and burg (old castle). Neuschwanstein (New-Swan-Stone) is one of the most famous castles in the world... you will recognise pictures of it if not by name (I didn't know the name but recognised it). It was a candidate for one of the 7-wonders-of-the-modern-world (didn't succeed though).

I went with 2 guys from work, Jan and Andreas. It was only a 2 hour drive down to the Bavarian Alps, very close to the boarder of Austria. Driving into the small town, Hohenschwangau, at the base of the mountain you could see the side of the castle. I was automatically captivated by the sight of it, and I hadn't even seen it up close. The backdrop of the Bavarian Alps with low cloud made the aura of the place feel like a fairytale scene.


There were actually two castles in the area: Neuschwanstein Castle and Hohenschwangau Castle. Hohenschwangau was the "main" castle where the Bavarian royalty lived for their vacation home. Neuschwanstein was built late 1800's as a pet project of King Lutwig II. The place was very touristy and there were 100's of people about.

We decided to get the "Royal Ticket" to make us feel important... well actually, it was just a fancy way to say "you can visit both castles in one day". The first tour of Hohenschwangau was first.

This castle was pretty small, and not very inspiring at all. The rooms were small (for a castle/palace) so you could tell it was not a main living place. The main purpose was a "hunters" getaway for the royal family. The guided tour was ok, but you were not really amazed by the inside of it. And you weren't allowed to take pictures anyway. There was one cool fact where the servants and king/queen were completely separated to the point where the stove-fires were fed from passageways in the walls. So the king/queen were kept warm without having to see the servants working away. Brings a new meaning to snobbery doesn't it :-)


The tour of Neuschwanstein was not for another couple of hours. We we sat down and had a drink to kill an hour. After that we continued to hike up the mountain which took about 40 minutes to reach the top. We stopped at Marienbrücke (bridge behind the castle) to see the spectacular view. The bridge itself was high above a river and cave system that was quite spectacular.

This castle was much much better than the other castle. The outside is spectacular and I took heaps of photos. This castle was built in a time that it fulfilled one purpose, to look good. No practical purpose of defence... and you can definitely tell and appreciate the toy project of Lutwig II that was built in honour of Richard Wagnar (composer).
The tour of the inside was good, the inside was more just as beautiful as the outside, if not more so. The "kings room" was amasing. They had 14 wood-carvers working for 3 years on that room alone, and you could tell. The top of the bed had spectacular carvings of other castles from around the world.

Our tour guide was funny, she kept getting her dates mixed up and getting numbers confused. In one room she mentioned the ceiling had 69 compartments... we counted and there were actually 96. So afterwards, we went up to her and Andreas made a bet with her about some of the facts. She messed up the numbers because of the translation of German numbers to English (in German you say 9 and 60, instead of 69). So it was understandable. Andreas achieved his goal anyway and got her email address (she was quite hot) and bet her an ice-cream for her answer on the number of steps in the castle.

By the time we finished the tour and got back to the car it was already 7pm. On the way home the weather was atrocious! Heavy rain and hail. Cars were stopping under bridges just to stop being pounded. We just drove through it.


We stopped at Ulm on the way home for Burger King. Ulm is a famous city because it has the worlds tallest church, the Münster. It was quite cool, but didn't stay too long. Got home at 10ish so had a quiet evening watching a movie or two.