Castles!

On Sunday the hotel opened breakfast for us 45 minutes early, because Sasha came way too early in a brand new Mercedes-Benz bus to take it to the Germans' most despised tourist attraction, Neuschwanstein!

I planned to blog on the bus, but I was just too exhausted and I slept most of the trip, noticing that I almost felt the beginning of a cold coming on. I woke up when the bus came to a stop at an intersection in a town, and I noticed the time: I was supposed to already be at the ticket office picking up our tour tickets. I called them, and was relieved to learn we had an extra half hour to get there. We were there within 10 minutes.

This place was crowded with tourists so I can understand some of Germans' attitude, but on the other hand the forest, mountains, waterfalls, lakes, and castles are absolutely gorgeous so I think they should get over it. They will never know, though, because they won't go there.

Schloss Hohenschwangau

We first walked up the hill to the original castle, Schloss Hohenschwangau. It is impressive and beautifully furnished, and has great views of the surrounding countryside, and I concluded it must have been good to be the king. There were other people on our tour, though, and one tour was right after the other, so the tour didn't feel very personal and the guide stuck closely to a prepared script.

We didn't have time to grab lunch before climbing the even bigger hill to the much larger, way more elaborate and impressive, somewhat over-the-top, and never fully completed Neuschwanstein. King Ludwig was a friend and huge admirer of Richard Wagner, so the walls of every room were outlandishly painted with scenes from Wagnerian operas. The poor guy only lived there for six months before dying mysteriously. I think the Germans are still upset he bankrupt Bavarian building this extravagant place just for himself.

Views just outside of  Neuschwanstein.

At the end of the tour, we had a difficult time ushering the students out, as they all wanted to buy souvenirs. On the way out there were two souvenir shops still inside the castle, then one more right outside, all of which held us up before getting to our planned souvenir and snack shop 15 minutes walk back down the mountain. We finally got there, and I enjoyed the most delicious brat for lunch. In all the chaos we lost a student and were left with no choice but to walk down the mountain and hope we found him at the bottom. Thank goodness we did.

It was a pretty drive on the bus ride to Munich, but unfortunately I couldn't stay awake. I woke up as we entered the city and we made our way to the Arthotel Munich, our home for the next three nights. There we checked in and met up with Jeanette's daughter Erika who led us on a long walking tour of the city. (According to FitBit, I walked over 11 miles that day!)

Our tour took us to three different Catholic churches, the Marienplatz and glockenspiel at the New City Hall, and a (by this time closed) marketplace. Then we walked past the intentionally unmarked first meeting place of the National Socialist Party, the Hofbrauhaus, the Munich Residenz, the site of a failed assassination attempt on Hitler, the former headquarters of the Nazis (also not memorialized in any way), and the site of many large Nazis rallies. By the time our tour ended and we walked back toward the hotel and restaurants it was after 9 pm. The only place we found that was open was a nice Chinese restaurant, so ten of us went in and sat down for a good meal. I returned to the hotel exhausted.