Reflections of My Travel

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We woke up this morning with the Alps towering over us. And they were glorious. It was a little bit drizzly, but not too bad. We drove up to Schwangau to formulate our plan for tackling the castles. There are two very prominent castles in the Schwangau valley. There is the extremely large and fanciful castle Neuschwanstein that was built by “Mad” King Ludwig II and was later the inspiration for Walt Disney’s® Cinderella’s Castle. It perches up on the side of the alps and sets a majestic focal point for the valley. It also overlooks his daddy’s castle, Hohenschwangau. By all standards, this is no small castle either, yet the entire thing would probably fit into the courtyard of Neuschwanstein. Daddy’s castle was much more humble looking and older, having been originally built in the 12th century and later ruined by Napoleon and rebuilt by Ludwig’s daddy, Maximillian II. We decided that we were only really interested in taking the inside tour of Neuschwanstein so we bought our tickets and started hiking up to it. When we got to the front gate, I was surprised to find it immensely larger than I had imagined or than it had seemed from the town. The sheer scale of it was quite impressive, even without the fanciful beauty. We took the 45 minute tour of the inside, which was spectacular. Everything was so opulent, but not to a sickening degree (at least not for an attraction, it would be way over the top to live in). The woodcarving. Oh my goodness, I cannot even begin to describe how incredible the carving was. The king’s bedroom alone had a team of woodcarvers devoted to it for FOUR years! It was amazing. He also had hot and cold running water throughout. The rooms were immense, even though the inside of the castle was only about one third finished – the king having been declared mad, evicted from his luxurious castle, and found dead the next day after only 172 days of living in it. The shame about his premature and mysterious death was that not only Neuschwanstein never completed, but his next fantasy castle, Falkenstein, which appears that it would have been even more fantastic, was never begun. His bedroom also had a spectacular view of Mary’s Bridge and a great waterfall. The whole tour was fascinating and I would heartily recommend it to anyone. Once we had finished the tour, we hiked up and then down to the base of the waterfall. Then we hiked back up to Mary’s Bridge. Neither I nor Randal was entirely comfortable walking across this very high bridge. It was 200 years old, made of wood going long-ways, and the wood buckled as you walked on it. I know that I’ve become a skeardy-cat about heights, but I knew it was bad when Randal was gripping the hand rail all the way across. Once we had crossed it, we hiked another very vertical mile up the mountain above the castle so that we could get a picture of Neuschwanstein with Hohenschwangau below it. It was a very pretty hike, but also intimidating. The trail was small and often right along the steep edge, the wind was whipping at us, and the rain started muddying the ground. Finally, not far from the top of the mountain at all, I found the closeness to the sheer, steep edge a little too overwhelming and we turned around. It was just as well, Randal’s camcorder had just run out of tape and it was starting to rain pretty good so the trail was going to get slicky fast. The downward hike didn’t seem as bad, but crossing the bridge again seemed much worse with the wood wetted and, therefore, more bendy underfoot. We made our way back down to the car, loaded the camcorder with a fresh tape, and walked the short way up to Hohenschwangau. Even though we did not purchase tickets for the tour, we were free to walk around the grounds and take pictures of the castle and its surrounds. It was a very nice castle in its own right, although not nearly as aesthetically pleasing as Neuschwanstein, or even Burg Eltz. Once we were done ogling the two castles, we got back in our car and drove down into Austria. We wound up on a road that took us up and over a part of the Alps. The drive was gorgeous, even though the lack of guardrails made Randal uncomfortable. As we neared the top, there was snow all over the place. It was a wonderfully scenic ride. After making it down the other side of the mountain, we found a place to camp in Bludenz.

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This morning, we woke to rain. Lots of rain. Not long after waking up, we had already crossed the border into Switzerland. We then headed south and in no more than 20 minutes, we drove from the north border to the south border of Liechtenstein (such a tiny, tiny country) and crossed back into Switzerland again. We headed north and drove along the shore of Lake Constance, which sits on the border of Switzerland, Germany, and Austria. It was a very pretty lake but I was surprised by the lack of lake-attraction sort of stuff. Of course, that didn’t stop me from finding a nice place to pull over and harass the pretty ducks. We followed the lake all the way up to the Germany border and then made our way into the Schwartzwald region. We went to Triberg because they boasted Germany’s highest waterfall. However, when we arrived in the town, we were disturbed to find that it was extremely touristy and packed with people. When we got out to start the hike up toward the fall, we discovered that it wasn’t really a waterfall so much as a series of cascades. Since the trail was so overburdened with people and we were upset to have been lured into a seemingly misrepresented tourist trap, we left Triberg in a hurry. From there, we drove west, crossed over the Rhine in to France, and drove south along the Rhine. Following the river took us back into Switzerland, once again, but we were back in Germany again in no time. We headed north into the Black Forest again and stopped in some town (wasn’t on the map so I couldn’t guess at a name) for a hotel.

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We decided to be daring and endure our first Zimmerfrei Frühstück. The buffet consisted of some mixed fruit, breads, odd spreads, a cereal, boiled eggs, lunch meats, cheeses, and the usual breakfast beverages. I took a big roll, some cereal with milk, a couple of the safer looking lunch meats/cheeses, a boiled egg, and both milk and orange juice to drink. The bread was delicious! The meats/cheeses were fine. The cereal was mostly good, it was a wheat flake cereal with dried strawberry slices, which was very good, but there were also some little soft pink things that frightened me and didn’t taste good so I tried to avoid them. The milk and orange juice were warm which, while we have gotten used to warm soda, was not very tasty. The boiled egg, which I just assumed to be a good old hard-boiled egg like I make back home, was actually a soft-boiled egg that ran all over the place when I cracked it and made me feel sick to smell it. All in all it was a fine and filling breakfast. Randal and I both helped ourselves to seconds on the bread because it was so yummy. As we continued on our northward trek through the Black Forest, we went over a mountain with snow flurries coming down on us in the 3°C weather. The next town we stopped in was Ulm – birthplace of Albert Einstein and home to the world’s tallest church steeple (528 feet). It was a nice little town to walk around. The Ulmer Münster (church with the record steeple) was absolutely gorgeous. The steeple work was so intricate that it looked like it was made of lace way up there. The doors were massive works of art. And the inside of the cathedral was just breathtaking. There was detail everywhere. Even the choir benches up beyond the alter were like statues. It was truly beautiful. And the choir singing in the back of the cathedral really set the mood. On the walk in the rain back to the car, we got lured by the sweet, sweet smells into a bakerie. Randal had an apple turnover thingie, I had a chocolate croissant which turned out to have amaretto in the chocolate. It was delicious. Just thinking of it is making my mouth water. We got back in the car and continued our drive up the Romantische Straße, turning at the end of it toward the upper part of the Rhine. We’ve set up camp just below Bingen.