Day Four - Castles Here and There..

     When in Germany, you must visit the castles...there are so many who can choose?

This morning we set off with our driver Thomas (a native from Munich, but he lived in Sydney for over 10 years) and the sun was out and the skies had cleared and it was a cold and beautiful day! Even though there was no snow in the city, you can see the abundance of snow on the Alps far off in the distance.

     Our first stop, a few hours outside Munich was the famous Schloss (Castle) Neuschwanstein, one of several castles built by the some say crazy, but Thomas said, "No, we prefer eccentric" King Ludwig II. In 1864, at the age of 18 1/2, Crown Prince Ludwig of Bavaria, son of Maximilian II, ascended the Bavarian throne. One of the books I scanned said of him, "The unusual lifestyle and passionate building plans of the lonely King led to the creation of the "Fairytale King" legend." He was obsessed with the composer Richard Wagner and was a life-long patron of his music. This is the castle Walt Disney used as the model for the castle in Sleeping Beauty, and later for the Disneyland castle itself.

     NORMALLY at the time we were visiting in early January, the castle would look like this (see the postcard below) but alas today there was no snow except high up in the mountains.

     To get to the castle, you could either walk a 15 minute hike up a winding road, take a taxi, or ride in a horse drawn carriage. We decided to walk up, stopping at the end to try on some hats, and eat the MOST DELICIOUS "hot outa the vat" powered donuts.

I tried to persuade Lulu to buy this hat, to no avail...

  

   Once inside you were absolutely not allowed to take any photos, so we paid attention to the rules (despite Bill's urging to ignore them) . Suffice it to say, there were murals, silver, gold, statues, china, heavy fabric, you name it everywhere. This guy decorated more along the style of "throw it up and if it sticks, it stays".

Afterwards we took the horse drawn carriage down the hill...

                                                  and then ON to the NEXT castle!

     We drove for another hour or so on a back country road that normally this time of year would be closed due to the snow, but was wide open for us. We saw very few other cars, and felt like we were climbing the Alps all by ourselves. I started to doze off, but Bill woke me up as there was beautiful scenery out the window. I got out of the car to take this photo, and stepped into a big pile of snow roadside.

   













We soon arrived at Schloss Linderhof. "Set in sylvan seclusion in Graswang Valley, high in the Alps" this castle was built on the site of King Ludwig II's father's hunting lodge." It is noteworthy that Linderhof was the first of his building projects, and in 6 years was the only one to be completed during his lifetime.

Backside....

Frontside...

    

     We took a tour but the guide only spoke German, and she was not interested in us, so we kind of dragged our feet and when she had moved on to a new room, we snapped a few interior photos!

Below are Bill and Lulu in the King's reading room.

The enormous bed...King Ludwig II was 6'2" ... quite tall for his day.

     It was about 6pm now, and we were hungry! So we drove on to Oberammergau, where Bill and I had been back in early 2000 with Msgr. Torgerson, Msgr. Connelly, Colleen & John Morrissey, and Mary & Jay Flaherty to see the once every 10 year production of The Passion Play. If you want to see it, the next production is in 2020. It has 16 acts and takes 5 1/2 hours on a partly open air stage against the mountain top. Over 1500 residents of Oberammergau participate in the play's production. The role of Mary was only given to an unmarried girls (many would postpone their wedding in the hopes of getting the coveted role) until 1990 when "amid much controversy" a 31 year old married mother of two was given the role.

     This small town is on the touristy side (there were lots of coo coo clocks for sale!) but it was great to be back and walk along the streets lined with painted houses. Many of the stores are owned by master artisans in wood working (a craft that has flourished here since the early 12th century), and Bill has been known to purchase a few wood carvings in his day. We had a hearty meal of spaghetti with meat sauce that "hit the spot", topped off with apple strudel.

And that was our day of castles. Tomorrow - Salzburg!