2006-09-15 - 7:01 p.m.
Ah, Fussen, beautiful Fussen, how I hated to leave you behind. I had to though, since Oktoberfest starts tomorrow, and we had hotel reservations.
Our second day in Fussen dawned bright and sunny (presumably. By the time we got up it was well past dawn). We partook of the better than average breakfast provided to us, and set off to find the fabled Neuschwanstein castle. The castle is only about five kilometers from the town, and there is a nice path there, so we eschewed public transit in favor of shanks pony, as Dad would say. A half hour of easy walking we were at the foot of the hill the castle is on, where you can access both Neuschwanstein, and also Hohenschangau which is the castle where King Ludwig II grew up. Ludwig, also known as Ludwig the mad, was the one responsible for Neuschwanstien, as well as three other castles in Bavaria. He was an industrious king, who loved Wagner's operas, and building castles. He didn't start out crazy, but he was diagnosed as mad in 1886, ( by a psychologist that had never met him!) and removed from power. About a week later he and the psychologist died in fairly mysterious circumstances. Work on Neuschwanstein was halted at his death, and since there was no more money, it was opened to the public. It therefore is not the full castle that was intended, but only parts of it.
Anyway, we got there and decided in the interests of money to only see Neuschwanstein. You can walk up the hill, but we opted for the bus, since it is brutally steep, and, well, we're lazy. To see the castle, you have to take a guided tour. Ours was at 11:45, so we had some extra time. We went to see this cool suspension bridge that hangs over a beautiful waterfall, and has a great view of the castle.
The tour itself was short, but cool. Since so little of the palace was finished, there is not much to show, but they did a good job with what they had. We saw the throne room (they never even got around to making the throne) and the kings apartments, and his living quarters, and then a very odd artifical cave that he had made, complete with mini greenhouse and fake waterfall. We walked past his office, and his aide's office, and then ended up in the music room, which had a trap door down to the cave. The king would sit in the cave and listen to the music, following it note by note.
The whole castle was beautiful, and the walls were painted with scenes from Wagnerian operas. It was all ornate, and beautiful, but somehow managed to not go over the top, like some places that we've seen. Maybe it was the setting, in the alps, with gorgeous scenery all around, it would be hard to go over the top.
The rest of the day was uneventful, we did walk around the lake by the castle, and then went back to our room.
We were in the room, a six bed dorm, when we met our latest pack of Stanleys. Now, I'm getting used to Stanley the random roommate. I don't look forward to it, but we've met some nice people, and it's part of the trip. We've had good Stanleys, and bad, Quiet, and noisy, discreet and shameless, happy and grumpy, drunk and sober, but this was the first time that we had pungent Stanleys.
I don't know why, but this group of four, or maybe one or two of them, smelled terrible! Some odd combination of BO and old socks and feet. They weren't keen on open windows either, so the room got pretty close pretty fast. We escaped for as long as possible, reading in the dining room, but it was an unpleasant experience going in to go to bed.
Luckily, we were leaving for Munich this morning. We had bought a Bahn ticket, which is good for anywhere in Bavaria for one day. It was cheaper than a regular ticket, and it is good on the public transit in Munich.
Oktoberfest starts tomorrow (and how I'm looking forward to that!) and so the city is pretty booked up. Anticipating this, we made the rare good decision to book ahead, and had a room reserved since we were in Berlin. Even that was leaving it late though, and the only place we could find was a real hotel. Luckily, we did up the budget after we booked the room, so we can afford it.
It's a beautiful room. It has two beds, IT'S OWN BATHROOM, a TV, everything that we've been denied for so long. It's a real, honest to goodness, western modern hotel room. It's glorious.
After checking into our awesome room, we went out to Dachau, to see the concentration camp memorial. That was great as well, very moving. We saw the crematorium, where they disposed of the bodies, and saw a film with hundreds of bodies piled in this room, and then stood in the room. It has a poison gas shower, not used in mass murder, but some people did die there. There was a good museum as well. The whole place was so moving, and so disturbing, and so much outside anything that I've ever seen that it really overwhelmed me. If you're ever in Munich, go to Dachau.
