Bavaria Day 6 - Neuschwanstein
We saved arguably the most touristy thing we did the whole trip for the last day, and drove from Salzburg through picturesque mountains and Bavarian towns on our way to Neuschwanstein castle. This castle built by King Ludwig II as a private residence and is very famous and well-liked by tourists. There are two castles actually in the same valley, Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein. The former was a summer hunting castle for the royal family, and where Ludwig II spent much of his time growing up. Each room was beautifully decorated, and they are lucky enough to have the original furniture as well. There were paintings covering all of the walls, in the romantic style, depicting scenes from operas, battles, and from Bavarian history. The first floor we visited was the King’s quarters, and one floor up was the queen’s quarters. I found it interesting that they lived separately, each in their own apartment of sorts with a bedroom, reading/living room, dressing room, etc. Of course, there was a private back stair that lead from the king’s bedroom to the queen’s.
Unfortunately there is no funicular to get up to Neuschwanstein castle, so unless you want to pay to take a horse drawn carriage, the option is to walk up the hill on foot. It wasn’t a bad walk though, and it only rained a little, so we did just fine. After our hike a few days before the slope didn’t even seem to steep since we took the “easy” way up. When you get up to the castle it’s easy to see why it’s considered to be out of a fairy tale, and why Disney based the Snow White castle, in part, off of its features. It was built more as an ode to medieval times, with which Ludwig was quite taken. The castle was never finished, as Ludwig died a somewhat mysterious early death in his 40s during its construction, and his family elected not to continue the project since they were out of money. What is built, though, is quite interesting. It was never meant to be a castle for visitors, but for Ludwig alone, and as such has an individual dining room, bedroom, office, etc. It was also quite modern for its time, looking medieval but with all the modern comforts available such as a telegram and running water supplied by an uphill mountain spring. The furniture was spectacular and over the top - his bed apparently took three years to carve, and many rooms had large ceramic swans on top of gorgeous ceramic heaters.
The strangest (Charlie says "best") room was between Ludwig’s study and his “winter garden” (kind of a greenhouse). They were connected by a fake grotto, inspired by a Wagner opera scene. Basically, you stepped from a study, into a cave, and back out again, in the middle of an upper floor corridor in a castle! It shed a little light on why there’s a board game we like called Castles of Mad King Ludwig, with rooms of all sorts as tiles to be placed in your personal castle. We always thought some of the rooms were a bit absurd, but after seeing the grotto they now seem a lot more realistic.
Apparently Ludwig and Wagner were quite good friends actually, and we are lucky for that since Ludwig financed much of Wagner’s career, without which we wouldn’t have many amazing musical works of art. So despite perhaps more than a bit of eccentricity, I’m glad Ludwig was such a lover of the arts and of beautiful things, and left behind not only his own architectural works, but facilitated the creation of so much more.
Finally, we made our way back down to the town below the castle, unfortunately via the knee-testing steep “hard way”, but we got there and loaded up the car to drive to our final hotel near the Munich airport. We plotted a course for a town halfway in which to stop for dinner, but were denied our chance to finish out the trip with one last Bavarian meal by a lack of parking of all things! All the obviously public parking was taken at both restaurants we tried and, not knowing exactly how to read the parking rule signs in the city’s old town, we didn’t want to risk getting a ticket our last night, so we eventually gave up and grabbed some snacks on the way to the hotel. A somewhat anti-climactic ending, but it worked out just the same.
All in all we very much enjoyed our short jaunt into Bavaria, and I think it’s likely we will be back to the Alps again, whether it be via Germany, Austria, Switzerland, or Italy. A promise of pretzels lured us there, and a promise of mountains I’m sure will bring us back. Until next time!
Unfortunately there is no funicular to get up to Neuschwanstein castle, so unless you want to pay to take a horse drawn carriage, the option is to walk up the hill on foot. It wasn’t a bad walk though, and it only rained a little, so we did just fine. After our hike a few days before the slope didn’t even seem to steep since we took the “easy” way up. When you get up to the castle it’s easy to see why it’s considered to be out of a fairy tale, and why Disney based the Snow White castle, in part, off of its features. It was built more as an ode to medieval times, with which Ludwig was quite taken. The castle was never finished, as Ludwig died a somewhat mysterious early death in his 40s during its construction, and his family elected not to continue the project since they were out of money. What is built, though, is quite interesting. It was never meant to be a castle for visitors, but for Ludwig alone, and as such has an individual dining room, bedroom, office, etc. It was also quite modern for its time, looking medieval but with all the modern comforts available such as a telegram and running water supplied by an uphill mountain spring. The furniture was spectacular and over the top - his bed apparently took three years to carve, and many rooms had large ceramic swans on top of gorgeous ceramic heaters.
The strangest (Charlie says "best") room was between Ludwig’s study and his “winter garden” (kind of a greenhouse). They were connected by a fake grotto, inspired by a Wagner opera scene. Basically, you stepped from a study, into a cave, and back out again, in the middle of an upper floor corridor in a castle! It shed a little light on why there’s a board game we like called Castles of Mad King Ludwig, with rooms of all sorts as tiles to be placed in your personal castle. We always thought some of the rooms were a bit absurd, but after seeing the grotto they now seem a lot more realistic.
Apparently Ludwig and Wagner were quite good friends actually, and we are lucky for that since Ludwig financed much of Wagner’s career, without which we wouldn’t have many amazing musical works of art. So despite perhaps more than a bit of eccentricity, I’m glad Ludwig was such a lover of the arts and of beautiful things, and left behind not only his own architectural works, but facilitated the creation of so much more.
Finally, we made our way back down to the town below the castle, unfortunately via the knee-testing steep “hard way”, but we got there and loaded up the car to drive to our final hotel near the Munich airport. We plotted a course for a town halfway in which to stop for dinner, but were denied our chance to finish out the trip with one last Bavarian meal by a lack of parking of all things! All the obviously public parking was taken at both restaurants we tried and, not knowing exactly how to read the parking rule signs in the city’s old town, we didn’t want to risk getting a ticket our last night, so we eventually gave up and grabbed some snacks on the way to the hotel. A somewhat anti-climactic ending, but it worked out just the same.
All in all we very much enjoyed our short jaunt into Bavaria, and I think it’s likely we will be back to the Alps again, whether it be via Germany, Austria, Switzerland, or Italy. A promise of pretzels lured us there, and a promise of mountains I’m sure will bring us back. Until next time!
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