Day 26!!

Today was the (reasonably long) trip to Neuschwanstein Castle!! WOOT!!!
I decided to forgo the shave I kinda needed, and wake up at 8 rather than 7.30, and after a quick breakfast it was in the car and off!! The drive to the castle takes about 2 and a half hours.. so I just kinda relaxed, enjoyed the countryside, and listened to 'SWR 1 - die aktuellste Vekehrsservice im Land' for the whole trip. Mrs Kirste always has this station on.. they play heaps of old school songs (like really old school.. like my parents songs). But its all good coz they basically play the huge popular ones, so most are pretty good. Oh, I was reminded on my trip out to the castle of these funny tunnels they have in the Autobhan.. The only concevable reason for them that i can think of is that there must be aroad ontop of it.. basically its a really short tunnel.. with like 1 m or so of earth above it. Its so weird! And they are totally outta the blue... No other hills or raises anywhere to be seen (altho they are always when you are climbing or descending a hill yourself. If it were a natural little rise you would think it be cheaper to flag the tunnel and just remove that last little bit of dirt and just have a normal road.. Anyway.. must be a road ontop.. Oh and while im on observations.. So many planes are flying over Germany all the time a! At any given time you can look up and see easily 6-7 planes in the sky.. its quite different to what im used to in Wellington!

After a few detours cozza road upgrades etc we found our way to the castle. MAN!! From about 45 min out you could start to see the outline of the mountain range that Neuschwanstein sits infront of... Its gorgeous ay! The mountains are so dramatic, and their shapes and stuff are so nice! I so wanna do a Carl and Sandy thing one day and bike around a bunch of Europe. I saw bikers today and yesterday.. and while itd be hard work I reckon itd be so great! Anyways.. I'll try and not get too sidetracked. So we got to the carpark, and after I took a few shapshots from below we lined up for a ticket into the castle at the office below in the carpark.. And we had 2 hours to wait. Instead of catching a bus (or horse drawn carriage) up the hill we decided just to walk which was really nice. Today it was 35-36 degrees.. but being in the shade of the trees was quite plesant still. And even in the sun it doesnt seem unbearably hot.. just rather warm. Walking up was great coz you could really enjoy the surrounding forest and see a few things on the way.

We reached a restaurant and decided to have lunch which was great. Theres a pic and description of mine on Flickr. Mrs Kirste ordered a wurst salat (wurst salad) which I assumed would be a salad with some bits of wurst through-out it... but no.. imagine a bit leafy salad... then replace all the greens with meat. Now you have a wurst salad :D. ha ha my kinda salad!! :D. After this we carried on up to the castle which wasnt much more of a walk. There were heaps of people there as there always is :). There were heaps of Americans too. At first it was cool to hear some English, but after a little bit it seemed really weird, and I was wishing they would speak German.. Im not sure exactly why.. and it was nothing to do with them being American specifically.. It was weird!! Dunno.. Anyways.. I had a while still before the tour so I walked around the castle and through as much of the inside courtyard that I could. Around the Mountains near the castle and here and there there were many para-gliders and hang-gliders cruising around basically the whole time I was there. Talk about the perfect place to go hang-gliding too!! If i ever learn how to do either of those sports I must come back here to do it ay!!
Anyhow once id done all around the castle and stuff it was only 10 min or so until my tour started. Ha ha the guy at the gate letting you in was wearing lederhosen!!! :D I wanted to take a picture.. but i felt it was a bit rude so i didnt in the end :).

Ok so our tour guide fully sounded like Arnold Schwarzenegger and kinda had theis weird serious look the whole time with a matching tone :) It was kinda funny :)!! The Castle was dedicated to Richard Wagner, and thus heaps of the rooms are painted with scenes from his Operas and stuff.. its great! Unfortunately when King Ludwig II died 17 years into construction they stopped work on the castle. so while it looks all complete from the outside, only a third of the rooms were finished :(. But the ones that were finished were spectacular!! Its almost stupid how decadently royalty lived!

We started off walking past the servants rooms (pretty nice for servants rooms!!!) and then came to the Throne room... WOAH!! A mosaic floor of over a million little tiles showing animal and plant life. On either side of the Italian marble stairs up to the throne were paintings of the 12 Apostles, then on the wall above where the throne would be were 6 sanctified European Kings, and above them all, depicted as the king of kings, was Jesus. There was a ridiculous chandellier and some amazing paintings mainly of stuff to do with the 6 European kings. All the paintings on the walls was done by artists from the academy of art in Munich, so they were great!

We then went into the Kings bedroom which was just ridiculous! It took 40 craftsmen a year and a half to make!!! The wooden carvings everywhere were breathtaking! On the top part of the kings bed was a massive carving that had the tops of all the major cathedrals in Germany on it! There were a bunch of paintings from a Wagner opera, an awesome writing/reading chair, and a washbasin with running cold water!! (from a spring 400m above the castle up in the mountains!!!!!) WOAH!!! Then through a secret door in the wall next to the basin was the toilet, which also fluched with the same water! Crazy man!! Next was the dressing room, which was similarly adorned with great carvings and painting from Wagner operas. There was a room basically all dedicated to swans (and with paintings of a Wagner opera where the hero rides a swan-drawn boat.. forgotting the name of it). There were swans depicted in the carving on the ceiling and doorhandles and everywhere!! And a large porcelein swan that was actually a vase! WOAH!!

We went thought some other rooms. The paintings everywhere were awesome. And the view out the windows on any side (which I always leaned out of to have a look) was absolutely stunning!!. We then came to the Singing room.. OH MAN! This place was breath taking! Gorgeously furnished, and again paintings from Wagner. It also has a stage at the front (never used in the Kings life time. And the room has awesome acoustics. This is aided by the ceiling being made of these large wooden tiles, and something about double layers and something and it kinda acts like the inside of a guitar.. Sweet man!! This was where the official tour ended and we left the room through a door (above which was the only place in the castle anything directly to do with Ludwig was.. his crest), then down a spiral staircase the servants used, and we got to a cafe and souvineer shop and stuff.. There was a model of the castle and stuff.. I was gonna watch a movie thing about Ludwig, but decided time was moving on and Mrs Kirste had probably been waiting for me at least a good hour and a half.. so I carried on and came back out to the outside of the castle.

I was pretty keen to go to the Marien Brücke, so we trekked up a little hill and after about 10 minutes we were there. I was glad we went!! You got an AWESOME view of the castle, and in the other direction and equally stunning view of the mountains... The Bridge was bulging at the seams with people. but I took a few minutes to just stand and stare, enjoy the awesome view and relax a bit.. Incredible!! I am SOOOOO coming back here one day with a tramping pack and a map and doing some serious walking around these mountains!!! Tho i think ill stick to the summertime :)!

We then walked back to the carpark via another, more bush-track-ish path (and a more direct one at that) and were soon back in the oven of a car and cranking the a/c. Id left some mineral water in the car which was seriously warm, no longer fizzy, and had a completely different, almost sweet taste.. was very odd.. Anyhow, we started on our way back home. near the start I saw this gorgeous sight that I so wanted to photograph, but we were gone too soon and I didnt wanna ask Mrs Kirste to turn around. It was this little wooden shack in a field and inside were a bunch of cows squeezed into the shade and lying down asleep. The cow you could see best looked so sweet and peaceful.. and it was such a good photo! :) but you cant take them all huh! We carried on and soon I got uncontrollably sleepy all of a sudden and couldnt stay awake.. It was weird as coz that kinda thing doesnt happen that extremely to me usually, and I dont often sleep in cars (unless im totally zapped, then i sleep like a log!). Anyway.. we reached about Ulm, and I woke up. We stopped in Erbach on the way back to visit Mrs Kirste's brother Wolfgang whos a pretty nice guy, and then made the rest of the trip home, probably getting in at 7 o-clockish. Everyone else was in the pool (Dont blame them in this heat!!), I was gonna join them, but I was famished and had some leftover spaghetti again for dinner (mmmmm), then they were all out of the pool so I came here, started photo-loading, sermon-downloading, and blog writing.
And now its 10.30 and I think I'll call it a day. My jaws kinda sore from dragging along the ground most the day due to the stunning scenery ;).

G'nite!