Schwangau

As I mentioned before, on Saturday the 8th of June I took a day trip from Munich to a town called Schwangau, where there are two castles: Schloss Hohenschwangau and Schloss Neuschwanstein. Neuschwanstein (remember, German 'w' is pronounced like our 'v') is the castle from which Walt Disney took inspiration.

I planned on meeting up with En-Chi, who I got in touch with through Couch Surfing about going to Neuschwanstein because I didn't want to go alone. I knew that Heidi and Wolfgang wouldn't want to go since it would be nothing new. It turns out they have never toured it at all, their reason being that they can find many really old and authentic castles and chateaus in Europe, while Neuschwanstein is not an original, authentic, real medieval building. It's just a kitschy surrogate, but it is still quite interesting to many people and is very profitable for the Bavarian State (which now owns Neuschwanstein).

I had trouble in the mourning finding En-Chi at the train station. Travelling without a phone is very difficult. I actually had to use a payphone; I'm glad these things actually still exist. Believe it or not, people do sometimes need them. I skipped the first train because I couldn't find her, but she had gotten on that one. So, we met in Füssen instead.

On my solo train ride I became acquainted with an interesting group of three people: Asumi, Katherine, and Rashid. Katherine and Rashid both live in Munich while Asumi, from Canada, was traveling through on her own trip. They busted out some wine on the train and offered me a glass. Yeah, wine at 10:30 in the morning; this is definitely vacation!

 Katherine and I making the train ride interesting...

Rashid and Asumi enjoying themselves!

Arriving in Füssen we found En-Chi on the platform. A short bus ride to Schwangau and it was on to the castles!

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Schwangau:

En-Chi and I bought a ticket package to tour both castles. Before touring either, our group took an out of the way hike towards Neuschwanstein. Unfortunately, we were not allowed to take pictures inside of either castle.

A view of Schloss Neuschwanstein from below. 

Katherine and En-Chi hiking next to the stream that ran down from the castle through the woods. 

Fair well picture with the crew from the train (they weren't going to do the inside castle tours).

Hiking back to Schwangau, our first castle to tour was Hohenschwangau. Centuries ago, the people of Schwangau considered swans to be the most elegant animal. Hohenschwangau was originally a fortress built in the 12th century by the knights of a swan order, which I found funny because swans are, well, not intimidating at all. So, half of what we saw at Hohenschwangau was swan-related. It fell into decay until the early 19th century when it was reconstructed under the orders of King Maximilian II of Bavaria as a place for vacationing.

A view of Hohenschwangau from below. 

Lake Adler 

A gate to castle Hohenschwangau on our walk up. 

Another view of Neuschwanstein, from the courtyard outside of Hohenschwangau. 

 What castle is complete without a wall fountain?

Swan fountain in the courtyard of Hohenschwangau. Always swans in Schwangau! 

This annoying American kept on getting in my photos. 

A view of the base area below the castle.

Check out the neogothic exterior of the castle!

They also have a May pole here.

The tour of the castle lasted about 45 minutes and we had a very knowledgeable Bavarian guide. I was surprised by the number of wall paintings covering the interior of the castle.

Afterwards we took a 15 minute hike from the base up to Neuschwanstein. This time we just took a road which wound around the southeast side of the village. Neuschwanstein is a much bigger castle than Hohenschwangau. It was built under the orders of Mad King Ludwig II, the son of Maximilian II. Ludwig spent a lot of time in Hohenschwangau when he was growing up and supposedly took inspiration from the beauty of the area. He was called mad because, among other reasons, he drained all of his treasury building castles. He simultaneously commissioned the construction of Neuschwanstein, Lustschloss of Lidnerhof Palace, and the palace of Herrenchiemsee. The king racked up debts of over 14 millions marks and still wanted to continue on architectural projects. It's not a big surprise the he ended up being found dead in the shallow waters of a lake under mysterious circumstances. But one could say that the area ended up benefiting from his imprudence, given the large amount of tourism.

We had a great view of the surrounding area on our hike up to the castle.

Much closer to the castle now.

The gate to the castle on the west. 

The courtyard of Neuschwanstein, where we waited for our tour. 

The other side of the castle gate. 

Nice view of one of the tours to the castle; it must be an even better view up there.

 Again, we couldn't take pictures of the inside of the tour, unfortunately. It was definitely more of what I expected a castle to look like, with tall stone walls, a huge courtroom, and spiral staircases. Apparently Ludwig had a cave hallway installed on the top floor. A cave, with stalactites and stalagmites. Why this wouldn't just have been put in the basement I do not know. It turns out that the construction on the castle was never fully completed, as it is missing a few of the towers originally planned and much of the interior is lacking furnishing. It was never really used, either; Ludwig only lived in it a few months before he died. I doubt anybody today is willing to spend the money on finishing it though.