Bavaria

Today we said farewell to Switzerland, and the rest of our Swiss franks, and made our way over to the Bavarian part of Germany. Our planned stop for the day was to visit the village of Hohenschwangau where two of the most famous German castes are located. These being the Schloss Hohenschwangau and the Schloss Neuschwanstein. The whole village is centered around these two 19th century castles and there are buses, horse drawn carriages, and hiking trails that offer ways to lead you up to the castle wals. We decided to do a tour of the Schloss Hohenschwangau as Chris had never been inside before, and visit the outer section of the Schloss Neuschwanstein. We took a bus up to the Newschwanstein first, it was a forty minute walk uphill and we wanted to ensure we had enough time to make the following tour. The castle is frequently referred to as "Cinderella's Castle" and it definitly earns the title of such. It was built by "crazy" King Ludwig II of Bavaria as a personal recluse for himself alone. He dried up Bavarian funds to construct this castle, but died during the almost twenty year period it took to create it and it remains unfinished to this day. The castle was an homage to Richard Wagner and a main source of inspiration. It also went on to inspire the Sleeping Beauty Castle at Disneyland where I'm sure you can see the resemblance.


Neuschwanstein



Sleeping Beauty Castle, Disneyland

The grounds were beautiful and we even got to go into the palace courtyard without being part of a guided tour. When finished exploring and taking pictures, we hiked down the mountain (about a 20 min walk) and headed up to the other castle, not as high up, to meet up for our next tour.
The Schloss Hohenschwangau is just as impressive as its sister castle if only slightly less popular due to the intense tourist hype of the Neuschwanstein. It was the childhood residence of crazy Ludwig II and was built by his father King Maximilian II of Bavaria.



Hohenschwangau (meaning High Swan) was the summer and hunting residence of King Maximilian, his wife Marie of Prussia and their two sons Ludwig and Otto. It is lavishly decorated on the inside and there can be found the reoccurring theme of swans (also scattered throughout the castle property and live swans in the lake). The tour was fantastic however no pictures were allowed on the inside of the castle. These are ones I pulled from the web to give you a feel of what it looked like.





Before leaving, we stopped to visit the lake which can be seen from the castle and is home to a large community of swans. There were tourists who were offering food to a two groups of cygnets (baby swans) while I'm assuming their mothers stood guard (there were only two adult swans with two groups of up to eight cygnets). There was a remote control sailboat taking a cruise around the surrounding area and I got a fantastic picture of the adult swan having a stare down with it before letting out a hiss which sent the sailboat off in the other direction.



We spent the night in the town of Schliersee which turned out to be a good stopping point between Lucerne, Salzburg, and Munich. This was one of my other favorite stays as the room was spacious and the town itself was situated in a beautiful area. The food and wine were once again excellent as always and I fell in love with the Kaesespaetzle, a cheese spaetzle dish with carmelized onions that is very popular in Germany. So good...right up there with mac 'n cheese.




Chris Rant:




So I officially don't like Austria anymore (sorry Trip). On our way to Neuschwanstein we had to pass thru a very small section of Austria between Germany and Switzerland. This is because Lake Constanz (Bodensee in German) is right on the Swiss/German boarder up till Austria. I had the choice of going the highway or regular streets to Neuschwanstein so I choose to take the highways since the GPS said it would be faster. The ended up being a big mistake! I had read before that you needed a highways sticker to drive on Austrian highways just like Switzerland, but as we crossed the boarder and got onto the highway there were no signs or places to buy the sticker (like Switzerland forces you to do). At this point I just continued on thinking that maybe because we were only getting on at a 10 mile section that lead straight to Germany they just weren't worrying about it. We got on the highways passed thru a tunnel and then came up to the German boarder where all traffic was being directed off to a truck stop. An Austrian police officer stopped me and ask me in German if I had a highway sticker so I pointed to my Swiss one trying to play dumb (I think my first mistake was speaking German to him but unfortunately it's a natural reaction at this point). He said no, that is a Swiss one and pointed me to another officer. This officer I kindly asked if he could speak English since my German is good enough at this point to debate. He again ask me if I had a sticker and I said no, I did not see any sign to buy one. Without question he asked me to come to his card and pay a 125 Euro fine for not having the sticker. I told him since we crossed the boarder not on the highway where could I have bought a sticker. He said I should have bought one from a gas station and proceeded to run my credit card. He handed me a giant receipt. I ask him "do I at least get a sticker now" in which he responded rudely "NO." I can't remember exactly what he said at this point because I was so PISSED a this point but I know he was rude and started trying to rush me away now that they had my money.

So for future reference if you travel to Austria on the highway for any extent, pull over and buy a sticker! The apparently they have no sympathy and there is a steep fine.

Another side note is after we entered Austria from Germany while on the highway there were signs all over to buy a sticker! After all of this I just felt pretty setup and conned out of 150 dollars.