Day Ten, Or Castles and Cheesecake

(A note about last night: Ever feel hungry, but not hungry enough for a full meal? Well, in Munich look for a place whose sign includes the word 'Imbiss' (or Imbiß). It means snacks, so I went and had one.

It is called currywurst. A large sausage, roughly twelve inches long, is cut into one-inch pieces, then slathered with a not-too-spicy sauce and sprinkled with curry powder. Not bad at all, really, and a bargain at E1.50.)

Now, on to today.

I boarded another train today, the weather nice and sunny, and headed for the town of Füssen. After getting off the train, I picked up a bus that took me another five kilometers to the village of Hohenschwangau. The trip was through some of the most beautiful farmland I had seen thus far, with pasturage for cows, horses, and sturdy-looking shaggy ponies.

Hohenschwangau has two things going for it other than its name being a triple-word score in Scrabble, and they are Schloss Hohenschwangau and Schloss Neuschwanstein. Yes, two castles.

I toured Schloss Hohenschwangau first, requiring me to take a dizzying walk up a switchback path to the castle's back door (those who chose to go up by horse-drawn cart came in through the front gate). Word of advice - NONE OF THESE PLACES ARE FOR THE DISABLED!

Okay, public service message over.

The castle is still a private home, owned by the Wittelsbach Family, and therefore photographs of the interior are not allowed. I sneaked a few anyway. The place was an old Order Castle, meaning that its first inhabitants were an order of knights - in this case the Order of the Swan (swans are common here, hence the use of the word in place names). The castle fell into disrepair until the mid-1800s when the then-King Maximilian decided it'd make a splendid summer home and hunting lodge. It feels like a home, too.

I was feeling peckish, so I ate lunch at the Müller Hotel's outdoor cafe. I had smoked trout with toast and butter, a bottle of an amazing dark beer (I have yet to find a beer in Germany I HAVEN'T liked), and by the time I got to dessert it was getting close to time to go up the mountain.

I opted for cheesecake and coffee, and bought another ticket.

No long hikes for me today, so I took a bus to a way point partway up from Neuschwanstein. From there I took a path that led to a spot called Marienbrücke, Mary's Bridge. See, old King Max decided to give his wife a gift, so he had a bridge built across a steep Alpine gorge, so she could admire the view of the river and waterfall far below. The other end of the bridge leads to a series of hiking paths that take you to the top of a mountain called the Tegerberg.

The middle of the bridge, when you face north, gives you the classic view of Neuschwanstein perched on its narrow ridge. It's not a medieval castle; there was one there, but King Max's son Ludwig II had it removed when he wanted a dream palace done for himself.

Neuschwanstein was built by a theatrical set designer, not an architect, and it shows. It also explains why Disney chose it as the model for the castles at his theme parks. His throne room is modeled after an idea of what a Byzantine emperor's throne room would look like, there's a plaster and lath "grotto" just off his bedroom, and the walls are decorated with scenes from Wagnerian operas.

Again, picture taking inside is prohibited, for the following reasons: no way you can stop people using flash photography, some of the paintings are still under copyright, and it would cause immense traffic jams as everyone stopped to take snaps.

Logical, as far as it goes.

Ludwig never spent a single night in his dream palace, which was finished at the same time we started seeing skyscrapers in New York. He was later judged to be insane, deposed, and later died under mysterious circumstances (he and his psychiatrist went out boating; they were both found drowned in shallow water).

So, it's almost 9 PM here, so I'm going to find one of those Imbiß signs and get a bite to eat.