After a hearty German breakfast, we skirted the Northern Black Forest and headed for the rolling Bavarian Alps. We stopped at the small town of Hohenschwangau near the foot of the renowned Hohenschwangau Castle and King Ludwig’s fairy-tale Neuschwanstein Castle. My husband was truly excited. He has had a fascination for Bavarian castles since childhood. In fact, his most treasured puzzle posters, meticulously assembled, glued together, and professionally framed, were those of Neuschwanstein Castle.
Our bus stopped at an outlook with a clear view of the Hohenschwangau Castle (High Swan County Palace). It was the childhood residence of King Ludwig II of Bavaria and was built by his father, Maximilian II of Bavaria. The name was derived from the Schwangau fortress, a medieval fortification built here in 1100 AD, upon whose remains this castle stands.
We then drove to the base of Neuschwanstein Castle. This one was commissioned by Ludwig II as his own personal retreat house, and as a tribute to composer Richard Wagner, of whom he was a patron. Looking at it from our vantage point, it was indeed magnificent.
Perhaps, Ludwig was inspired by his already-grand childhood home and wanted to build something grander. Or perhaps, he was fired by his own fantasy-filled imagination. Wasn’t he called, “Mad King Ludwig?” The accuracy of this label has been disputed. Some said he was indeed mad because his younger brother, Otto, was considered insane, and therefore, insanity must be something that ran in the family. Others said this was a ludicrous claim because there had never been any medical examination, thus, this so-called diagnosis had no solid basis.
Maybe Ludwig was just a free spirit and needed to assert his supreme creativity and ardent passion for the arts. And because he was not a typical king and had a different way of expressing himself, they labelled him crazy. After all, his reclusive nature and eccentric personality had been judged and misinterpreted all throughout his life. In reality, he was highly intelligent and had ingenious ideas. Remember the saying, “There is only a thin line between genius and insanity?” Perhaps, this was the case.
Or perhaps he just valued his privacy and wished to avoid the prying eyes of the curious, and the people around him did not approve of that. It was said that he disliked large public functions and avoided formal social events as much as possible. As a patron of the arts, he enjoyed theater but preferred private performances for himself alone or with some guests in the comfort of the court theaters. He once complained to a theater-manager, "I can get no sense of illusion in the theatre so long as people keep staring at me, and follow my every expression through their opera-glasses. I want to look myself, not to be a spectacle for the masses."
Or perhaps, he is just a natural mystery. One of his most popular quotes is, “I wish to remain an eternal enigma to myself and to others.”
Or maybe he was misunderstood because he saw the world around him differently. Richard Wagner wrote of his first meeting with Ludwig, "Alas, he is so handsome and wise, soulful and lovely, that I fear that his life must melt away in this vulgar world like a fleeting dream of the gods.”
The irony of it all was that his supposed madness had brought fame, glory, and money to Bavaria. He left a legacy in art and architecture, and at the same time, made Bavaria the richest state in Germany.
This particular Bavarian royal has certainly intrigued me (and in a way, I do share some of his personality traits, being super introverted and private, for one). I think he is a brilliant visionary. It is a pity that he died before completing his castle project. I read that he personally approved every drawing and every detail of the architecture, design, and furnishings of every room in Neuschwanstein Castle.
Though he never intended this castle to be seen by the public, shortly after his death, his successor ordered the opening of the castle to paying visitors in order to settle some construction debts. Some rooms were finished, but they were never done according to the meticulous specifications of Ludwig. Some plans were altered to create a simpler version, while some were totally abandoned. It is a pity, I must say, but nevertheless, Neuschwanstein has become the symbol of the Romantic era in Germany.
When one thinks of castles, especially in the imaginative years of childhood, one pictures a grand structure high up in the mountains with turrets, towers, and moats. The interior would be filled with all things magnificent - a majestic throne room, elegant dining halls, luxurious bedrooms - and the palace grounds would look like a vast landscaped garden surrounded by flowering bushes, tall trees, and elegant fountains.
A friend who had lived in Europe as a child and had spent her summers visiting different castles once mentioned to me that her fairy-tale dreams crumbled when she saw how old, dilapidated, dusty, musty, and dingy most of the castles were. The rooms were badly ventilated, the floors were bare and covered with dirt, and the whole atmosphere was gloomy and somber. She even told her parents, “If this was where the medieval princesses lived and if this was how they lived, then I do not want to be a princess anymore!” But when she saw Neuschwanstein, she said, “Now, I take back all that I had said. I want to be a princess again!” Wasn’t Neuschwanstein the inspiration for Disney’s Sleeping Beauty Castle?
While at Hohenschwangau, my husband toyed with the idea of walking up to Neuschwanstein, which I discouraged him from doing because our guide emphasized that this was going to be a lunch and shopping stop only.
Based on the information on the signs posted at the base of the hill and from asking a few locals, the hike up takes around 30 minutes, which means, it is another half hour going down, making the whole trek alone an hour. Plus, given the size of the castle, we would need at least two hours to tour it’s interior at a pace that would enable us to appreciate the place. That would be a minimum of three hours, which we did not have.
There is a bus that departs regularly from a nearby hotel which takes tourists to the lookout point, and from there, it was a ten-minute walk on a steep downhill path to the castle. But we had to walk to the hotel to get the bus schedule, had no idea how often the trips are, and I did not particularly relish the thought of clambering up and crawling down a steep path on a cliff!
I told my husband that as much as I didn’t want to break his heart, I had to remind him about our limited time and bring him back to reality in terms of what was feasible versus what was highly impossible to do within two hours.
My husband was disappointed with the fact that the castle tour was not part of the itinerary. I told him the company offers other tours that include this – one was an in-depth tour of Germany and the other was an exclusive tour of all German castles. Or, we could make our own arrangements next time because there are all-inclusive tour packages available from Hohenschwangau – hotel accommodation, meals, transportation, entrance tickets, and guided tours of the two castles and the Museum of the Bavarian Kings. I also learned that there’s even a fancier way of going to Neuschwanstein – via horse-drawn carriage! We could do all these later on when our child is old enough to appreciate and enjoy cultural outings.
There were several wonderful restaurants in town, but we decided to forego a sit-down Bavarian lunch in favor of shopping, as my husband wanted to get some castle souvenirs. We just ordered wieners on bread and pretzels to go and munched while walking to the shops.
We found a big one that sold everything he wanted to see and he was quite happy with his acquisitions – giant Neuschwanstein puzzle sets (as if he doesn’t have enough at home), smaller versions for our nieces, castle magnets, castle posters, castle kitchen stuff for his mom and his sister, and books about the Neuschwanstein Castle and the Bavarian kings.
I saw little dirndls, the traditional Bavarian dresses (the ones worn by German girls at Oktoberfest celebrations), sold at the shop, as well as lederhosens, the equivalent for boys. I wanted to get the dresses for my nieces (and maybe one each of the boy and the girl outfits for our child, as we did not know his gender yet at that time) because the clothes were made of quality material and they were authentic, up to the last detail! But they were quite expensive and I realized it wasn’t practical to pay that much for costumes that the kids would probably wear just once or twice (perhaps a cultural event at school or Halloween, I was thinking...and boy...what an expensive Halloween costume!).
That afternoon, we had a nice drive through the Bavarian countryside on our way to Austria. I still couldn’t get over how green Germany is. For some reason, I had always pictured an industrial Germany – tall buildings, huge factories, modern manufacturing plants, autobahn highways with super fast vehicles zooming about, and all kinds of technological stuff.
That impression was changed when I went to Frankfurt the previous year. As our plane hovered around the city in preparation for landing, I looked through my window and saw wide tracts of land in all shades of green and clumps of trees dotting the landscape every five meters or so. A fellow I met on the train enroute to downtown Frankfurt from the airport echoed my thoughts as we passed by dense woods and parks within the city. And on this trip, after seeing more of Germany, this sense of marvel remained.
Photo Credits:
The Lux in BeneLux (Reddit), tomtom.com, grayline.com, Thomas Wolf (foto.tw.de), Gretzky Dog and Friends, afar.com, wandering-around.com, exploring-castles.com
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