Day 58: Neuschwanstein, Germany

Today we woke up at 8 to get ready for our tour. The tour started at the train station at 9:30. We were going to see another castle that King Ludwig II had started building but died before he could finish. It was the castle that was the inspiration for Disney's Sleeping Beauty castle. We met at the train station and took a two hour, relaxing train ride followed by a 10 minute bus ride.

When we got there, we took time to eat our lunch. We ate our nutella sandwich with pretzels and juice. Christine also bought a Bratwurst. While eating, we were suppose to be thinking of our decision for how we would get to the castle on the mountain. We could either take a bus for 1.80€, ride in a slow horse wagon for 5€ or walk for 45 minutes. We chose to walk up. We were accompanied by a guy from New York City and a guy and his mother from Washington D.C.

We walked up past the the castle first and up to a bridge called Marienbruken (Marie's Bridge). The bridge crosses the Pöllat Gorge which is 92 meters below the bridge. Our guide had said there was a beautiful view if we went over the bridge and climbed higher on the mountain (which we did of course). This day marked our first Alp climb. Part of the path wound safely up the mountain. Then to get to the top, we had to climb steep sloped and rocks. A little 8 year old boy was up there by himself, so we (Christine, Kim, Jordan from DC and Kevin from NYC) did too (not wanting to be shown up by an 8 year old). There were parts where if we were to slip, there was nothing but a straight drop of at least 300 feet into the gorge below. It was not the most comforting sight when we got to those areas. As we climbed up we used a lot of exposed roots and branches to pull ourselves up. The path was muddy, but we got up fine. We were a bit nervous about our safety getting down again. Jordan went first, holding the random 8 year old boy's hand to make sure he didn't fall since he was FEARLESSLY jumping off rocks and down slopes. Christine followed Jordan so that in case she slipped, he would hopefully stop her. Kevin was after Christine, prepared to catch Kim if she slipped, but she took great caution not to. Kim and Kevin were pretty far behind Christine and Jordan, but it was probably for the best so that we couldn't make an avalanche effect. The little boy (Zachary) was reunited with his father and 6 year old sister (it was crazy that these little kids were doing this hike) at the bottom. While climbing down, Kim met up with Jordan's mom and took an easier/safer way down. Christine, Jordan, and Kevin had missed that path so they went down the path that was mostly roots and mud.

Christine took a spill in the process. Imagine her in khaki pants, sliding down a mud slope (not in the direction of the gorge!). She had mud all over her left foot/ankle, a big thick patch of mud on the knee of her khakis, mud on her hip, on her hands and wrists and even in her pocket. To make it better, her camera was in her left pocket as well and she landed right on it. The camera was not harmed...Christine was hopeful that the impact may have dislodged the dust on the lens sensor...but it didn't.

When Kin and Christine met back up on the trail, Kim boasted that she found an actual path then laughed when she got closer and saw all the mud. In reality, Christine just wanted to look her finest for the royal castle and wanted to draw as much attention to herself as possible. She did a pretty good job at that.

After our climb, we went down to the castle to go on a guided tour through the interior. We walked around and we (as well as Jordan) made up our own commentary of jokes as we walked along. After the tour we walked back down the mountain, stopping for ice cream and souvenirs along the way.

We like to sit facing each other on trains because then we can put our feet up. Jordan sat with us and we all talked and laughed for the 2 hour ride back to Munich. He asked if we would be out in the city later, but we were quite tired, Christine was dirty, and we decided to do a load of laundry while we had easy access to the laundry machine.

When we got back to our room, all of our roommates from the night before had checked out. We had a new roommate from Australia named Chris. We chatted for a bit, organized our laundry, and left to put it in the washer. While we were in the laundry room we struck up a conversation with a guy there. Small world: he goes to RIT and his girlfriend he is travelling with is from Victor! We started to document some of our pictures while our laundry was washing and drying, but then Chris came down and we all talked for the rest of the time.

We seem to have good luck with laundry in Munich! No problems. Our clothes that had turned blue in Norway from our laundry incident there became the correct color as well! After our laundry was done we went back to our room and found 2 new roommates. They are young teachers from Michigan travelling with their husbands. Right before travelling to Europe they had visited one of the husband's old college roommate in... Gates Chili (Small World)! The girls mentioned that their husbands had gotten them the last 2 beds in town and they were going to sleep in the train station across the street. We insisted that they should sneak their husbands in the hostel to sleep in our room and not have them sleep in the train station. Chris agreed that he didn't mind, but we weren't sure what our 6th roommate would say since we hadn't met him yet. All we knew about him was that he was reading the book "Hannibal" because he had left it out on our table. This freaked out Christine and it didn't help that Chris was making Hannibal jokes and impressions to creep out Christine even more. This 6th mystery person was to be Christine's bunkmate, which was somewhat secluded from the other 2 bunks. When we did finally meet him and he just got ready for bed and read his Hannibal book. In the morning we talked to him and found out that he was a nice (quiet) guy from Wyoming. We ended up with eight people in our six person room because the girls' husbands did come back to sleep in the room after going down to the "Wombar".

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