Starnbergersee

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12 miles south of Munich is the Starnbergersee. It’s one of the most historical lakes around Munich and people have been coming out to enjoy its beautiful sights and weather since the 1600’s. I was a little bit tired from the Prague trip, but since we have Monday off from school (a Bavarian holiday) I decided to join some friends who were buying reduced S-Bahn tickets to go visit the lake. We ended up doing a ton of walking.

As soon as we stepped off the S-Bahn we were at the edge of the lake. The lake is really clear and clean and across the lake you can see the Alps towering above everything else. I saw then why this lake was a “must-see” of the lakes in Munich.

Everyone wanted to stop and eat at the restaurant, but Lisanne and I decided to walk some and enjoy the fresh air. We started down the path on the water’s edge, taking more pictures and just enjoying the view. Eventually the path meandered away from the lake’s edge, because of some really nice summer homes that crowded in next to the water. So we were pushed back onto a street a little ways away from the lake. We decided to take a side street that had signs for a walking path. Halfway up the street we see signs that lead to a Schloßpark (castle park). We didn’t know there was a castle on the lake so we hurried onto the castle park path. We had no idea it was going to be as long as it was.

We started walking down a street along the path that was pretty suburbanized. We were aways a way from the water now so we weren’t expecting to see the lake again anytime soon. A lot of leaves had already fallen and been scraped onto the side of the sidewalk so to get around some of the people walking towards us I stepped into the leaves. Of course I stepped in hidden dog scheiße in my brand new shoes that I got in Prague. So that was fun. And a special shout-out goes to the person who hid their dog's stuff under leaves! :P

Along the path we came to a house with high bushes around the fence and Lisanne pointed to a huge pair of ears sticking over the neighboring bushes. “Look, it’s a thing like a deer,” she said. I thought she meant a fake dear to scare off real dear, or something like that, but she said no, it’s real. But what is it?

I thought it had to be fake, because it wasn’t moving at all, but as we got closer to the corner of the fence, we heard movement. Now the tall bushes completely blocked out our view of anything past the fence. We heard rustling and I actually started to wonder what it could possibly be. We kept walking along the fence until finally we saw a small break in the bushes and moved towards it. Out of the hole in the bushes popped the head of a donkey. This suburban home had a donkey in their backyard. He was really nice and friendly and kept sniffing us trying to see if we had food. He kind of acted like a dog and Lisanne made us leave before I got too attached and named him.
We had to keep walking along through the neighborhood until suddenly, out of nowhere, we were at the edge of a forest. More signs clearly showed that we needed to keep going through the forest, so that’s what we did.

We trekked through the forest for a while, occasionally finding more signs leading to the schloss park. The leaves had changed colors, which made our walk through the woods even more awesome. It finally feels like Fall here in Munich, because it’s not freezing cold at the moment and you can enjoy the outdoors.

When we finally stepped out of the woods we arrived in schloss park. A sign we found told us we were almost to the castle, so we picked the path that went back down by the lake and walked along the water the rest of the way. The castle was called Schloß Possenhofen. It’s where Sisi (Elisabeth of Bavaria - Empress of Austria and Queen of Hungary) spent more than twenty summers with her cousin King Ludwig II (the fairy tale king). Unfortunately we couldn’t go inside, someone told me that people still live inside, but it was beautiful from the outside.

We decided to keep walking along the water towards an island called Roseninsel. It wasn’t too much farther and when we arrived we found that you could take a boat to the island and walk around. The island had a museum and also a casino, which I thought was kind of random. It wasn’t a big flashy casino, but it was still kind of odd. The south side of the island gave us a spectacular view of the Alps since we were much closer to them by now after all this walking.

We had really walked along way and on little food since all the lakeside restaurants were really expensive, so we decided to go to the nearest S-Bahn station and go back to Munich. Even getting to the S-Bahn station was fun, because we had to walk through a few small lake towns on the way, which were really cute. Once we got on the S-Bahn and were about halfway back to Munich the sun went down. It was the most gorgeous sunset and I can’t believe we only missed it by about 20 minutes or I could’ve taken pictures from the side of the lake. The sky turned a pink and blue color that looked kind of like cotton candy. It was a great day anyways though and we got to do a ton of hiking.

I’m definitely going to go back sometime because I found out that there are at least three more castles that we didn’t see, because the lake is so big. And there’s also a memorial cross on the side of the lake marking where Kind Ludwig II was found mysteriously dead. He was in major debt after having built so many castles (Neuschwanstein - which the Disney Cinderella Castle is modeled off of) and was maybe murdered, but no one knows. So hopefully we’ll go back soon to see the east side and southern tip of the lake.

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Photos

Starnbergersee and the Alps
view as soon as you get off the S-Bahn

Photo 13
view from the Roseninsel

Photo 14
view from the Roseninsel

Comments

[Chris and Nikki]

Cool picture.