Castles in Germany and Austria

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For this week of the trip, I traveled with Theresa in Germany and John traveled by himself in France. This blog entry covers my travels and John has promised an entry covering his.

I left the beautiful French countryside and traveled to Frankfurt to meet Theresa. If you ever read Heidi then you will remember that Heidi was miserable in Frankfurt and even today I can understand why. Frankfurt is very much the big city focused on banking. We only had an hour to take a self-guided walking tour and we did not get past the Red Light district. So I was grateful when the next day we traveled to Baden-Baden.

Baden-Baden

Baden-Baden has been a resort town since the 1850’s. The naturally hot water there has been used for bathing, relaxing and healing since at least the Romans. Mark Twain, Marlene Dietrich and many others came to “take the waters.” During the late 1800’s it was said that Paris was the social capital of Europe in winter and Baden-Baden in summer. We took a self-guided walking tour through town and saw the casino (built in the 1850’s and still operating from the same beautiful building), the Trinkhalle (an old drinking hall), and a church heated solely by the hot water of the baths. Then we partook of these hot, healing, relaxing waters.

There are two bath houses in town. Friedrichsbad is quiet, nude, adults only and relaxing. Caracalla is more fun and cheaper, more like a swimming pool. We chose Friedrichsbad.

The bathing process is 17 steps. Three days a week the genders are separate and the other four they are mingled; for us they were separate.

0 - get completely naked and lock your stuff in a locker
1 - Shower
2 - Warm dry sauna
3 - Hot dry sauna
4 - Shower again
5 - Called a massage but actually a good, soapy scrubbing by an attendant. You know you are done when she slaps your tush.
6 - Shower again
7 - Warm steam room
8 - Hot steam room - actually the same room just sit at the top of the stairs, 5 feet higher and the temp goes way up
9 - Hot pool - 102 degrees
10 - Warm pool - 98 degrees
11 - Cool pool - 85 degrees - this pool is co-ed all the time
12 - Shower again
13 - Cold pool - 66 degrees (Brrrr)
14 - Warm towels to dry off
15 - Moisturize head to toe
16 - Rest (aka 30 minute nap wrapped in warm blankets)
17 - Reading room (but all the reading material was in German)

This takes approximately three hours and after all that we felt very clean, warm and relaxed. Then we put our clothes back on and went outside into the real world.

We finished the walking tour by strolling Lichtentaller Alley. This is a botanical garden that runs along the stream through town and was the place to see and be seen 150 years ago.

Munich

Next we traveled to Munich. Our first sightseeing stop was the Frauenkirche church. Like so many things around here, it was mostly destroyed during WWII and has been rebuilt. It is unusual because it has two tall towers in the front both topped by green onion domes. There is a black footprint in the front of the nave where legend says the devil stood, saw the building had no windows and stomped his foot for joy. But he was standing in a spot where you could not see the beautiful stained glass windows so he was wrong again.

Our next stop was the Residenz. It is a huge palace complex in the heart of Munich that was the ancestral home for the Bavarian ruling family, the Wittelsbach family. It was destroyed during the war and is still being rebuilt in many places but many of the wings have been restored to their original grandeur and that is very grand indeed. There were many sets of rooms all with beautiful, old furnishings and many with original tapestries or paintings. Apparently they were able to remove and save a lot of the art and some of the furniture before the palace was bombed. Because it was built over a 500 year period and redecorated numerous times it is a mixture of style but we saw a lot of rococo which is highly ornate like baroque. Obviously a lot of work went into rebuilding it and I wondered if the expense of rebuilding all of it with its marble and its gilding is worth the effort.

After the palace it was dinner so we headed to the famous Hofbrau House beer hall. It has a main indoor hall with large wooden tables and hundreds of people drinking small and large glasses of beer and eating German food. It also has several side sections and an outdoor section. All of the staff and some of the customers were dressed in traditional costume and as we were leaving an oompah band was getting ready to play. It was too big and overwhelming for us so we found a small German restaurant and had good food and great beer in a quieter atmosphere.

The next day, we took a tour of Dachau Concentration Camp. Our guide was a Brit named Nick who proceeded to lead us onto the train to get us to the town of Dachau then a bus to get us to the actual memorial.

Dachau was the first of the concentration camps and was opened in 1933 to house political prisoners. It evolved into a slave labor camp and although its primary purpose was not as a death camp, the Nazis recorded 32,000 deaths and the authorities estimate an additional 22,000 went unrecorded. The most surprising thing I learned is how the Nazis set up the camps to provide slave labor for the war effort and only later decided to use the infrastructure to murder Jews, Gypsies and others. The brutality of the Nazis defies comprehension and so I choose to not record any more about it.

We took the bus and train back to Munich then went back to the Residenz to view the Treasury and crown jewels of the Wittelsbach family. My favorite piece was a beautiful jewel encrusted reliquary of St George slaying the dragon. It was also fun to see 1000 year old crowns.

Then Theresa led us on a fun walk where we accidentally found Theatinerkirche, a beautiful church which has a crypt where the Wittlesbachs are buried and Hofgarten, formerly the gardens for the Residenz. Then she selected a great restaurant for dinner; good German food at a reasonable price.

The next day we picked up a rental car and went castle hopping. Getting out of the city was nerve-wracking but straight-forward because of Theresa’s navigation. And we found ourselves on an autobahn much to Theresa’s delight. We topped out at 140 which sounds exciting until I mention it was in kilometers per hour.

Our first stop was Castle Linderhof. Linderhof was built by King Ludwig II of Bavaria (KLII) also known as Mad King Ludwig. He hated doing the work of a king so spent his time at this fantasy castle. He also built Neuschwanstein (discussed later) but did not live there much. He was a recluse…the dining room was designed so the dining table for one was set with food then raised into place via a dumbwaiter so the King did not have to see the servants. The palace was modeled after Versailles and all of the paintings were of Kings Louis XIV and XV. Linderhof, however, is not nearly the size of Versailles having only 8 royal rooms plus what the servants used. The décor was your standard “over-the-top” palace but I loved the gardens surrounding it. For instance, there was an artificial cave called the Venus Grotto where the King could watch his favorite opera performed live just for him on a custom built stage inside. There were acres of grass and gardens and woods with various gazebos or buildings like the kiosk modeled after a fantasy in 1001 Arabian Nights.

Then we drove the town of Reuette (ROY-the). It is a medium sized town just across the border in Austria. The road from Linderhof was a narrow, twisty road with beautiful views of the Austrian Alps and a large green lake called Plansee. After dinner, our hostess told us about a concert of Tyrolean music that evening (we are in the region of Tirol). Tyrolean music is mostly marches and polkas. Out of 10 pieces they played, 9 were a march or a polka and one was what I would consider a folk song. It was quite pleasant to sit under the stars, drink wine, shoot real schnapps and enjoy the concert.

The next day we visited three castles. First up was Hohenschwangau. It is a very nice castle but not so over-the-top as compared to other castles. It is well maintained, still owned by the formerly Royal family and I could actually envision living there. It was built by the father of KLII, King Maximillian and this is where KLII spent his summers. It is also where he lived during the 17 years it took to build Neuschwanstein. My favorite thing in Hohenschwangau was seeing the bathroom and hearing about the secret passage between the King’s and Queen’s bedroom even though they lived on separate floors.

Next up was Neuschwanstein. It was built in the 1800’s as an idealized medieval castle and was the model Disney used for Cinderella’s castle at Disney World. Visiting this castle is extremely popular and the entire tour of Neuschwanstein felt like an exercise in crowd control. To give them credit, they have it very well organized. The bus up the hill was packed. The bridge overlooking the castle was packed but did have wonderful views of the castle. By the time we reached the castle, we only had 20 minutes to wait then our tour was called…they admit 60 people every five minutes. We spent more time waiting for everyone to gather in each room than we did listening to the guide. My favorite room was the throne room and I especially liked the mosaic floor. The room was five stories tall and decorated everywhere. The guide made a point of mentioning that KLII died before the throne was built and all work stopped when he died so there was no throne in the castle. Later he pointed out the modern conveniences including a flush toilet and I joked that the castle did indeed have at least one throne.

Last up was a set of ruined castles and fortresses above the town of Reutte where we were staying. There are actually three castles or fortresses plus a gate house originally used to collect tolls on all of the salt that passed through here. We skipped the museum (for children on being a knight) and climbed to the first castle. It is a ruin but you can recognize walls and towers and it has great views and there was a lot of good explanation.

Salzburg

Our next stop was Salzburg in Austria. First thing we did was take a self-guided walking tour to get oriented. The tour focused on Mozart (he was born in Salzburg and lived there most of his life) and salt (which drove the Salzburg economy for a thousand years). The tour contained your standard statues, spectacular churches and ancient cemeteries.

The next day we started with the Sound of Music tour. The movie was set and filmed in Salzburg and touring the various settings is big business. Our guide was Trudy and the driver was Lazlo and both had a fun sense of humor. We were on a full-sized bus that was completely full so it was a big tour group. Trudy toured us around Salzburg and the Lake District reminding us of various scenes from the movie and playing the songs (encouraging us to sing along.) We saw only outsides of places because only outside shots (and the wedding scene) were filmed on location. Everything inside was filmed in Hollywood. We saw the palace used for the front of the von Trapp residence and a different house used for the back, the lake from the canoe scene, the gazebo from the two romantic scenes, the mountains they climbed over to escape, the town where the shots from the opening scenes were filmed and, of course, the church in the nearby town of Mondsee where the wedding scene was shot. We caught a glimpse of the abbey where Maria really was a postulant and where she actually married the Captain. Then we walked through Mirabelle Gardens where a lot of the “Doe a Deer” scenes were filmed. We had an hour in Mondsee (by the church) so we got lunch in an outdoor café. We tried the cheese strudel but don’t like it nearly as much as the apple. At the end we got an edelweiss pin as a souvenir. The whole tour was a bit cheesy but fun.

In the afternoon we had a tour of a Salt Mine. Our guide was Walter and there were only five passengers in the van. He did a good narration pointing out interesting sites as we left Austria and drove to Bechtesgaden in Germany. Then we drove through the Oberberg where Hitler had his second HQ. Nothing remains to show Hitler was there so it was a quick drive through. Next it was on to the Salt Mine. First we put on a jumpsuit over our clothes then we boarded a mini-train which took us 2000 feet into the mountain. There were a couple of laser shows, two slides down to the next level, a funicular back up and lots of info about salt mining. My favorite part (besides the slides) was the description about how they use water to create a cavity in the rock then pump out the water (now a very salty brine) to extract the salt. A given cavity can last 30 years and they have 10 active cavities. At the end of the tour we were given a small container of salt.

We took the overnight train from Salzburg to Brussels and met John at the train station in Brussels. But what we saw in Brussels is for another blog.

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Photos

Trinkhalle in Baden-Baden
Beautiful decorations from 150 years ago now adorn the Tourist Information office.

Munich Church Post WWII
This is a picture of a picture of a church in Munich after WWII but prior to reconstruction.

Munich Church Today
This is the same church after reconstruction.

The Residenz
This is the oldest room in the Residenz Palace in Munich.

Linderhof Palace
This palace was built by Mad King Ludwig and is modeled on Versailles in France.

Hohenshwangau Palace
This palace was where Mad King Ludwig spent many years of his boyhood.

Neuschwanstein
A fairytale castle in the clouds. Another castle built by Mad King Ludwig.

Theresa and her Castle
Theresa dreaming about living in a fairytale castle.

Castle Ruins
One of the four castles above the Austrian town of Reutte.

Monsee Church
The wedding scene from "The Sound of Music" was filmed here.

Comments

[Betty Blakney]

We are enjoying reading your blogs and all the information you give. Sounds like you are having a great time. Love, Betty and Dick