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Published: March 20th 2011
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This tale actually starts from the night prior…On the Sunday evening Rachelle and I had decided to participate in a Beer Challenge – basically a group of strangers meeting for the first time and being led around several of the Munich beer halls to: a) learn about Munich’s history of beer making; b) see the different breweries and learn about their history; and c) drink beer!!! It was an extremely fun night where I met some really cool people including a Canadian mum and daughter (Lorraine and Ash) and some fellow Aussies Ash, Brian and Curt. The night ended with Lorraine and Ash offering to take Curt and I out to Fussen the following day to see the amazing Neuschwanstein castle. If you don’t know this castle by name, you most likely do by looks – it’s the one that 'inspired' the Disney castle. I had been wanting to head out there and see this castle in real life since deciding to come on this trip, so I was pretty excited to be on my way out there. Meeting up at 10.30am we were to catch a train out to the airport, collect the hire car and be on our way.
The trip out to the airport was relatively easy and after a short time Lorraine had the car keys in her hand.
Lesson number one – when you leave the airport carpark know which direction you need to drive! The sat nav (which I hate with a passion) wouldn’t work until it could see the sky, so we had to pull out of the car parkwhich meant heading straight onto the road approximately 50mts from a fork in the road – the question: left or right? Not knowing which way, I grabbed the map (which was a full scale size of Germany, so not really any great help when trying to work out which road to take) whilst Ash tried to kick the sat nav into action. Finally, with the sat nav kicking in we were on our way.
Lesson number two – never trust the sat nav! The sat nav must have been set to take us through the most idyllic, windy, slow roads in the world rather than the motorways. Never mind, we got to see some fantastic scenery that we would never have seen from the motorways so overall this lesson wasn’t too hard on
us.
After approximately two hours we made it to the carpark for the castle - the castle itself is perched on a ridge on the mountain which requires either a) a 45min steep uphilll walk, b) a horse drawn carriage ride, or c) a bus ride to reach it. From the car park though I was already in awe at this magnificent castle, it's position on the mountain is imposing yet it looks beautiful in its surrounds. We purchased tickets to attend the next guided tour in English (you cannot get inside the castle without being on a guided tour) and caught the bus up the hill to the castle. Getting off the bus you still have an approximately 10min walk to the castle but it is so pretty it doesn’t matter. Knowing that we had time before our guided tour, we firstly went in one direction which took us to an idyllic bridge, where we had some amazing views, before we headed off towards the castle.
Arriving for the guided tour, it was all very systematic, and commercial, you had to wait for your ticket number to be shown on a screen, walk through automatic gates, wait in
line for someone to escort you into the castle, and then be lead through at quite a fast pace. The tour was over in less than half an hour and we did not really get any great information from the guide. Nevertheless, we did see the inside of the castle which is AMAZING! I'll give credit to King Ludwig II he had vision when it came to creating this fairytale castle! I’d love to be able to show you photos however no photos were allowed to taken inside.
Lesson number three – never trust the sat nav! Leaving the castle at the end of the day we keyed in Fussen Train Station, expecting it to take us to Fussen Train station, what a silly expectation we had. Instead, we were in the car and driving towards the Austrian Alps, with the train station clearly nowhere insight. The exciting thing was that it meant that we spent about two minutes in total in Austria whilst we checked the map, checked the sat nav and then did a U-turn, to head back to Germany!
Lesson number four – When a group of ladies get on the train, laughing loudly, wearing feather boa’s, and looking like they are heading to Munich’s carnival festivities ALWAYS talk to them because you just never know what they will pull out of their bags!!
In my last blog I had mentioned fasching - the week prior to lent where people behave recklessly and have fun, we had been seeing people all over Munich wearing costumes, masks, and funny outfits as they celebrated fasching. The climax of the week was going to be on Tuesday where most people would have the afternoon off work to get dressed up in their costumes and hit the streets of Munich. We had been enjoying a few quiet beers on the train (just because we could) when the train stopped at a station for almost 20 minutes. Six ladies sat in our carriage several seats away. They were quite excited and talking and laughing loudly, and it naturally attracted out attention when we spotted one of the ladies wearing a purple feather boa. We began talking with them (us knowing no German and they knowing no English) and before you know it one of the ladies has pulled out a head band with two love hearts on bendy wire (you
know the kind that you used to get in a show bag or maybe at a carnival?). One of the ladies was so pleased that I liked them that she gave them to me as a gift. Another lady, seeing that Curt was looking left out of the action, pulled a rabbit suit out of her bag and indicated that she wanted him to put it on! It was one of the funniest sights to see, Curt (who is well over 6ft) putting on this rabbit suit – the old ladies loved it!! Following in the fasching tradition, naturally enough, I gave it a go as well. It turned out that the ladies don't normally carry random costumes in their bags, they were in fact off to Munich to celebrate fasching the following day. Whatever the case, it made for a very funny train trip home.
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Ashley
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Loving the Rabbit suits! your blog is great hope you are having the best time!