Neuschwanstein

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Geo: 47.5714, 10.7017

I was a little surprised this morning that I felt as good as I did. For the last several days, I have done things to my body that would put Richard Simmons into an absolute tizzy ... the only saving grace being copious amounts of walking, hiking, and climbing ... and zero minutes in front of the idiot box. But I felt great. Wonderful ... WUNDERBAR!! (for the record, if you try and spell check 'Wunderbar" it wants to change it to "underwear" .... I FEEL UNDERWEAR!! Oh I could spend the rest of this blog commenting on this but I'll spare yinz ....

Breakfast at the Hotel Hirsch is something you must experience to fully understand. I wish I would have taken a photo of it, but after the past several days of dealing with busloads of Chinese girls and their selfie sticks .... meeeeh ...... But it was pretty substantial and absolutely, without a doubt, stuff your face full .... Awesome.

After Das Frühstück, we headed to meet our tour group. It was only a few blocks away to walk. I used the walk to harass some Ingress Resistance ..... Not alot of time spent on Ingress, but when I think of it, I'll blow some shit up and take over portals. Sometimes I just need to disengage from the sensory overload around me for a few and battling for the future of humanity is a great fix ....

We me the tour guide. no one remembered his name so to us .. He's "The Italian dude." So the Italian dude drives us up to the Neuschwanstein parking area to pick up our bus to the top. First stop .. The bridge across the gorge with a breathtaking view of the castle. No, I'm not particularly afraid of heights, but this bridge was a little scary. I don't know if it was the floor boards that bowed when you walked on them, or the Chinese teenage girls linebacking their way to where they wanted to be. I have zero against Chinese teenage girls .. But these ones were cray cray .... hehe ... I'm so hip ....

After some choice photos, I un-assed the bridge because .... well I just did. We met up with The Italian Dude (TID) right off the bridge and he proceeded to give us the abridged history of Kind Ludwig II ..... It basically went like this ...

In the late 1800's, the Bavarian King was alot like the Queen of England is today. Insanely rich with almost no power. Well, this didn't seem to bode well with poor Ludwig, so he said to himself ... he said ... "Self .. This doesn't bode too well with me, so I think I'm going to show everyone here in Munich my ass, and head over to that aree where all the towns are named after the Swan." So off to Schwangau he headed. You see, Ludwig II was wicked smart and well versed in literature and music and rumor has it he could catch more Pokemon in a hour than anyone in Bavaria. The place he moved to, Schwangau and HohenSchwangau, he had visited and fell in love with as a kid. I don't blame the dude at all. It is one of the most picturesque places I have every seen. Since Ludwig was wicked smart, he had read all about the Medieval Kingdoms that were ruled by a noble King who was given his power from none other than God almighty, and damnit it wasn't fair that he couldn't be an all powerful, you will kiss my ring, Medieval King. Add to this that Ludwig was a groupie of Richard Wagner, who's operas were all about Medieval Kingdoms and the Real Housewives of Heresy drama that was surely abundant ..... You have the seed set for Neuschwanstein. So, in 1886, Ludwig began construction of this almost caricature of a medieval castle on the ruins of a real medieval castle. In 1882 it was kind of sort of complete. Enough for him to kind of sort of move in, sleep during the day, and pretend he was a medieval king at night.

Anyway ... If you really want to know more (it is a fascinating story) .... Ask the almighty. Google.

After the castle tour and feeling pretty confidant that on the crazy meter, I'm at about a 2 and Ludwig II was about 9.7 ... we headed back down to the bus via horse and buggy. It was fun. Nothing thrilling but a genuinely cool experience none the less. During the tour we noted there was one of those "I don't want to get on that thing" alpine cable cars so, after arriving back in Füssen, we hopped in the car and headed straight for it. The Tegelbergbahn take you about .8 of the way up the Tegelberg. From there so can see ... Well .... Damn near the world. The one thing people love to do when they get to the top of a giant ass mountain it seems, is to hurl themselves off of it. So, we watched the para-gliders launch themselves off which was pretty cool if I may say so myself. After taking in the views, we grabbed lunch which afforded us the ability to sit down for a few moments which was fabulous. The restaurant was cafeteria style and very similar to the ones n the US except it had all kinds of kick ass Bavarian fare and there was beer. Lots of beer. I of course inadvertently grabbed and Alkoholfrei Weizen and didn't realize it until I had finished it. Surprisingly enough .. It was not bad. Not bad at all.

After a couple hours on the Tegelberg, which .. I almost forgot ... I saw the first small airplane since I've been here .... we headed down, hopped in the car, and off to our next destination. Hornberg. Smack dab in the middle of die Schwartzwald ..... The Black Forrest. The trip was fairly uneventful ..... Until someone put a giant red X right in the middle of the B33 in Vockenhausen. Elsa .. .aka Fraulein Wurst, our GPS, REALLY wanted us to stay on B33 so no matter where we turned to try and get around the bid red X she was squawking at us to turn around. Of course we didn't have a paper map on us because we are true children of the digital age, so ... to the rescue .... The almighty Google maps. It took about 1/2 hour and 15 different swear words to untangle that mess .. but we did and 35 km later we were in Hornberg. Yet another picturesque town.

Home for the next 2 night was the Schloss Hornberg. We wanted to stay in a castle while we were here because, well, we're tourists and we work hard to do stuff like this. We really did research, and thought we had found the perfect place in the Schloss Hornberg. All, however, did not seem like it had been advertised. Maybe it was the fact that we had logged over 6 miles on our feet that day, the long drive from Füssen .. and probably in some part the giant red X diversion .... but as we sat outside overlooking the very pretty town of Hornberg ... we were at that point in time, unimpressed with the hotel. don't get me wrong. It was beautiful .. and none of us wanted the full on chamber pot sleeping on hay experience ... I just thought it would be more .... I dunno ... Castle like? But our rooms were as modern as any Hilton.

After essen und trinken we headed to bed. Thankfully, as we would all find out tomorrow, our first impression was an incorrect one ......

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