Day 29 - Neuschwanstein
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 Next
Neuschwanstein
We took the train from Munich to Füssen and rented bikes at the bike shop. As we bicycled, I would stop and read the road signs, much to Hobbit's frustration. I let her take the lead and she promptly got us lost.
Hobbit kept mispronouncing it Neuschweinstein. I kept having to correct her because she was confusing the locals.
Neuschwanstein literally translated is "New Swan City."
Hobbit kept asking for directions to, "New Pig City."
After a 2 mile detour, we got to the ticket booth for the Neuschwanstein Castle and I picked up our tickets. Our first castle tour was Hohenschwangau.
Hobbit Next To A Swan - if we were in Neuschweinstein, she would be standing next to a pig
Wendell Next To A Swan at Hohenschwangau Castle
Riding The Luge
Hobbit wanted to ride the summer luge - it's this really long luge run near Neuschwanstein. http://www.tegelbergbahn.de/208.0.html Rick Steves Guidebook says that it's nearby, however he neglected to provide a useful map. We hopped on our bikes and tried to follow the road signs to it. It took us a while to find it by trial and error. Once we got there, I got us 6 run ticket and we had time for 2 runs each. Once we finished our second run, we had barely enough time to get to Neuschwanstein Castle. I gave our ticket (with two runs left on it) to a local lady who was visiting with her daughter - as we rode off, we could see them starting up the hill.
The luge track - it's over 1km long!
A Little Exercise
We rode as fast as we could back to the castle. The road forked, and the route to the left was a paved route up to the castle, but it was very long. The path to the left ran up the back side of the castle and the sign said that it would take us 30 minutes. The times given on the signs assumed that people were out of shape tourists, and we had 15 minutes until our start time so I presumed that, if we hurried, we could make it. I suggested that we take the route up the back side of the castle. It was, technically, shorter because it was MUCH steeper. We were in a hurry so we ran up the stairs (carrying our bicycles) to the castle.
If we hadn't been carrying our bicycles, we would have made it up all those stairs in less than 15 minutes, however we were carrying rental bicycles with steel frames. By the end of the stair climb, I was suspecting that the bike rental place had substituted a solid lead pipe for the top tube on my bike.
Because we were 5 minutes late, the guard wouldn't let us in to the tour - he made us wait an hour until the next English language tour.
The castle tour was interesting - most of the floors in the castle are unfinished and empty because Ludwig died before he could finish it.
We made it back to the bike shop in Füssen and returned the bikes just as they were closing, then we went to the local market, grabbed a bunch of food and beer and got the train to Munich. We arrived in Munich and had 30 minutes until our train to Berlin. We were all sweaty from biking and running up stairs, but we were sleeping in second class tonight, so we didn't get a shower on the train.
Grumbling, we went in search of a bathroom in the Munich Hauptbahnhof - we found ...
McClean!
McClean is a franchise of bathrooms and showers in train stations in Switzerland and Germany. They're pretty expensive (it's $2 to use the toilet) but they're really clean. Hobbit and I went up to the counter, plunked down 7 Euros each and we got to use one of their private bathrooms. You get big, fluffy towels, soap, a really big shower, lots of hot water and 30 minutes for your 7 Euros. Normally they make men and women use separate showers, however the clerk let us use the same shower room.
It felt really good to take a hot shower after our long day of biking and riding trains.
We got into our couchette and fell asleep quickly as we headed off to Berlin
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 Next