Visiting Neuschwanstein…finally

The most famous tourist destination in Bavaria (outside of Oktoberfest) would have to be Neuschwanstein Castle.  They not only receive millions of visitors from around the world each year, but they also win the award for most obnoxious souvenirs which you can find in just about every tourist shop in Munich.  Therefore, we never had a sense of urgency to make a visit to see the overcrowded and over-commercialized site.  After all we live the local life here in Munich: you know, commuting to work, running errands, and all that fun “local” stuff [insert judgmental tone towards tourists here].

Instead, we have been strategically plotting for about 2 years now on the best time to make a visit there.  We waited to avoid the scaffolding that was up through 2012, avoided visiting in the bad weather earlier in the year, and then definitely avoided the tourist surge over the summer.  And so we capitalized on the perfect fall scenery/weather 2 weeks ago to visit the Schloss while our two Allisons were visiting us.  We timed it perfectly - combining the perfect fall weather with the beautiful fall colors into the best visit ever to Bavaria’s most popular tourist destination.  This just may be too much awesome for you to handle! 

After a beautiful two-hour drive along the “Romantic Road” (an arbitrary marketing designation for what is simply a highway), we arrived at the parking lots.  From there we took an amazing 30-minute hike up the hill to reach the fairy tale castle.  Ok, Julie and I did the hike – the Allisons waited in the long line for a carriage ride up.  The one thing not going for us that day was the fact that the buses weren't running.  But this was fine for me - most of the castle’s beauty is best enjoyed from the outside and from a far distance.  So when we reached the castle gates, we instead kept on walking away from it to get to more amazing views from the side and behind. 

As we reached the ‘Marienbrücke’ bridge behind the castle we heard a helicopter approaching, getting closer and closer.   Since helicopter rides and touristy places tend to go hand and hand, I did not think much of the hovering helicopter at first.  But then I yelled at Julie to start taking photos as I realized we were witnessing a full on helicopter rescue of two people at the bottom of the canyon.  In a matter of a 2 minutes a rescuer repelled out of the helicopter, secured the person, and flew out of there completely James Bond style.  They were back 15 minutes later for the next victim/bystander.  By the way, it wasn't obvious to us why they needed to be rescued, so I hope they are ok.  But it’s a rare moment when you can take a photo looking down on a helicopter. 

After enjoying the views, we wandered back to the main gates to meet our two Allisons, who enjoyed their more expensive but more romantic horse carriage ride up to the top.  We got a quick look at Neuschwanstein up close, had a nice lunch at a nearby restaurant, and then made our way down for part 2 of the castle tour.  And yes, we skipped going inside for the Neuschwanstein tour, which we usually hear is overcrowded, expensive, and underwhelming since it’s only partially completed (we hear this from both tourists and locals alike). 

However, as Allison B wanted to view a German Castle from the inside (she did travel all this way), we decided to take the tour of the neighboring Hochenschwangau castle about 1 mile away.  It was a bit disappointing to see our English language guided tour be falsely advertised as it turned out to be simply an “audio guide” tour in English.  This wouldn't have been so bad, except for the fact that they combined our tour with the German language guided tour behind us, so the tour guide spoke loudly in German while we were straining to hear our audio guides.  So basically we could not really hear anything in either language!  But I can’t complain too much since historical facts don’t really stick in my brain anyhow.  The castle was very nice, unexpectedly small, and nothing in comparison to our own Nymphenburg. ;)  

I think the rest of our trip can be summed up in a small sample of the 400 photos we took.  Can you tell we were excited to experience fall with colorful trees and falling leaves?  We even made a game out of trying to snatch falling leaves out of the air which was frustratingly difficult and pretty much sums up the fact we spent too many years in the desert.

I am Dreaming of a White Easter…

As any of our avid blog followers probably have noticed (hi Mom(s) and Grandma!), we have not been very active this winter.  Partly this is because we burned ourselves out visiting 9 countries last year and we are saving up our vacation days to do it all over again in 2013.  However, another large factor of why we have not done much lately is that this winter has been very, very long and dark.  Julie and I had discussed that there just didn’t seem to be as much sun this winter as last year, and the German Weather Service confirmed our suspicions.  This winter was officially the darkest winter for at least the last 60 years (they have only been tracking sunshine records for 60 years). 

The temperatures have been relatively constant around the freezing point, which brought a lot of snow this year.  It seems the snow started in October (see previous blog) and has not let up since: except for Christmas of course when we had a freak period of warm, sunny weather.  We’ve had a few freeze/thaw cycles in March, but even this week, the first official week of spring, we had a little bit of snow.  So since our ventures began in Munich back in December 2011, there have been 0 white Christmases and 1 white Easter (last year, 2012).  And with just one week to go, the forecast has us dreaming of another white Easter.

So naturally we have spent a lot of time avoiding the darkness by staying inside where it is warm. But seriously, what have we been doing!?  We conquered a 5,000 piece puzzle, bought a Nintendo Wii, had Indian food delivered about every Friday, watched 3 seasons of Downton Abbey, and learned to play/became addicted to the strategy/conquer board game Die Siedler Von Catan (The Settlers of Catan, also available in the States).  Oh and I can’t forget the thrilling episodes of “Der Bachelor”, “Deutschland Sucht den Superstar”, and “Germany’s Next Top Model” featuring Heidi Klum.  Only a small price to pay so I can watch soccer once a week, and it’s good German practice…..don’t judge!  I went to the FC Bayern vs. Arsenal Champions League game...pretty much a soccer fan’s dream come true.  Meanwhile Julie was busy winning trophies beating her co-workers in Go-Kart races…..I’m just glad I wasn’t there to also be defeated.

I also spent a lot of hours this winter studying German and preparing for my B1 language exam in February.  Today I received my scores and found out I passed with 93% and received the Goethe Institute “sehr gut” (basically an A) stamp of approval!  Yay!  Now the Mt. Everest that is German grammar looks a little bit smaller.

But don’t worry; our blog is about to get new life because after Easter weekend we are booked for every weekend until July.  We are jet setting to Denmark and Iceland in early April, then we prepare for 12 visitors over the following 6 weeks while also making long weekend trips to Vienna, Dresden, and Hamburg.  And that doesn’t include the trip to Croatia in August we just booked.

It is bound to be an awesome spring and summer - we just have to get through the last days of winter/ our potentially “white” Easter.  Happy Spring everybody!