It has been a tradition for the last three years that Bee and I celebrate her birthday somewhere other than Brussels! This time, I did not tell her where, just that there was the castle of a princess, the nest of an eagle, a place where there is lots of beer and a place that should never be forgotten.
We flew to Munich and immediately drove south with the intention to visit Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein, two castles who belonged to Ludwig II (the mad) of Bavaria. Hohenschwangau is not very famous and therefore not familiar to people. However, that is where the visit starts and I had nothing to do while waiting in a long line of cars – so I took a picture of the castle behind the trees.
We were only 300-400 m away from the parking lot, but the road was completely blocked and we moved a few meters every several minutes. Bee went ahead to see what was going on; when she came back 15 minutes later, I had moved two car lengths and she explained that the parking lot being full, one car could get in every time another one got out! She also mentioned that the line to buy tickets has several 100 people in it.
So we decided that visiting Neuschwanstein was not that important. We stopped and took a few pictures, because that one is recognised all over the world!
It was the inspiration for Disney’s original Castle at Disney World and was the Sleeping Beauty’s castle in the movie. It was also featured in “Chitty Chitty Bang Bang”, another Disney movie, but not animated this time.
The castle was actually never finished and Ludwig II never lived there. Only 1 or 2 rooms were decorated, including one with a fake grotto as an homage to Richard Wagner, who was a close friend (very close friend?) of Ludwig.
The location for the castle is great – At the edge of the mountains and on the side of a large plain.
So, we decided to move on ahead and go to Garmisch Partenkirche, where we would be spending the first night. This is one of the first winter resorts in Germany and it hosted the Winter Olympic Games in 1936, the same year the summer games were in Berlin. In summer, like right now when we were there, it is a sleepy little town, with typical Bavarian architecture such as this Bier Garten with very nice frescoes.
The local church has the onion dome that is also typical of this region.
We were early for dinner so we kept walking around town and heard music in the distance. We were intrigued and saw that there was a trio of young musicians setting up. Two violins and a clarinet. They were very good and played classical music adapted for their instruments. The movie below is taken with my still camera and reduced so that it can fit into my blog, but the music quality is not bad. Continue reading “Garmisch and Munich”
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