The Sleeping Beauty castle
Steps: 8,200 – too much sitting on the train for four hours!
We went on a guided tour of Neuschwanstein castle, rumoured to be the inspiration behind Disney’s Sleeping Beauty castle.
It was built high in the German Alps by the eccentric King Ludwig the second. The train ride out, which took us across the black forest to the south west of Germany, was two hours to Füssen. Because the rain was pretty bad in Munich we had decided to do the castle hoping the weather will improve for the next day. For the same reason our tour guide only had a group of five – Lija, Lis, me and an older couple, perhaps in their sixties – brother Wally from Perth and sister Fred (Marlena) from Melbourne. Their other halves were left at home so they could visit their mother country where they grew up.
There was also a ten minute bus ride to the bottom of the hill, and we nearly had to walk the 40 minutes up the hill because the buses weren’t running. We found out the farmers were bringing their stock down from the high country because of the cold, so the roads were closed. And sure enough minutes after we got there we heard the clanking of the cow bells and maybe up to six men with their sticks herding the cattle down the street. There was still a slight walk from the transfer bus to the castle.
There is a viewing bridge called Marienbrücke (Mary’s Bridge) that overlooks the castle and gives spectacular views. I only managed to get half way across before I froze and had to inch back between other tourists slowly so as not to rock or step on squeaky wood and try get back to firm ground. Naturally the girls were watching, pointing, laughing and yeah love the support – rather than helping me they chose to photograph me – expect to see those embarassing pics on Lija’s pages.
Ludwig was obsessed with Wagner and the composer’s music, and everything in the castle had swans. Lake Swansee can be seen from the castle, where Tschaikovsky was inspired to create his famous Swan Lake. Also from the castle you could see Hohenschwangau where Ludwig spent his childhood.
Neuschwanstein was never finished. When Bavaria had to become a part of the country of Germany and the government wanted him to stand down as king, Ludwig decided to build many castle – if he couldn’t be king of the land/people, he would be king of his castles! Although he used his own money to fund the castles (not the state’s money), he got terribly in debt. Not six weeks after his death were his castles opened for the public to reclaim funds.
Ludwig died at the age of 40. He was labelled as insane by the state, and his mysterious and tragic death still remains unresolved. He went out for a walk with his shrink on a cold, dark, thundering night. His guards found him several hours later face down in the river, the shrink not far off also dead. Years later the doctor who did Ludwig’s autopsy ‘remembered’ that his lungs had no water in them, which takes drowning out of the equation, oh and did I mention the two bullet holes in the body?! A sad story.
He only lived in the castle for 186 days, and the third floor was never finished. The throne room was painted from bottom to top with other Bavarian kings, the twelve apostles and Jesus Christ, on the far wall behind where the throne was supposed to be. It was never built. On either sides were murals of those kings and their fables, and intricate mosaics on the floor were made from over 200,000 individual pieces.
In the bed chamber next door the four poster bed was hand-carved by four men over fourteen months. However, it was only a king single because Ludwig never married. The castle had fresh water which flowed from the adjoining alps straight to a tap in his room (no pumping necessary). It was a really beautiful place owned by a misunderstood romantic ‘fairytale king’.
We didn’t get back to Munich until 7pm, and went straight into the Italian restaurant over the road from the hostel and I had the nicest Capricciossa pizza with pepperoni, artichokes and green peppers – not capsicum but actual chilli peppers, mmm! They were nice and sweet. After my bee incident though I seem to have gone off cola.
Tags: Travel
marzipan_mad
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