Eurotrip Day 21 - Officially Broke Camera and Disney Castle with Rob
Another day I was really looking forward had come. Going to see that beautiful Neuschwanstein castle has always been on my mind since Ryan (Mike Chun's friend) had told me about it and showed me pictures of it. Yesterday, we had already signed up for a group that would pay for a group ticket pass for the day to go to Fussen and back. I was really excited, and it was really easy to tell as I was the earliest to wake in the room and ran into the shower.I sneaked around the room all morning to make sure I didn't wake anyone else. Even while opening the locker to my backpack, I tried to keep the noise level down and move really slow to make sure I didn't make anything fall. But that idea and theory all went to hell when I picked up my jacket and saw my camera slip out of the pocket and smacked right onto the floor. OH SHIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIT. It was over. A few pieces broke off and flew in several directions. The little door that concealed the CF card was slightly broken and couldn't close. Was my camera finally dead after this? I instantly found that it could still turn on. Next, I had to check if it could take pictures correctly without being fuzzy or anything. It would suck if the lens was knocked out of place because of the impact. That was fine. The final thing was to test how it took pictures with flash, no flash and in different settings. Everything seemed to be fine on the picture taking side. Thank goodness for such a durable camera. The only thing I had to do now was mend the broken piece. Funny thing was that I didn't have any tape on me, so I decided to patch up the camera like how I would patch up a person, with a band-aid.
The noise caused by the camera startled a few people and woke them. Hopefully I didn't make them really grumpy X( . It wasn't the best way to start the day, but it could have been worse if I knew my camera was dead. It was also alright because I had just unloaded all my pictures onto CDs, so we had all the backups that we needed. But my excitement couldn't be fully killed because of this. Steve still had his camera, so everything would have still been fine.
We headed down to the front desk to wait for the other people on the list to show up and walk together to the train station. One of the was an older lady, I don't remember her name though. The other was Rob Jensen, another person I had noticed in our tour group yesterday. It felt awkward to be travelling with some strangers and Rob seemed kind of freaky. He was tall and wore some "cool" shades that made him look too proud of himself.
There was no information on the walls or at the ticket purchasing machines on which ticket to purchase to go to Fussen. Seeing that we didn't understand German, or even the English because we didn't know what to by, we decided to wait inline like everyone else. By the time we got to the ticketing window, Rob found out that he didn't have to buy a ticket and could use his eurail pass for his train ride. That was good for him, but meant that we had the split the cost of the group ticket between 3 people instead of 4 people. It isn't that much, but we couldn't really complain. If I were in Rob's position, we would have done the same thing.
The train to Fussen, compared to the other ones we had taken so far, was very old style and had very little facilities and looked very worn down overall. It was by no means uncomfortable to sit it, it just wasn't as nice as the other ones. Our lady friend sat with Rob and us and talked for a bit before we dozed off on the train. Once in a while, I opened my eyes to the sound of a person (always the same person) opening the door to the train car and walking across the car to the other door only to later come back in the opposite direction doing the same thing. Rob, Steve and I introduced ourselves and started talking a little bit. We talked about Canada and Rob talked about New Zealand, where he was from. Rob was traveling around Europe for quite some time already and had a 90 day eurail pass to go with it. The two hour ride didn't seem very long, thanks to our conversations with Steve and Rob. It was nice to have a friend around to know more about as we traveled.
In actual fact, 1 train wasn't enough to get close to the castles. Once we got there, we had to take a 15 minutes bus ride. Here is where I felt really bad. Our lady companion had ran off to the first bus that appeared and paid 3 Euros to take the bus when she didn't have to. All you had to do was show the bus driver your train ticket and they would have let you on for free. I didn't know if I wanted to tell her, even if it was a few euros, it could be misinterpreted for tricking her.
The bus stopped at the foot of the mountain where the two castles were. There were two ways to get up to the Neuschwanstein (aka Disney Castle): Pay and take a horse driven carriage or use your own legs to walk up. I think the choice was obvious for us. Before we headed up the 15 minute climb/walk up the hill, we stopped by the ticketing office to purchase tour tickets of the castle itself. For reason that tourists are not permitted to freely roam around the castle, see and photograph anything you liked, we had to purchase a ticket for a designated tour. Steve and I purchased the tickets (no student discount this time) but Rob didn't. Rob said he just wanted to stay outside, as there wasn't really anything that he wanted to see inside. He grabbed a red bull before heading up with us.
We talkedto Rob a bit more while we walked up the hill and stopping occasionally to dodge any horse manure that was just left on the road. With each opening in the tress above us that gave us the opportunity see the castle, we grabbed our cameras to take a quick snap shot, thinking we could never get another good shot like this from the BOTTOM (so stupid).
The trip up wasn't that tiring at all. There was no rush to get to the castle as our tour would start in about 1 hour, a long time from now. We did take a hell lot of pictures once we got to the front. We probably took pictures of every square inch of the front and the surrounding area. The great thing about our pictures this time was that Rob was able to help us take a few. Beside taking pictures, Rob also took short video clips with his DV camera describing the castle as the Disney Castle.
We waited around the gathering area for around 20 minutes before we got fed up and walked down the hill a bit to have some lunch before actually going on the tour. I am guessing that it was pretty obvious as to what we ate for lunch, that's right, Bratwurst zemmel. It was not until I bought a drink from the concession stand that I realized the extra money I was paying extra as a deposit for the drink. As advertised, the drink was 1.50 euros; but when it came time to pay, I was asked to pay 2 euros. Then, I realized that I was actually paying for a recycling deposit and that I would get back the 50 cents when I returned the bottle for recyling. Anyway, I had to note this because I had never been asked to pay for a drink deposit.
Rob had agreed to meet us outside the castle after we had finished our tour of the castle so we could explore more later. Steve and I walked back to the gathering area to wait for our tour group number to be called. It was around a 10 minute wait before we were called and a group of around 25 people went through the gates to join the tour guide.
One thing I noticed was that although this was a castle, it wasn't the type of castle to show off a large collection of gold or precious stones; It had more of a story. The only exception to this was the throne room where the floor, wall and ceiling were beautifully decorated with paintings and patterns. King Ludwig II's bedroom was nothing too spectacular. The bed was actually setup against the wall and the room was actually quite small for a king. No pictures were allowed, but i still sneaked a few non-flash pictures. They didn't turn out well, but I atleast got the form of the really unique sink and tap that was in the bedroom/chamber. The tap was made in the shape of a swan (Schwan) and the water came out of its mouth and into a removable metal bowl.
The Neuschwanstein castle is actually an incomplete castle. This was definitely surprising news as it definitely looked finished from the outside. King Ludwig II passed away during the construction of the castle and after that, there was little to no motivation to complete the castle. Only 12-14 rooms were complete and decorated. The rest are left rather untouched. As such, the tour itself wasn't actually that long but it was really nice to see the work down on the rooms that were completed. The hallways were more or less undecorated but provided a nice view of the outside.
Here are some examples of the rooms we visited:
Too bad I couldn't get pictures of the inside. But those links provide some good information about these rooms. To be perfectly honest, not even I can remember how each room was but these bring back some memories.
We were eventually led to the kitchen and then out to the gift shop at the end of the tour. I spent a good amount of time there looking for something good to buy. But there really wasn't too much other than the postcards that I wanted to get. I eventually ended up buying nothing and left to go look for Steve. Instead of finding Steve, I found Rob outside instead. Steve was staying behind to checking things out, what he was checking out, I have no idea.
Once we have met up with Steve, we walked around the back of the castle following a small crowd toward Mary's Bridge, a small bridge 300-400 meters away from the castle and built on top of a huge cliff with running water under. There weren't too many people on the bridge, but with every step on the bridge, I got the slight fear that it might collapse. It sort of wobbled a bit when some people walked onto the bridge. The view from the bridge was wonderful and it was obvious that some of the pictures of the Neuschwanstein have been taken from this angel before. i didn't hesitate to take a bunch of photos before just standing there peacefully looking around the castle and sucking in the fresh air.
Moments later, we noticed some poeple hiking up the path past the bridge to hight ground. THey were standing by a small thin tree taking pictures. It seemed like a better view. Since we really didn't have anything else to do, Rob, Steve and I decided that we go through the hiking path to try to get to higher grounds to see what we could see. We walked along the path until we trail seemed to get thinner and less smooth. There were more hills and roots sticking out that could have definitely tripped someone. Eventually, we were walking on barely a trail and had gone to a huge hill down in the opposite direction from the castle. Rob and Steve seemed to think we were going somewhere, but I kind already thought that we were totally off.
We went down the hill full of leaves to find a creek that separated ourselves and a car road. Rob suggested that we walk across the creek and walk with the road. Steve and Rob walked around to find safe areas with lots of rocks that would allow them to safely cross the creek but none were found. I distinctly remember Steve even suggesting that we take our shoes off and just walk across in the water. Wow.... what an idea. Good thing we didn't take it.
it was quite obvious that we were lost and had gone the wrong way so went headed back up the hill and back along the trail, or what seemed to be a trail, back to the main trail. After getting back to the main trail, it was then we realized that we had just totally missed the curve on the trail to lead further up the hill. Stupid us. Anyway, it was still an adventure not worth missing out.
With in 10 minutes, we had reached the end of the trail which led to the small little cliff the gave another great view of the castle. We sat there for only 2 minutes when we heard some voices from an even higher point on the mountain. We all noticed people climbing down slowly and carefully. Steve and I decided to try to climb up even higher to get a nicer view and some more pictures. We took baby steps to climb up the mountain until we reached our limit and sat there again for around 5-10 minutes. Rob had waited at the bottom not wanting to climb up in fear that he might break his equipment; an understandable explanation.
Like the previous group, Steve and I slowly climbed down the rocky moutain to meet up with Rob again. We made our way back down the hill, past the bridge and past the castle to head back down. Steve and I stopped at a small gift shop to pick up some nice post cards of the castle. I took a few minutes to write a postcard to Christine and had it sent off. With the post card sent, there wasn't much left to do at Fussen. Since we still had to meet up with the lady a few hours later in the afternoon, we had no choice but to check out the Hohenschwangau castle, a smaller castle not too far from the Neuschwanstein.
Scaffolding! That is all we saw at the Hohenschwangau. There wasn't a huge hike up any hill to get to the castle, if you could call it a castle. It looked more like a classical royal estate rather than a castle, or at least the castles that we come to expect. I guess we could have gone in but that would have been a waste of time. We spent the next 15 minutes walking around the open area in of the Hohenschwangau until large rain droplets starting falling from the sky. This was only the start.
Umbrellas quickly opened and we made our way back to the tour office where a lot of people were already waiting. A bunch of kids were gathered outside playing Mario kart DS. We walked into the office to get a little warmer and also had to convenience of purchasing a postage stamp for the post card. Nice. We figured out that we had just missed the bus back to the train station after overhearing some guests talking to the customer service agent at the tour office. Oh well, guess will just have to sit around and chat.
The train was basically waiting for us at the station when we arrived. Finding a seat was no problem this time and we were able to all sit together. The ride home wasn't so fun though. A drunk guy, probably the same one from the previous train ride, was walking around the train talking to random people. He would occasionally stop and talk to Rob too and Rob was so good at handling him. He would ask him questions and say things to him in a very polite voice. But eventually, it came to the point where Rob would pretend to sleep and ignore him.
By the time we had got back, our stomachs were starting to growl and feel empty. We didn't go very far since we already did a lot of walking for the day. We stopped by a franchised restaurant, and had some turkey schnitzel and Steve had Cordon Bleu. The Schnitzel we great. I was expecting the crappy schitzels that we go in Carleton University's residence cafeteria. I guess the meal wasn't too expensive, around 12-14 euros. Hey, it was good, can't complain.
It was Rob's last day in Munich so we went out together to try to find a bar to sit down and just drink away. He was actually leaving tonight, whereas Steve and I were leaving the next morning. One of Rob's goals was to go and drink at the Lowenbrau brewery to drink some of their beer. We weren't 100% sure where it was but knew that it was close the the train station. We wandered around in some general direction until we found a crowd of people wearing an odd attire that I had seen on the Simpsons character Uter. These were the actual traditional Munich clothing.
There was a party going on at the brewery and all the men were dressed up. Not a single one was not in a Traditional Munich attire. The women were in old style dresses that were really long and tight around the chest area. Rob asked one of the people to find out what was going on and if he could get a beer. He came back and said that it was kind of like a private party and everyone had to wear their Munich clothing. We had no choice but to leave.
Rob wasn't all too happy about that. We eventually went to a bar but they didn't server the beer that Rob wanted. They did however have Augustiner, Munich's #1 beer, but Rob wasn't interested in that. He liked Lowenbrau that much. We sat down at a table with two other German men who were talking. They introduced themselves to us three and we did the same. One was fat and had a very stereotypical mustache while the other man had curly short hair and was thinner and taller.
We sat there talking for a whole 2.5 hours. Steve and I had 1 litre of the regular Augustiner beer and another 0.5 litre of a more yeasty Augstiner beer. All good, but I was slightly tipsy by the time we left. Rob had left in the middle of all the conversation because he had to get picked up by a friend to leave Munich. Rob left his money on the table. By the time it came to pay for the bill, we looked to find that the money was gone from the table. Someone had stolen Rob's money from right off the table and we didn't even notice. Soooo stupid. But it wasn't too bad, the beer was 3 euros anyway.
Not much else from here. Steve and I slowly made our way back to Wombats to sleep so we could get ready for the next trip tomorrow, to Berlin.
Labels: eurotrip
posted by lazypig @ 12:36 PM
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