May
21
2009
My Dream Castles
Author: LindaEver since I saw a picture of Neuschwanstein a few years back I knew that this was the castle for me. It was like seeing all the fairytale castles all jumbled into one! When we first started planning the trip to Europe one of the first things I knew the trip had to include was a trip to see this fairytale castle. Thanks to Hugo I also knew to add in the better decorated Linderhof to the trip to get a true feel of the protential of Neuschwanstein had it been finished. Needless to say, king Ludwig II did not disappoint. The castles was every bit as magnificant in real life as I had dreamed about. In fact the splendor of Linderhof was beyond even my wildest dreams.
Our trip to king Ludwig’s castles started out early. The day before we had the nicest weather imaginable and I had quite hoped that it would stay that way. Alas that did not happen, we woke up to a steady drizzle but even the rain could not put a damper on my mood. I was going to see my dream castle and by golly I was going to enjoy it! We meet up with the tour group around 8 at the main train station ( this was very early for us as our regular routine in Munich was to wake up around 10/11am) and after a delay due to traffic we were off. The tour guide started of telling us what we were going to see throughout the trip (10min), then proceed to tell what we were about to see 5 minutes before we were to see it and again when we did see it. After the 7th time he mentioned going to a particular restaurant because it was fast I came to the conclusion that he’d make a great drinking game. Everytime he repeated himself, drink and guaranteed within 30 minutes you’d be off your rocker! When we finally arrived at Linderhof I was quite glad to be off the bus. Linderhof was the first “castle” that King Ludwig II built. A bit of info on King Ludwig II, he was a peaceful king who preferred to he left alone to dream. Never married, he was deemed insane because the politicians didn’t like that he was spending all the money building grand castles. 2 days after he got dethroned he died of mysterious circumstnaces. Personally, I think he was just a dreamer, and way ahead of his time. Afterall the amount of tourists visiting his castles far outshines any other castles we’ve been to. At Linderhof there are 2000 tourists that visit during low season, on a busy day there might be as much as 10 000 tourists! And Linderhof only had 4 rooms! It was built for his exclusive use, where he retreated to in order to be alone. The building itself was rather small, about the size of a million dollar mansion of today. His section of the “castle” consisted of a music room, a bedroom, a mirror room and 2 sitting rooms all interconnected. However what it lacked in space it more than made up for in extravagence. All but one room was accented in gold (a lot of gold!) and the room that wasn’t in gold was covered in silver. Everything in the room was rich and lavish: crystal, porcelain, and ivory chandeliers, priceless vases (in the mirror room there were over 180 vases), gold everywhere, even a “magic” table that lowered down to the servants quarters so he could be served without having servants being in the same room as him! I don’t think words or pictures can do it justice, I really think it is something that needs to be experienced. As Brit had mentioned in a previous post, our tour did not allow us enough time to see the grotto, but knowing that such a thing existed and was worth a visit we ran up a steep hill and made time. Unfortunately that meant we didn’t have time to visit the gardens or give the fountain a proper look and definitely no time for pictures. In the future I would love to come back and give Linderhof the proper visit it deserves.
Next came a small village by the name of Oberamagau (sp?), we stopped by mainly for tourists to buy overpriced nick nacks. We being seasoned tourists went for a nice walk. Oberamagau is also well know for their decadial (once every ten years?) passion play we just missed it by one year.
Finally after another hour long ride we hit Neuschwanstein and boy does this castle look impressive as we were driving up to it. To get to Neuschwanstein required an hour long steep walk from where the bus dropped us of. Having just run down the steep hill at Linderhof and I had no desire to climb up it by foot. So we opted to pay a little extra for a minibus to take us up instead of walking or taking a carriage ride as were our original plan. (Sidenote: the carriage took people only 2/3 ways up, and looked nothing like Cinderella’s carriage so boy a huge loss on my princess fantasy of the place.) the view from above wasn’t as nice as the one on the bottom, mainly because we were at the backside and could see the construction going on. But the front was still impecable! We got there rather early as we ended up picnicing instead of going to the restaurant that was recommended to us. We walked around the grounds, did our little dance and sat down on their benchs. It was rather chilly out that day and I think this is where Brit caught a cold.
Neuschwanstein was rather huge but there were only a few rooms that was completed, people went up by groups. When it was finally our turn to go up we all lined up and started marching up the spirally staircase. We went up and up and up (did I mention that Neuschwanstein was really big?) my thighs were rather unhappy with me at this point. We saw the grand receiving room with the mosaic floor of animals that was lacking a throne, his bedroom with a swan fauset and crazy complicated bed and finally the never used concert hall (ball room). All the rooms had beautiful murals of fairytales too which made it so much better for me. My only regret was that Neuschwanstein was never finished for the tour was way too short for such a huge place. But at least one more thing on my dream list has been fullfilled. That night I had a lovely dream about princesses and castles.