Day two of our Bavarian adventure was to visit Schloss Neuschwanstein the castle designed by a theatre set designer and built in the late 1800s as a fairytale castle for Bavarian King Ludwig II and copied by Disney as the blueprint for the enchanted castle at Disneyland. (Which explains why it is such a popular place to visit.) You can get to Fussen, the town where the castle is, by train so once again we were aided by our trusty Eurail pass. From the station, they let you know where to go for the bus to the castle complex. And I call it a complex because there are restaurants, cafes, hotels and gift shops everywhere here. Fromm there it is a relatively short stroll to the ticket box. The castle is so popular that the only way to see it is on a guided tour. There are two ways to buy tickets – from a tour company as part of a tour from Munich, and most of those were around 100 Euro and took 10 hours, or by coming to the ticketbox and taking your chances. Knowing this we had left Munich about 8am and arrived here a little after 10. Thankfully it is less busy in winter although we still had to wait until 11:55am for the next available English tour. The tour was 12 Euros each so pretty reasonable. (The Rascal King – Mighty Mighty Bosstones – like all the Bosstones best tunes, you can’t keep your feet still while listening to this, which I guess is why the band, like other favourite ska bands of mine, includes a dancer.)

From here, as the shuttle bus wasn’t running, there were two ways up to the castle – about 1.5 kilometres up a quite steep road – on foot or by horse drawn carriage. Usually anything connected with a horse pulling a carriage would set you back at least $50. The horse and carriage ride up the hill here was six euro and it cost less to come back. There was quite a line for the horses so we used shanks’ pony (our feet) to make it to the top. It was definitely a bit of an effort. The reward was worth it though – we could see the castle in all its glory. Just like the Disney replica, this castle looked like it had been built yesterday. And because it was built in the late 19^th century, after the invention of the telephone, it almost had. We wandered around outside the castle for a while and snapped away before lining up for our tour. The amount of people going through here suddenly became apparent. A tour left the front gate every five minutes and each tour had about 30 people. The tour went for about three quarters of an hour but you still felt like you were shuffled through quite quickly.

The inside of the castle was where the real eccentricity and ostentatious decoration can be found. Decorated mostly in a baroque or byzantine style with plenty of gold everywhere, it is completely over the top   when you consider it was built in the late 19^th century. As Dan commented, it was basically a copy of something else. A 19th century version of building a suburban home with Greek columns. Dan is now calling it the silly castle.

The absurdity of it didn’t make the interior any less impressive. The first room we entered – the throne room without a throne was heavily decorated with gold leaf and religious murals and all the candle chandeliers were bejeweled and shaped like crowns. In fact the crown lights were a feature throughout most of the castle. He also had a thing for opera and there were plenty of murals inspired by his favourite operas, including in the singers room at the top of the castle, designed for performances that never happened. Apparently the acoustics are pretty awesome – they hold a concert here every year in September. The only room that wasn’t all gold and showy was the King’s bedroom although it was completely over the top. It was modeled in the gothic tradition with a mass of intricate dark wood carvings, especially above the king’s bed. It took 24 carvers four years to complete the carvings in that room alone. (Time to Build – The Beastie Boys – this is from their awesome post 911 concept album – To the 5 Boroughs. If you don’t own it already, buy it now).

Of course like all good museums and attractions, the passageway out funneled you through not one but two gift shops, including one that had been there since the castle opened to the public in the 1920s. With our fill of King Ludwig, we weren’t minded to visit the castle constructed as an abode for his parents. We waited for the bus back to town, made a quick trip to a bakery – tip pretzels taste really good when split and buttered like a bread roll – and caught the train back to Munich to collect our bags from the locker and head to Nuremberg. The delay with the tour meant we missed the Nuremberg train we had reserved by a couple of minutes. Thankfully there was another train to Nuremberg just over half an hour later and this one even went through Augsburg.

Christmas themed activities – 13  War museums and model shops – 1.5 Design experiences – 1