The past few days have been very busy, have involved a lot of climbing up mountains and have been some of the best days of our trip!
After leaving Berlin we went to Munich and spent a day exploring that city. It felt very different from Berlin, where you could still feel the shadow of the Nazi era and the Cold War. Munich, on the other hand, felt more stereotypically German. There was less destruction there during World War II so there were more original buildings and architecture. We watched the Glockenspiel dance in Marienplatz at 11:00. This is apparently in the top three things to do in Munich, according to tripadvisor.com, but it wasn't all that impressive. Music plays, the dolls dance, a LOT of people stand around holding up iPhones to record it, and then the crowd disperses. We hit the other highlights - some churches and the English garden - but mostly we just walked around the city.
One of the more unique things we stumbled upon in the English Garden was a large group of people river surfing. A man made wave in the Eisbach River (a man made arm of the Isar River) is used by a group of skilled surfers to try their best to maintain balance and ride the one meter standing wave for as long as possible. Some of the best were able to make it back and forth across the river (about 15 meters) and do some tricks. Others barely stayed on the board long enough to do much of anything. It is legal to river surf in this spot, although signs warn of the danger. We watched for a while we ate our lunch.
We stumbled upon Viktualien Market, a huge outdoor food, candy, beer market as we were winding our way slowly back to our hotel. This was rather impressive and so far the best local market we have found. Though we had already eaten and didn't need any more, we were glad we found it.
The next day we were very excited to go to Neuschwanstein Castle. This was one of the sites we had been planning to visit for months and Adam bought our tickets months in advance so we were guaranteed to see both Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau without having to wait on huge lines.
We first visited Hohenschwangau, the castle of Ludwig I and childhood home of Ludwig II. It was beautiful and impressive but pales in comparison to Neuschwanstein.
Neuschwanstein is known as the "fairy tale castle" and is probably the most visited castle in Europe. This is the castle that inspired Disney's castle in the Magic Kingdom and is one of the most photographed buildings in the world (though photography is not allowed inside). The castle has an amazing history. Hohenschwangau was the castle where King Lugwig II grew up and he spent his childhood playing in the forests surrounding his home. When he became King he designed his own castle, Neuschwanstein. Unfortunately, Ludwig II spent only 11 nights there before he died and the castle was unfinished. Two days before his death he found out that he had been declared insane and the circumstances surrounding his death are very suspicious. He and his psychiatrist reportedly went for a walk and when they didn't return a search party went looking. They found both Ludwig II and the doctor dead in the water. It is unknown if one killed the other and then committed suicide or if they were attacked by outsiders. Regardless, the castle was never finished but a mere six weeks after his death the castle was open to the public for tours. The outside is simply breathtaking but the inside does not disappoint. Ludwig's design was inspired by medieval castles, but the inside was extremely modern, including flush toilets and an interior heating system. It took carpenters four years just to carve the woodwork in his bedroom. Ludwig and his family were huge supporters of Wagner, the composer, and some of the rooms in Neuschwanstein were inspired by his operas. As the castle was incomplete upon his death there is no royal throne. The throne room, however, is lavishly decorated and the marble platform remains, waiting for its throne that never appeared. Ludwig even had a room designed to look like the inside of a cave! It was simply magnificent. Neuschwanstein Castle definitely makes it in our family's top 5 sites of Europe.
We drove a little further south and spent the night in a small town in Austria. The next morning we continued south into Liechtenstein. We were originally motivated by this trip just to put another country on our list, but as we read about Vaduz, the capital, we thought the trip would be worth it. There is a castle in Vaduz and it is where the royal family still lives. There is no king of this principality, only a prince. Prince Hans-Adam currently lives there, but his eldest son does the day to day work of running the country. No one can tour the castle, as it is a home, but we felt motivated to hike up the mountain to check it out. The views from the top were beautiful and from there we could see Switzerland, snow covered mountains and Austria. We also stopped in another small town just a few kilometers south of Vaduz to see Gutenberg Hauss, another castle. It is no longer a residence and we didn't go inside, but it was cool to see.
We drove back into Austria to Rankweil. As we were headed south into Liechtenstein we noticed something on the hill, a castle or church, and we wanted to go back and investigate. It turned out to be a Basilica. We once again walked up to the top of the hill to see the Basilica and had another lovely view and found that there was a musical exhibit there as well. Outside the church many chimes hung and played in the wind. A small fountain had floating wooden bowls that visitors could play as drums. My girls loved playing them.
We crossed the river into Switzerland and spent the night outside of Zurich. This morning we explored the old city. We walked around the pedestrian zone and were able to check out the three most famous churches. Fraumunster has some Chagall windows and the girls thought those were quite pretty. It was nice to walk around the city; it feels quite wealthy and upscale. As we walked across the river we could see the snow capped Alps in the distance and the girls think it is really cool to see the snow in the summer.
Now we are back in Germany. On our way we wanted to stop in the town of Singen to check out Hohentweil Castle ruins. The castle is built on the top of an extinct volcano and was first established in 914 AD. Today the ruins are the largest of any castle in Germany. The castle was called "unconquerable" once it became a fortress. It was easy to see why it was called "unconquerable" as we made the exhausting walk uphill. According to Adam's FitBit we did the equivalent of 60 consecutive flights of stairs to get all the way to the top. Those 60 flights were well worth it for the rewarding view! We were able to see Bodensee, Switzerland and the beauty of southern Germany from the top of the fortress. We rewarded the girls with some well-deserved ice cream for the hike back down.
We will now slowly make our way back to northern Germany over the next few days. We'll get to see some more castles, two more countries (Luxembourg and Belgium), and will end up back in Klein Nordende for a week.