The kingdom on the hill, or at least the castle

The choice of my new trendy sandals with the gold buckles wasn't quite the right pick for a hike into the foothills of the Alps. Nonetheless, with the real Cinderella castle never far from sight, I could have been hiking in glass slippers for all I cared about footwear. In a recent article from the New York Times, I read the following:

Sometimes, travel is this elemental: the desire to replace the old molecules with new ones, familiarity with its opposite. To find the kingdom on the hill and stand in awe in its gold-paved streets, even if those streets are strewn [...] with sheep poo.

Well damn if I hadn't found my kingdom on the hill, poo and all. (The optional horse-drawn carriage ride up the hill leaves its mark.)

Note the castle perched on the side of that mountain.

It wasn't quite Christmas in July, but it did seem my birthday had come for a third round following the two parties I'd had in March. If it wasn't enough to be treated enough this month with all the dinners with my parents in restaurants across Paris, if I hadn't furthermore had a good excuse to throw a party (Bastille Day), I really got into birthday mode this weekend when I got my parents' present: a girls' weekend in Bavaria.

Back in March, my parents surprised me by offering to let me charge a certain sum to our joint credit card, anything of my choosing. Of course when extra cash comes my way, where would it go but to a weekend abroad? With the termination of my CAF payments-- effectively French welfare for the newly employed-- at the end of 2012, I'd lost the luxury of my regular escapes and explorations across my new home continent. I couldn't complain so much as the timing coincided well with the ramping up of the last leg of my PhD. However, I can't deny jumping at the chance my birthday afforded me to just be a carefree kid trekking across Europe for one last weekend. Having just listened to a Stuff You Missed in History Class podcast on Mad King Ludwig, the choice of destination was easy. Roping in a few travel buddies sealed the deal. Last Thursday evening, overworked and not fully read-up on the region, we boarded our flight Munich-bound.

Thursday's arrival included a more thorough tour of the city than anticipated, but it ended with beers in steins, so all was well.

Friday came early. Our train departed before 8am to take us south to the Bavarian Alps for the bait that had lured us into Bavaria: Mad King Ludwig's castle.

Neuschwanstein, the mouthful by which the castle is formally known, is a surprisingly modern creation. The US has a whole century on this guy, constructed from 1869 until 1886, which isn't something you can often say of massive historic monuments when traveling across Europe. The castle was dreamt up by King Ludwig, the tall, handsome, arrogant, reclusive, and very lonely Bavarian king who ascended to the thrown at age 18. Much of its decoration is devoted to the operas of Wagner, including over whom Ludwig was completely infatuated, having earlier even offered to give up his kingship to live together with the (completely uninterested and quite heterosexual) composer. The construction of the castle took far longer than the three years Ludwig had expected it might (and cost far more than he could budget), and he never got much of a chance to appreciate it: Ludwig died under "mysterious" circumstances before the castle was ever even finished shortly after he was arrested and removed from Neuschwanstein once his family had him declared insane and deposed. Within weeks of his death, the incomplete castle was opened up to the public as a museum. Neuschwanstein remains unfinished to this day.

To visit Neuschwanstein, we hopped a train to Füssen, a tiny town which has been inhabited since the Old Stone Age (14000-9000 BC), was settled by a Vindelician (Celtic) tribe, and once ruled by the Romans. Despite its millennia of inhabitants, the medieval town center is a small, charming, and pristine cluster of streets that seem to have fallen straight out of a Bavarian tourism book.

Füssen knows how to charm the socks off (and the money out) of its tourists.

Pointed in the right direction through a stop by the tourism office, we were soon off toward the castle. Along the hike, Lake Forggensee snuck upon us as we emerged from a thick of trees and doused in aquamarine as we crossed its footbridge.

Lake Forggensee is shockingly aquamarine, no photo editing required.

After another couple of thankfully shady kilometers, were reached the castle's ticket office. Somehow this never figured into my Cinderella visions, especially not with its hour-long wait through a snaking line of tourists as castle visit time-slots sell out before your very eyes. Prepared with sandwiches from town, we recuperated with a picnic on a grassy hillside before braving the last climb past the horsedrawn carriages to reach our mecca. By the time we made it to the castle, we were so tired from the heat that we drifted off for a bit in a shady grassy corner and were lucky that Jenna caught the time before we missed our castle admission time slot.

This castle tour merited our arousing from a mid-afternoon nap.

After the tour, we flowed along with the crowd to Marienbrücke, the bridge which King Ludwig had enjoyed as a child for its natural scenery, and which he upgraded to enjoy the view of his castle later in life. Though the king had thought to upgrade it, its sways with the footsteps each tourist made me wonder if anyone since Ludwig had considered doing likewise. Knuckles whitening and a hand held tight to Vasilisa, I still couldn't be kept off such photo-op gold.

Danke, Marienbrücke : I even got my own Cinderella-meets-Marilyn-Monroe shot, totally unplanned. And though I feel like I've seen a million of those locks on bridges, I was particularly fond of one of Marienbrücke in which the pair described themselves as "Life buddies!" (exclamation and all!)

You know you're a misplaced citydweller when you stop on walk home from the tourist attraction to coo over a field full of cows decked with real cow bells.

The rest of the weekend lived up to its promise, at least as far as the weather reports were concerned. We'd set out with entirely good intentions of exploring the city and its cultural resources, but with 40ºC (~104ºF) of summer sun beaming down on us, it was hard to get much farther than a biergarten, ice cream sop, or a spot under a tree in a park. On Saturday evening (over beers and a solid German meal), we listened to a free outdoor classical music concert, bravely standing our ground against a wily old man with questionable political leanings.

A montage of our impression of Munich through the haze of the heatwave, in between ice creams and beers.

We did dive (almost literally) into a truly Bavarian experience on Sunday afternoon. Whether it was cultural or not, about half the city seemed to be in on it, so it was definitely sharing in what the locals do:

Swimming down a river insider a major city, even if said river is within park boundaries, was a new and fantastic experience. Every city should have one of these. The water, which flows down from the Alps, melted the heat off your body like ice cream from a popsicle stick on such a hot summer day. And in appropriately German style, clothing was optional. (We opted in.)

All too soon, with one last set of beers, we bid the city (and its heat) farewell, boarding the public transport with only a moderately better idea of where we were headed than we had when boarding three days prior. Nonetheless, we made it to the airport on time and were back in Paris by bedtime.