(no subject)

[sanura]

We crashed pretty readily after distracted greetings and room preparation (Gaestezimmer Ulm again) from the new father. Apparently we slept better than they, and I'm not surprised. Newborns are not known for sleeping through the night.

We tried carefully not to impose; Virgilio made us breakfast but I played with Filia and Sophie, took them outside when they got a little antsy for an apartment with a day-old and his home-birthed mother. Mama further edited and checked Virgilio's Africa proposal, and everyone really did seem glad to see us, so it was probably okay. Man, babies are small. His name is either Amade or Amadeus; they hadn't decided upon our leaving, though Sophie was convinced it must be the former. How French.

Armed with fruit, cheese sandwiches and carrots Virgilio made us for lunch on the road, and a map of how to get back to the freeway that he drew in a state of utter distraction, we set off for Neuschwanstein, the castle Mad King Ludwig built and then abandoned, the famous one that the Disney castle is based on. It's in Fuessen (a funny name for a town; it means "feet"), for whihc the road signs are musch clearer than most towns. Ah, well, tourism will have that effect.

The way from Goeppingen to Fuessen is mostly on the Autobahn, so there was less blow-by-blow navigation for me to do until we hit the exit, but the signs were still clear and plentiful. I had time to shoot most of the tiny town castles on the way, until it started drizzling.

Despite a ten-hour night of sleep, mama started dozing and required a rest stop 15-minute nap. By the end of it, it was really raining. I'd given up on making the mp3 transmitter behave, so we listened to a station with various performances of every imaginable Mozart opera scene for awhile, before it ran on into Verdi and the reception died. German classical-station announcers have the same deep and melodious timbre as the U.S. equivalents.

Several tiny one-lane-road detours later, we found Fuessen and its pair of famous castles (I suppose the other one really belongs o Schwangau), and the rain was quite sever. After a short sojourn in a parking lot halfway up the tourist-bedecked mountain to decide what to do about it (we weren't walking up in the rain with no umbrellas, and the horse-drawn carriages seemed a reasonable option but it was 5:00 and everything closes at 6:00), we descended again to the town, looking for a hotel. While mama was asking Tourist Information which one was cheapest, I stayed in the car and listened to most of Mary Poppins in German (including Supercalafragilisticexpialidocious, or rather Superkalafrajilistkexpialigetlisch) before I found Bayern Drei, the Bavarian classic rock station, which was in the middle of a Behind The Music style documentary of Dire Straits. I laughed. By the time we got to the hotel, we'd been thorugh an unfamiliar (and rather bad) Scorpions rock ballad and up to Supertramp, the lead singer of which the enamored female DJ seemed to share my adoration of.

The hotel, Gaesthof Charlotte, is far enough away form the castles to be cheap, but still quite cute and German with pansies spilling over its flowerbeds and rustic pine paneling, doors, and furniture. The rooms were tiny but charming, and Neuschwanstein against the mountain out the window could shame a frosted cake on a green velvet tablecloth.