(no subject)

[sanura]

Breakfast was a fairly simple affair, with the same strange cereal-in-yoghurt option we saw at Virgilio's. Mama saved the sandwich she made out of the roll, cheese, and salami for lunch, but I ate mine there and didn't have lunch. It was fine. I didn't get hungry till evening, and by then I could go to sleep and eat in the morning.

The ticket we bought in Fuessen for Neuschwanstein included a tour of Hohenschwangau, the castle where mad King Ludwig (II) grew up. The carriage ride up the mountain reminded me of my pledge to become more Aragorn-like; the horses were pretty lazy, but I don't blame them. The castle, a startling bright yellow (muted somewhat by the weather), was under construction from nearly ever exterior angle, but that made no difference on the tour. Only the first two floors were open, and it's a fairly small castle, with room for a royal family of four and several servants, but its opulence and intricacy contrasted wiht its scale. The most memorable aspects (to me, anyway, the rock enthusiast), were the rare red alabester ceiling light, which bathed Wagner's guest room in a hearth-like light, the bedroom where Ludwig slept, with a mural of the night sky and various romantic figures on the walls, and the transparent stars in he ceiling which could be lit from the next floor.

The slight frustration we had with the time-limited tickets (getting through the souvenir shop, down the mountain, in line for a carriage up to the next castle, and through its gate) were assuaged by a woman in the courtyard of Neuschwanstein, after mama asked what to do about expired tickets. I suppose they have enough pushy Americans through the Ur-Disney castle making a fuss after not reading the information sheet that specifically states if you're late you have to buy a new ticket and oh sorry the carriages and buses are an independent company so there's no guarantee they'll be coordinated with the tour times. So there's a loophole late-ticket entrance to Neuschwanstein, and verily, I am glad.

So many elements of my future castle are included in this tremendous monument to Romantic sensibility. There are murals of Wagnerian mythology in every room (unless it's purely religious) and the way the lights are decorated with gem-looking hunks of glass, though busier than I prefer, use an idea I've been nursing for a long time. There are arches and vaults on every ceiling (though painted more garishly than I would have done), astounding intricacy of carving and embroidery on the walls and hangings of most rooms (except the ones with murals all the way). It took 14 sculptors four and a half years to finish the Gothic ornament on the walls of Ludwig's bedroom.

The thing about Neuschwanstein is its scale. It's huge, even the 1/3 of it that was finished before he drowned in the neighboring lake under suspicious circumstances, and the excess reminds me of Versailles, except that here rather than a King's egotism, the monstrous grandeur betokens his obsession with a composer's interpretation of Germany's stolen mythology. The entire castle was dedicated to Wagner, despite being built to every specification of the mad King. He ran out of money, but apparently kings don't worry about that, because he kept Wagner on a pension till the end of his life.

There was a laudable "multivision" show at the end of the tour by the cafe, WC and exit. It was basically a short movie, sing only original documents voiced-over and photographs of the various castles, gardens and surrounding environs related to the text, to describe Ludwig II and his money problems. A small paragraph at the beginning (which I had to wait awhile to completely understand, since we came in at the end of a showing in English and had to wait through the German one before seeing the beginning in English) informed us that, though we are too late to help him financially, this organization would like to preserve his memory and personality through this presentation. It was the sincere regret about the money that tickled me.

We were well and truly caught in the souvenir shop on the way out, getting something for most of the family and for our German-living friends. After the ride back down, during which the rain poured down on the horses but it steamed right back off of them, we took shelter in another souvenir shop and found a tiny green-and-gold-leaf glass chalice for a reasonable price, and got it for ourselves. Not that you really need anything to remember Neuschwanstein by if you've been there, but it's lovely, and it looks perfect for Ailuriann rituals and/or casual use in my own castle. :)

The road out gave us a bit of trouble. Perhaps the gods of luck in travel, whoever Mercury's Bavarian equivalent might be, don't work Mondays. However, since the mp3 player had died in the hotel and there was no transformer to plug it in, my radio duty disappeared, and the rain made the need for the camera unlikely, so the concentration navigation required was mostly available. We decided to follow the route dubbed by the tourism book "Romantische Strasse" for the days we had remaining before we had to be at the Frankfurt airport, so we got of the main roads occasionally to drive around in particularly Romantic towns like Augsburg, Donauwoerth and Noerdlingen to take pictures.

The sun came out for awhile on the drive through the country. This end of Bavaria seems to be flatter and the woods mostly cleared, and the lazy, contented feeling of straightish road trips could surface through the ever-present awareness of where we should be next. Several of the ubiquitous town castles made it onto the camera's memory before it got late and rainy and dark and we decided to stop for the night in Dinkelsbuehl, another walled medieval town, less busy than the next stop, Rothenburg. The hotel wasn't quite as cheap, nor quite as charming, but neither was its bathroom microscopic. The decor was less Southern and more modern, with fewer flowers and no wood; a couple of impressionist prints on the wall and metallic checkered curtains on the window. My beloved boots having held some water, my toes were freezing and I was extremely ready to hop under the duvet and go to sleep.