Back to Munich and my Bday weekend... On Sunday we had a grand adventure to go visit Neuschwanstein Castle. (Its the one that inspired the Disney Castle.) For those of you who don't want to read this whole thing, I'll give you the quick summary: AMAZING!!! Pictures are at the end of the post since Blogger isn't cooperating right now.
For the longer story...
We started out the morning getting ready and heading to the train station. We got the Bayern (Bavaria) train pass that let us ride all regional transportation for the whole day, which was way cheaper than getting individual tickets for every part of the journey to the castle. We had planned out which trains to take to get there the night before and were ready and excited to get going.
We got to the main train station and found our train to Augsburg, where we would then connect to Fussen. We grabbed pastries for breakfast and got on the train all ready for what should have been a relatively straight forward trip. We killed time playing Monopoly Deal and then we heard the announcer say that the next stop was "blah-blah-blah Augsburg." Augsburg was our stop so we got off. Well, we were in Augsburg, technically, just not at the main train station where we needed to be. Oops. We checked the train schedules posted and realized that we wouldn't be able to make our connecting train to Fussen by taking any of the trains coming through the stop we were at. This made our decision to go look for a bus, which eventually ended in us taking a cab to the main train station. We found a very nice cab driver who spoke basically no English (and we all speak basically no German) but we could tell him we wanted the hauptbahnhof and, thanks to Erin, I could even ask him how much that would be before we decided to get in the cab! (Not that I had any remote idea what his answer was at first when he told me in German). So we got in the cab with maybe 15 minutes until our connecting train was leaving the main train station and essentially raced the clock to get there. The cab driver had the radio on and was playing American music. Katy Perry's TGIF came on and Sarah and I proceeded to sing along quietly in the back seat...we sang quietly until the cab driver heard us and CRANKED the volume! It was awesome! We had a blast rockin' out in the cab and we even made it to the train station in enough time to make our train!
This train ride was almost 2 hours, bringing our total train travel to just under 3 hours one way. The train ride was relatively uneventful, we played monopoly deal and looked at some awesome scenery. Once we got to Fussen, we took a bus to Hohenschwangau, the small town at the bottom of the mountain where the castle is. We got our tour tickets (the only way into the castle is through a tour), grabbed lunch, and did some shopping before taking another bus up the mountain to the castle. The castle is absolutely gorgeous, as is the area its in. Mountains and lakes and just wow.
We took pictures on the bridge that overlooks the castle and all around the castle. We weren't supposed to take pictures inside but Google "Neuschwanstein Castle Interior" and you can see how awesome this place was! The tour was pretty good, just not long enough. The whole tour lasted about 30 minutes and I easily could have spent the whole day in the castle looking at each of the rooms.
The rain held off until just as we were leaving the castle, which meant we took the bus back down the mountain and got pretty wet waiting for the bus back into Fussen. From Fussen we took the trains (which were absolutely packed!) back to Augsburg and then Munich. We grabbed Subway in Augsburg, since it was already around 9pm and we were hungry, and it was open. When we got back to Munich we headed back to the hotel intending to play monopoly deal some more, but actually ended up packing up our stuff and going to bed.
Monday morning it was off to the train station again so I could grab a train back to Linz in time for class and Sarah and Kaley could grab a bus to the airport and head home. It was an awesome birthday weekend! The pictures are below!
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| The waterfall |
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| View from the train on the way to Fussen |
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| Restaurant we ate lunch at! The castle is on the hill in the background! |
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| the top of the mountains are covered in clouds! |
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| Really Excited/Scared looking horse on a door in the castle grounds |
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