035 - sun 04 jun - fussen/salzburg

after breakfast we boarded a train for fussen. on the agenda today - neuschwanstein castle, the world-famous castle nestled in the black forest, the fairytale castle that walt disney based 'that' disneyland castle on. yes that fairytale castle. that was the agenda. the castle. agenda = fairytale castle.

on the train from fussen we met an american family who invited us to visit them in tennessee. we took a raincheck. they were really friendly, and their names were mike & tina, and their two college-age sons brandon & alex. one of the boys had spent 6 months studying in germany and his whole family had come to visit him. what a cool wonderful thing. and what was on their agenda? apart from family fun and general good times? fairytale castle. their agenda was our agenda. agendas = fairytale castle.

we parted ways when we arrived at the train station in fussen. fussen is a modern town nestled in the hills. from there we caught a bus to the town of schwangau, which honestly seemed less like a town and more of a glorified entrance lobby for the fairytale castle, which turned out to actually be two separate castles, and also turned out to be the hot tourism ticket in all of the black forest. the place was packed. we may as well have been at disneyland, such were the lines. actually, it was interesting because only one month earlier, we HAD been in disneyland. schwangau, for those in the know, is very much like downtown disney.

we queued for our tickets to see neuschwanstein castle, which i may have mentioned is the 'fairytale castle', and as i also may have mentioned, was on our a-g-e-n-d-a. armed with tickets we assaulted the hill, which we need to climb in order to get to our agenda-listed castle, the castle of mad ludwig ii, the fairytale monarch of fairytale germany. it is said that he went mad because he was obsessed with agendas, and fairytales, and castles. and he often liked to combine his obsessions in the form of an equation, for example: agenda = fairytale castle.

our tour of castle neuschwanstein (fairytale castle) was great for two reasons. the castle, which was actually never completely finished, is really quite a strange and impressive thing. ludwig was a huge fan of the composer wagner and wanted to recreate the fairytales in wagner's pieces in the form of a a castle. ludwig was like a mad walt disney ahead of his time, except that he wasn't interested in animation, and he was also obsessed with agendas. the castle's interiors were really fascinating, almost grotesquely grandiose but also strangely personal.

the second reason why our tour was awesome was because of our guide, who was a manchild. we couldn't work out if he was 15 or 35, and he had a delightfully zombie-like way of moving and talking. his eyes were kind of vacant as he recited for the thousandth time (or more) the lifeless descriptions of an otherwise breathtaking castle (fairytale castle), but it wasn't like he wasn't enjoying it. it was like he was part of the castle, like he had traded in his soul, traded in his life force, and also traded in any chance he ever had of growing facial hair, in order to become one with the fairytale castle, or perhaps more specifically, the fairytale castle tour. we did not ask him if he liked agendas, but suz did enquire about something at the end of the tour...

something we have learnt in our travels is that glass can last many centuries, but over time it melts, so that glass that is centuries old has a warped look to it, where some of the glass from the top of the pane has actually 'fallen' (albeit at an extraordinarily slow pace) to the bottom of the pane. the windows in the fairytale castle did not have this look to them, so suz assumed that they were new. she said to our manchild guide with no soul, 'when the castle was built, what was in the windows? not this glass obviously' to which soul-less manchild guide chimed 'the windows are all original' prompting suz to exclaim 'wow! thats amazing.' what followed was the single most quotable line of the whole trip. imagine this being said by a fair-haired german manchild who has given up his life force to the evil fairytale castle of the king of agendas:

'yes. it IS amazing.'

i'm shuddering right now just typing this.

after our manchild experience, our agenda thusly fulfilled, we descended the hill to eat lunch in schwangau. we shared a table with a pair of young new yorkers who conversed with us in a semi-bemused fashion that i have now come to associate with all native new yorkers. they were friendly, but a bit stand-offish, and they smiled a lot but it was those kind of slanty smiles where you really hope they are smiling about what you think they are smiling about, and not about something else.

that afternoon we left germany. from fussen we passed back through munich and ended up in salzburg. by the time we arrived it was well and truly approaching night-time. we slugged our packs from the station down in to the main town, spotting a shell service station for the first time in how many weeks. all the hostels were booked - so in the end we were forced to stay in a nice hotel called 'hotel amadeus'. we drank wine and ate chocolate from the minibar, we relished not being in bunk beds, and suz found a channel on the tv that played 'the sound of music' 24 hours a day. from that point, there was to be no flicking. our stay in austria had begun.

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