April 11th- Crazy Konigs, is there really a btter kind?

Both eyes open and active, I vaulted out of my bed in anticipation of what the day might bring. What was so fantastic about this particular day? Well, it was in fact, April 11th 2009: national Jesse and Ted explore the fairy tale castle of Neuschwanstein day! Hooray!

After a massive German breakfast, we set out onto the train to Füssen, the city which had become a tourist city due to the architectural excursions of the old bavarian ruler, Crazy King Ludwig!

Why was this man crazy? Well, he was just bored, and rich! Rather than spend all his time fopping about at the latest balls and keeping up on the latest regal trends, he would dedicate a great deal of his time to building fancy castles. Three fancy castles in fact. "Well, that's a tiny bit crazy.. but he's a king right? Big deal". It was a big deal, he ended up spending ALL of the royal funds, much to the distaste of his "chums". His court-fellows were so irritated by this, that he was decreed insane. Then one day he was found dead, a great "mystery" of the times.

Upon arriving in Füssen, we had a quick snack in a Nordsee. Nordsee (north.. sea) is a lovely german fast foodish chain. The menu is quite different. Rather than stacks of bovine flank smothered in grease, it offered a variety of seafood sandwiches, which were quite cheap. Om nom nom.

Delicious... AND neutrinos

Rather than take the bus like most of our fellow tourism robots, we instead had the PAINFUL task of moving our legs back and fourth for about 20 minutes. yikes. At last, around the bend we saw the elegant towers and a too cool view of the castle.


there she be lads, booty and treasure for the taking..

Alas, the tours were full, so we had to wait. What's a good time filler? Why, beer in a biergarten of course! Just common sense, simple common sense. We also took some time to check out Ludwigs main home, the much smaller manor just across the ravine. It was quite nice, with a rather elaborate courtyard.


I guess it's OK for a place to live... i mean really though, you can see why he had to build some more castles.. right?

After murdering enough of our spare time, we were at last able to ascend to Ludwig's unfinished (since he died and all) masterpiece. Speaking of which, only a week or so later after his death, the place was already open to the public for tours.


BAM


Since a great many tourists come to this attraction, there were tours of many different languages. We of course, took english as our German isn't astounding enough to comprehend everything being spoken. What do you know? We're with a bunch of other americans! That's cool right? Wrong...

I've never been more ashamed of my nationality. Our touring companions were absolutely wretched. After the tour guide told everyone not to take pictures, a young couple snapped away, thinking they were tricky and secret, as the camera noises were quite obvious in the silence... oh wait.. there wasn't any! Part of the time, rather than hearing interesting tidbits about the castle, I instead had to catch the latest news about TV shows, from our blubbery land mates. "Please don't touch anything".. as the the obese couple trails their hands along the ornately painted walls (each one a priceless masterpiece, i have no doubt), and the oh SO TIRED person (it's a slight hike of about 15 min to the castle) leans on Kind Ludwig's ancient bookcase. At least the tour guide wry warning each time we had to hike a measly amount of stairs, a secret jab at our panting countrymen. What a depressing day to be a member of the USA.

The tour itself was still quite impressive, despite the castle being unfinished. Every room was a literal artistic masterpiece. I could have stood in each one for hours, in awe of the time and construction it took. His bedroom alone took 14 carpenters 4 years to complete. I only wish I had pictures to go alone with it, but unlike our Bush loving friends we actually obliged and respected the rules.

Da courtyard.


On the train ride home, we sat across a thai couple who had also toured the castle. They were a couple of doctors on vacation, who were very very friendly and suggested a tram ride that showed a great many of the cool sites in munich. One Sawatdee later we arrived back at the hotel, internetless once again.




I don't know if I've expressed my frustration on the topic, but I'm in the mood for a mind dump. We've had absolutely horrible fortune in the way of the wifi (weefee in french, hehe). Switzerland was really the only time we've had a reliable connection. Otherwise, it's been nonexistent throughout the hotel and city. Or it costed about 2 euro an hour, for an abysmally slow connection where I could upload one image about every 15 minutes. Now, we finally had wifi in the hotel in Munich, and even that stopped working. I tried desperately to troubleshoot the issue, but unfortunately the problem was clearly on their end. When I tried to bring this up to the clerk, he looked at me really confused ( a common tech support occurrence) and gave me the impression nothing could be done. Sigh. Ted had some important college application work to do as well, so he set out into the night to find a place to connect, which was in vain as nothing was open.

So, after another wireless night, we passed out. Gutnacht.