Saturday I was up early to catch the train to Kempten to meet purple_peril – it took me three attempts to find somewhere I could buy a ticket from, first was an information desk, then I found an advance booking desk, finally I got a Bavarian Local Trains ticket from the right desk, and went to find my train.
The journey was around 1.5hours, starting out on fast straight tracks, which as we got to the foothills of the mountains became twistier and slower.
Upon arriving I couldn’t find Sally, so headed out to look around the different bits of the station…there was a magazine shop with quite a reasonable selection, better than I’d found in Munich on Friday, so I picked up another couple of music magazines and headed back to get a drink. Just as I was wrestling with the machine – it refused to give me Cola, so I accidentally bought some chewing gum – “Its Neil, isn’t it?”. Found, before I had time to wonder about what I’d do if I couldn’t find her.
We drove south, following some rather poor directions that I was (not) giving, making only one minor detour due to roadworks and general confusion. We were childishly amused by a small town and made it to our desination without serious incident.
Our destination being the twin castles of Schloss Hohenschwangau and Schloss Neuschwanstein, practically on the edge of the mountains, with a wonderful view over the foothills to the north and with sheer rock faces climbing into the mountains to the south.
We started by walking up to the old castle first – the home of King Ludwig of Bavaria, and his family – this castle was in ruins for many years but was restored by Ludwig in 1830s. Our guide was a fun German guy who spoke very good English, and was obviously fairly enthusiastic about his job (I guess it is still fairly early in the season).
The castle itself had many of its original (1830s) decorations and furniture. Most of the walls painted directly, rather than having canvases hung. Swans are a strong theme throughout (to the point of tastelessness – swan chandelier?), as are images of St George, the patron saint of the Bavarian Royal Family.
During the electrification, in around 1910, a lift was added inside the main staircase, lending the place something of the air of the Rocky Horror castle. Sadly its no longer functional.
Restoration work was being done in the library – all of the books had been evacuated to Munich a long time ago because of the humidity in the area – a room with paintings on its walls suggesting that the bookshelves were limited in their numbers, probably containing even less books than I own.
Time for lunch before dashing up to the new castle, higher up the hill. Laziness and hunger made catching the bus the right way of getting there, though we were still late for our tour. They let us through into the next English tour, which meant us sneaking through the back door rather than going through the normal turnstiles.
This is a far more a Disney castle, built for show as much as anything else. It has a very manufactured feel to it, with the entrance way guiding you through the fine rooms into the throneroom, or upstairs to the singers gallery. We started in the throne room, a cavenous room in a greek, or perhaps roman, style, mosaiced floor, galleries all around from which to watch the King, a huge chandelier which, when lowered, collapsed into three parts of equal levels to allow easy access to lighting the hundreds of candles it contained.
We wound our way through the private rooms of the King, which included some intricate oak carvings, through one of the secret doorways. Within this small maze of rooms there is a fully featured cave, built into the third floor of the castle, complete with stalegtites and everything. Beautiful. Weird, but beautiful.
Then we ascended into the singers chamber (I forget the actual name they used for this room), a huge concert hall with wonderful acoustics in which concerts are still performed on a regular basis these days.
At the end of the tour we were let loose to make our own way out down the servants staircase, not even the demand of “Don’t lurk in the kitchen”. It was a kitchen worth lurking in, with plenty of unexplained little iron doors which yielded little information to the inquisitive. Further on the way down we passed through two gift shops, as if one wasn’t enough.
After descending what seemed like far too far – I was half expecting to arrive in Hell, but thats a story for later – we were ejected from the servants entrance to the castle, and headed up to the bridge to look back toward the castle. This was a beautiful view but I was holding too tightly onto the bridge itself for fear of falling to appreciate it properly – I’m not very good with heights and if the boards beneath my feet are writhing around as people walk past it does nothing for my nerves.
We walked back down the hill, grabbed a coffee on the way, and then headed back to Kempten, where we arrived with perfect timing for my train back to Munich.
About halfway through the journey there were a number of announcements at one of the stations and we waited. And waited. And waited. The train had broken and the announcements were information about what to do, where to catch a replacement train, that much I could figure out. But I couldn’t work out whether she’d said platform 4 or platform 5. It didn’t help that the number seemed to change at one point. And there was an angry guy trying to get the guard to agree to get him a taxi to Munich, but she wasn’t playing. But it did mean that I didn’t get a chance to ask, so I figured I’d just go to platform 4 and hope that took me home. At least its going to be an adventure, whatever happens, and I can always play the “I’m a stupid foreigner, help me” card, if I get in trouble. It was a fast train to Munich they’d made stop at this station to pick up us refugees – I was in the right place, well probably, my ticket most likely wasn’t actually valid on that train, but nobody checked it.
All in all, a lovely day. Thank you purple_peril – hope to see you again soon.
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