A Fairytale Castle

This bright, lovely morning... uh, I mean wet, foggy day... we were on our way to Neuschwanstein Castle. But first, our wonderful bus driver, who could turn this huge bus on a dime. Not kidding. He was amazing. Our hotel--a Best Western!! (but still no air conditioning). I did, however, sleep very well there, with my head under the open window. It cooled off a bit, too.
The Mercedes-Benz plant. Kind of looks like you could put a quarter in the top and get a car out of the bottom doesn't it? (yeah, 25,000 euros, that is)
The night before the Germans played the Turks in the World Cup, in Vienna. Guess who won? GERMANY!!! And boy, did we hear it! This house apparently likes Italy, though... or is it Spain?

OK, so we got on the busses and traveled for some time (about 2 hours) to get to Neuschwanstein Castle. It was rainy, so my 'pictures from a bus' are very foggy. I'm told there are mountains in this picture...Here Matthew holds an umbrella for Robin. It did stop raining as we made our way up to the castle, and cleared a little bit later so we could take some pictures.
Here's the sign to let you know where to go--and you can see the fog in the background. We were told it was quite a hike up to the castle, and to only attempt it if we were in good health. But when we got there, shuttles took us up most of the way, and the rest of it was a fairly easy 5-10 minute walk to the castle. There were lots of stairs to climb inside, though, maybe that was it?
Neuschwanstein Castle was built by King Ludwig of Bavaria. He loved the fine arts, and was Wagner's patron for many years, although he was forced to send Wagner to Vienna after a time. He was raised in this castle on the nearby mountain,with murals of great sagas on the walls. When he became king, he decided to build a new castle across the way from his childhood castle, and fill it with murals and stories as well. Here it is, rising out of the mist.
It is a lovely castle. Disney used it as inspiration for Sleeping Beauty's castle in Disneyland (and for Cinderella's Castle in Disney World as well). Here you see the forecort.
Inside the courtyard we had time for a couple pictures.

They wouldn't let us take pictures of the inside of the castle (copywrite laws), but I figured it would be ok to stick my camera outside the window and take a picture of the outside. Here you can see the courtyard from above.
After the tour (and hitting the gift shops), the fog cleared enough for some decent pictures.
Up another path, around the mountain the other way, you come upon a bridge that offers a fine view of the castle (and I'm sure of the valley below). King Ludwig would have the servants light candles in all the windows, then come out to this bridge just so he could see the castle.
Everyone says King Ludwig was crazy, but I think perhaps he was just born a century or so too late. His people forced him to abdicate, and placed him under house arrest in another of his castles (he built three, I think). A few months later he died under mysterious circumstances. Very sad. He was only able to live in Neuschwanstein (which had a different name when he was alive) for about 6 months. It wasn't completed by the time he died. The people changed the name and opened it for tours six weeks after he passed away. It has since been finished, though.

Here Reela and I are with Jan, our Tour Guide. There are two tour guides, Jan and Jessica, but we were on Jan's bus.
Here is the castle Ludwig grew up in, his Grandfather's castle. Next time I shall have to go through it as well.

As we were driving away, the castle appeared in the mist.
We returned to Munich, and had dinner at the Hard Rock Cafe, Munich. Very fun, and nice to have some americanized food, too, for a bit of a change.
My dinner companions--me, Joy, Reela, Angel, and Stephanie
What would the Hard Rock be without memorabilia?

We voted to stay in downtown Munich for a while after dinner--not realizing that all the shops closed right about the time we finished eating. Sigh. I took the time to wander around a big. This is the big gothic church where the Glockenspeil resides. Not sure why I didn't include a picture of the Glockenspeil.

The two towers that define Munich
This little cherub is going to kill that snake, I think.
Waiting for the bus.
And so ends another day of our trip.

The Sound of Music and good-by to Salzburg

Wednesday

Time for the Sound of Music Tour--yay!

I LOVE "The Sound of Music." This tour was probably my first and main reason for coming. I didn't get good pictures of everything, mostly because, again, it was a bus tour and we didn't stop a lot.

This is the train station where the actual VonTrapp family left for Switzerland (Salzburg is not close enough to Switzerland to just walk over the mountains).

This is the castle seen in the opening credits of the movie

And here is the Gazebo. In actuality, they rebuilt the gazebo in Hollywood, making it a little bigger so Liesl could do her jumps from one bench to the next.

The palace used as the back of the house in the movie. The front side was a different palace; my picture of it didn't turn out. On the left side of the picture you can see the place where Julie Andrews and the children fell into the water.
This is me on the shore of the lake! (no, it's not photo-shopped!)This actually has nothing to do with the Sound of Music. It's a resort for rich people. Look at the color of the water! And with the mountain in the background, I can see why people would want to come here.
Can you see the steeple in the center of this picture, just below the lake? This is the church where the real VonTrapps, Maria and the Captain, were married (in the 1920's--several years before World War II)
After the tour we returned to Salzburg, and this time we had about an hour and a half to walk around. I went to the Mozart Birthplace museum, where we were not allowed to take pictures. however, I figured this sign, outside, was fair game ("Madame Muther, I like butter!", something Mozart was to have said when a child)

In one square there was this silver person. For a Euro or two, he would hand you a postcard and let you take his picture. Cool, huh?
And then we loaded back onto the busses and made our way to Munich. Not such a long drive this time (about 2 hours), and no concert tonight. We ate at the Haufbrouhaus (some of my non-church friends couldn't belive we were in the heart of Bavaria and no one even tried the beer!)
The entrance
Going back to the bus stop, I found this witch on the side of the building. I picked up some doll witches the next night; I heard they were good luck, but I'm not completely sure about that.

Off to the Salt Mines

Tuesday

On our way to the Salt Mines we passed into the Alps. I think I like the Alps better than the Rockies. Certainly better than the Appalachians, and they beat the Sierra Nevada's too. You will see more pictures of mountains as we go on; are they not beautiful? I think what I like best is that they're not so desert-y. Lots of vegetation.We got to Durnberg where they had us put white clothing over our regular clothing. Don't we look cute?!!
Reela and I were 'partners' in the mine--it helps to have a friend to go down the slides with. She went first on the first slide, but insisted I have a chance to go first on the second slide. Near the bottom I thought I was going to take off flying!

Ah, the salt mines! The source of Salzburg's wealth and prosperity for hundreds of years!
The descent involved two slides--they gave us lots of instructions about not trying to break, keeping your feet up, holding on to the person in front of you... this particular picture is of an old slide that is no longer used (good thing--looks like we might end up with splinters if we used this one!)
We passed from Austria into Germany, where the majority of the mining took place--hence the need for a fort to prtect Salzburg since the Bavarian's weren't too thrilled about them 'stealing' their salt.
They mined using a technique called 'solution mining'. They would carve out huge chambers--one of which we crossed in a boat--and fill them with water. The salt would leach out of the rocks into the water over a period of about 6-8 weeks. They would drain the water to the town at the bottom of the mountain where the water would be boiled off, leaving only the salt behind. Yum! This is inside one of those chambers--you can see the little diorama if you look carefully.
Returning to Austria The Salzburg Citizens were not the first to mine the salt here--about 500 BC the mines were opened by Celtic miners. We know this because the miners in the 1600's found one of the old Celtic miners--perfectly preserved by the salt (until they took him out of the mine and he disintigrated). Here's a mock-up of the mummy. Hmmm, do I sense a "Mummy 4" down the line?
St Rupert, patron Saint of Salzburg, was the one to build the monastary we ate at the night before. He also built the original Dom Cathedral in the 700's, which burned down around 1634 and was rebuilt by Wolf Deitrich.
Here's Wolf Deitrich--the story is that one of his chamberlains knocked over a candle and caused Salzburg to burn down. When he heard Salzburg was burning, he said, "Let it burn." He wanted to rebuild it in the Italian style, with 5 Plaza's or Squares. So he did :)
After the Salt Mines we went into Germany briefly (above ground this time) to Berchtesgaden, a little touristy town in the mountains. We followed this little river. You can see the water is green--that mean's it's being fed by a glacier. Cool, huh? Or maybe 'freezing' would be a better word...
The mountains above Berchtesgaden. Complete with glaciers.
Then a return to Salzburg, where we had about 15 minutes of free time before dinner at the Garten restaurant.
Diane, Rebecca, I forget (sorry!) and Reela, my dinner companions this night.
After dinner it was time for our third concert at our church's building where Salzburg Saints meet. The buildings there have far more character than the buildings here... but they still serve red punch! (that's an LDS joke--you know the church is true because everywhere you go in the world they serve red punch/Kool-Aid with the refreshments)
And the fort in the distance, from the other side.