Neuschwanstein Background

Ludwig I was the king who when he got married he gave his wife a plot of land. They held their wedding in the field and it was a merry old time. In fact, it was such a great time that people were still talking about it the following year and so King Ludwig decided to have another party in the field. That year he brought in people to sell agriculture. This continued to happen year after year but was getting too expensive, so he stopped bringing people in and started to have local fare which included the beer. This is were Oktober Fest originated.

Ludwig II became king at the age of 18. Now think about what you would do with all of that money and responsibility. This guy was a bitweird and one of the things that he did was build castles. They were extravagant and wonderful but the people of Bavaria were not happy that he was turning Bavaria bankrupt; in fact he even sold Bavaria to Germany to get money to build Neuschwanstein. Anyway, people wanted to throw him out of the throne and so they began to spread rumors that he was crazy. He mysteriously died in 4 feet of water with his psychologist (he was a very good swimmer). Some say he was killed, others say it was suicide since he was going to be overthrown.

Neuschwanstein is the castle that Walt Disney modeled Cinderella’s castle after. It is huge and beautiful. Ludwig died during the making of it and so it was never completed. 6 weeks after his death Neuschwanstein was turned into a museum and is in wonderful shape. No pictures are allowed to be taken inside as it is copyrighted, so I only have pictures looking at the castle from the outside, looking out of the castle from inside, and of the unfinished rooms. The castle was basically dedicated to Ludwig’s favorite composer Richard Wager and all of the paintings are related to Wager’s operas or songs. Wood worker’s worked four years to carve church steeples on top of Ludwig’s bed. It was just stunning.

I thought that more rooms would be finished and that the tour would be longer, but it was informative and very nice. After our visit we met back up to go to dinner in Kaufbeuren at a Croasian restaurant. Justin got lamb chops and I got a steak, both were delicious! Everyone seemed tired after dinner and we were ready to go. They came around with shots of banana liquor, which I felt I had to do given the people that I was with. We cheers’d and then down the hatch it went. After a while I stopped to see how much I had left, and it was basically all gone. I was happy and put my bottle down. My heart started beating really fast but then finally slowed again. I had to pee but waited until the very end as I did not want to stumble or look stupid in anyway.

We walked back to the base and I felt fine by the time we reached the car. We followed the instructions on how to get to the restaurant via car to pick up Robert. We followed the instructions but did not find the restaurant, after only one loop, we found it, found him, and headed home. Justin’s driving is quite acceptable at this point.