A Place for Fish

 7/15

Castles of Ludwig II

I glossed over this in the earlier sections as part of our wildly impossible plan for travel from Hallstatt to Triberg that included stopping at Neuschwanstein Castle. On a map, totally possible. In reality, very unlikely. With my planning skills, straight up fiction. While in our Hallstatt lodging at night, we thought, lets get tickets now to make sure we get a good entrance time for tomorrow. Well, turns out they were sold out until August… Oops. Planning would have done well here. Not one to give up hope, we looked at the options. It was still possible to show up and buy tickets, but the result would be unknown and could end up with a 4 hour wait. That wasn’t ideal. There were a couple of local tour companies that had tickets for 6 days from now… not gonna work, but better? However, day trip tickets from Munich became a possibility, as a couple of tour companies had availabilities for Friday. All of them are very cryptically worded, but we found one that seemed to do what we wanted. In the end, it’s clear our original plan was bad. And while I don’t like tour buses, this one ended up being fine - to the point that if you are in Munich and don’t want the hassle of figuring out transit and buying tickets way ahead of time, I would even recommend it. The big group ended up having almost no impact on the day - and the trip brought us to another castle not on our original list. Cost-wise, I doubt we paid much more than we would have otherwise.

Basically, we got up early, headed into town to get on a bus and were on the road by 8:45. Pretty basic. The ride there was simple, mostly the autobahn until we got closer to the southern border and the alps where we started through the more winding mountain roads. It was nice to enjoy the scenery without worrying about the car in front of me this time.

The first stop was at Linderhof Palace. I had never heard of this one, but its the only one the Fairy Tale King really ever lived in. Apparently he took a trip to Versailles and decided that he wanted to live there too, so he built his own mini Versailles. Maybe the weirdest part is his odd obsession with Louis XIV throughout the decorations. It is quite small overall - but what is there is wildly over the top in baroque glitz and gold gilding. Every room impresses - or at least leaves an impression. You can easily see how this is the look all of the Trump-like people want to recreate. Great for kids as well - its very much storybook and you move through it quickly. No pictures allowed in either of the castles for today, but you can look them up and see this or this. The gardens were nice, and the setting overall is maybe the best part - can’t match it for setting with the alps rising high in the background. The grotto - his private opera house, was closed for restoration, but apparently that just adds to it all.

The tour we went on would normally stop in Oberammergau to walk around a bit. Lots of fun painted houses with classic scenes and such. They also put on a Passion of the Christ (5 hours long) every ten years as part of a thanks for God ending the plague 400 years ago, and this was one of those years (kind of ironically delayed from 2020 due to a plague…). Because the play was in town, they don’t allow the tour buses to stop. I was fine with that overall.

The next stop was were I really wanted to go - Neuschwanstein Castle. This is the castle made famous by Walt Disney. He saw it in the 30s and used it as the setting for Cinderella and then that turned into part of the Disney brand. Ludwig II built it as an escape from the modern world with the intent of creating a romanticized time based on the Middle Ages when kings had divine, absolute power and controlled the world. Our tour guide was very adamant that he wasn’t actually crazy, just very eccentric - comparing him to Bezos and Musk using their millions to fly into space. Fair enough. (Side note - The tour guide on the bus gave a lot of fun facts, so that was a nice added bonus - my Ludwig II knowledge is significantly higher than it had been, for what that’s worth.) Although he drove himself deep into debt to do his thing. The palace was never finished - now only consisting of 15 rooms versus the 200+ he had planned. But it is absolutely striking and was worth the trip from my standpoint. Both castles are much newer than I think of when considering castles. They don’t have some old fort basis from 1210 or something. These were just built in a beautiful setting in the 1860s+.

The experience at Neuschwanstein was fine. There are crowds and such, but what do you expect. You also get a nice view of Hohenschwangau Castle - another medieval castle built but Ludwig’s parents - apparently the medieval era was newly re-discovered and all the retro rage of the day, with everyone seeing it as a more idealized world (I guess when the world is changing and all of your kingly friends are being overthrown by the people, medieval times seem much better for sure). The castle tour was fairly brief - about 30 minutes - but it wasn’t finished, so as opposed to the Residenz in Munich, it was enough. Plus, what it lacks in volume, it more than makes up for in quality. Eccentricity runs high, including a cave room stolen from Wagner and its own stage (also for Wagner - he was big on Wagner).

We spent roughly 4 hours in this area - adding in a lunch at a biergarten, but it seemed much shorter - I honestly could have used another 30-45 minutes for pictures - then again, we didn’t exactly go at it all with a plan.

The bus ride home was uneventful and on time, which let us stop at another biergarten (park cafe) on the walk back to our airbnb. All in all, a good day.