Schloss Neuschwantstein und Schloss Hohenschwangau

This weekend we took a trip to Schwangau so that we could see the Neuschwantstein and Hohenschwangau Castles. We drove out Friday and stayed at rented apartment that night. After eating dinner at a restaurant, we drove around some to see a few things that evening in the town of Füssen and up near the castles. The castles were lite up beautifully, so we are really glad we got to see them at night too.

Hohenschwangau Castle from the valley road

The large white thing on the top of the Hohenschwangau Castle is actually a giant swan.

The Neuschwantstein Castle at night

The next morning we had tickets reserved to go through the Neuschwanstein Castle. What we didn't realize is that it would take about 30 minutes to walk to the castle with Austin. We therefore ended up starting our walk later than we should have and had to really hustle while carrying Austin up to the castle.

We reached the castle a bit tired, out of breath, and just in time for our tour. It was worth it though. I knew before we saw it that the Neuschwanstein Castle would be absolutely beautiful on the outside. It is the famous fairy tale castle that was the inspiration for Disney's Sleeping Beauty castle. The picturesque castle with the breath-taking landscape surrounding it exceeded the beauty of anything I had expected or imagined, but I was equally blown away by the ornate rooms found inside. From the wall paintings, mosaic tiled floors, and intricate carvings, the inside was just as worthy of the fairy tale designation as the outside. The building of the castle was started in 1872 under King Ludwig II, who use it as his personal retreat where he could live out his medieval ideals. He loved music, plays, and operas so many of the paintings in the castle depict scenes from his favorite opera stories, which are based on legends and fairy tales of sorts. There are especially a lot of paintings, sculptures, and carvings that reference the story of St. George slaying the dragon, which are also references to good (St. George) overcoming evil (the dragon). Numerous swans are also found around the castle, since swans were Ludwig II's favorite animal.

The bedroom of Ludwig II was especially ornate with its intricate wood carvings that took fourteen carvers over four years to finish. The bed canopy itself is topped with carvings of every Bavarian cathedral tower.

The inside of the castle was never finished. It far exceeded the original estimated costs as King Ludwig II continued to add things to it. In fact, only 17 of the 200 planned rooms are done, and some things from the completed rooms are not even finished. For example, there is no throne in the throne room. The paintings in the throne room around where the throne was meant to go depict six canonized kings, the apostles, angels, Mary, and Christ himself above the throne. The idea was to show Christ appointing authority to the king to be the ruler. This idea of the divine right of kings was unpopular and outdated at Ludwig II's time. Germany was a constitutional monarchy by then, so this didn't go over well with many people.

We also saw all the other finished rooms, including a dinning room, study, waiting room for visitor's to the throne, and theater among other things. Interestingly enough, there was also an artificial cave made by a stage set designer, which at one point had a waterfall and colored lighting in it.

Unfortunately, visitors are not permitted to take pictures from inside the castle, and so we don't have any to share here. I also wish we had just been able to spend longer in each room more carefully taking it all in, but that was also not possible on the fast paced guided tour.

Front of Neuschwantstein Castle

View of the valley below from up at the castle

After coming back down from the Neuschwantstein Castle, we tried to get tickets to also see the inside of the Hohenschwangau Castle. However, the tickets we wanted ended up selling out before we could get them. We decided to get lunch and just walk up to the castle afterwards for a closer view.

The Hohenschwangau Castle was a ruin when King Maximilian (Ludwig II's father) acquired it and had it re-built. He used it as a summer and hunting residence for his family, so Ludwig II spent time there as a child and loved the area.

View of the buildings below Hohenschwangau Castle

After visiting Hohenschwangau Castle, it was too late to see much else. We were hoping to ride the tram to the top of the mountain, but by that time the clouds covered the tops of all the mountains and we knew we wouldn't be able to see much after going up. Tram tickets were expensive, so we decided it wasn't worth the money.

We have found it difficult to fit everything in we want to here since most museums, palaces, historical points, and other things of interest to tourists open at 10:00 in the morning and close at 4:00 in the afternoon during the winter. This leaves little time to drive between different points of interest and still be able to actually spend time at the places we want to see. Austin tends to further complicate things, because he doesn't walk to places quickly. He was actually in a cranky mood all of Saturday, which also made things more difficult.

Since the tram didn't work out, we drove over to the nearby town of Füssen to walk around there some more. This town is about 700 years old and lies right along the old road connecting northern Italy to Augsburg. I loved the view of the Hohes Schloss (High Castle) from the nearby river. This castle is the former summer residence of the Bishops of Augsburg

Here is the painted facade of Heilig-Geist-Spitalkirche (hospital church):

Here are Nate and Austin in front of the main entrance to the former Benedictine Abbey of St. Mang. Now there is a local history museum inside, which was of course closed since it was after 4:00.

St. Mang's Abbey/Füssen Abbey

We were rather confused at how few shops in this area were open while we were here. The old town area is packed with various little shops on the street, with apartments above them. However, the vast majority of them were closed. I don't know if they are closed for the winter or just open for very short hours during the day. Either way, we aren't sure how they manage to stay in business if they are closed so much. Even most of the restaurants we passed were closed, despite the fact that dinner time was nearing.

KZ Gedenkstätte Dachau & Schloss Nymphenburg

Yesterday we decided to visit the KZ Gedenkstätte Dachau to see this important piece of history and to remember the thousands who died here and in other such camps. Thee Dachau Concentration Camp was the first of the concentration camps. It was built in 1933 for political prisoners only a few weeks after Hilter became the Reich Chancellor. However, within a few years it was being used for all sorts of other prisoners.

The largest portion of this camp was actually the SS training camp, known as "The School of Violence," which is not open to the public. The camp was under the command of Theodor Eicke. He came up with the organization and rules for the camp, and his camp became the model for all the other concentration camps. Eickle also later became the inspector of all the concentration camps.

The Jourhaus with its gate, which was the entrance/exit to the camp

This infamous motto on the camp gate translates to "Work will make you free."

The inscription on the memorial inside the camp

The morning started out very foggy, which just added to the somber mood of the former concentration camp.

 
One of the first rooms of the museum portion of the memorial showed what some of the factors were that helped lead to Nazi Germany. One of those conditions was the terms in which Germany was left at the end of WWI. They were left with such huge debts that they decided the only way out was to inflate their money and pay off the debts with the worthless cash. This happened when Germany was known as the Weimar Republic and this chart shows the hyperinflation that resulted:

While the Dachau Camp was not built as an extermination camp, tens of thousands still died there. Some were given lethal injections, others died during various "experiments" performed upon them, and others were shot or beaten to death. Being assigned to work in the field at the camp was one of the worst assignments and was often reserved for the Jews. Apparently, SS guards would at times take the cap of a prisoner working in the fields, throw it across the border of the camp, and command that prisoner to run and retrieve it. Of course, this was a death sentence since anyone crossing the boundary was immediately shot. If the prisoner hesitated though, he was beaten to a bloody pulp and then forced to crawl across the boundary, where he was still shot. A gas chamber was built at this camp, but for some unknown reason was never used. Many who the Nazis decided to kill were just transferred to other extermination camps, such as Auschwitz, for that purpose.

By the end of WWII, this camp that was built to hold only 6,000 prisoners was holding 63,000. Prisoners from other camps that Germany had already lost were being sent here. An epidemic of typhus fever broke out, killing thousands more. A coal shortage made it so that the ovens couldn't be used, so bodies were piled up and some mass graves were made. After the war, there so many bodies left at the camp that local farmers carted them off to mass graves.

There was plenty of torture administered the prisoners as well. There were tree/pole hangings, standing cells, and floggings. Below is a flogging bench.

Two of the barracks were reconstructed for the memorial.

They included a room with a couple rows of toilets and another with large central basins that served as urinals.

Here is where the other barracks once stood. You can also see the old watchtower in the distance.

This was the camp road lined with poplar trees. It was the prisoner's central meeting place. In the few free hours that prisoners had, they could meet other friends from different barracks in this area and exchange information.

The Concentration Camp, memorial, and museum were difficult to stomach. I don't know how those who perpetuated the cruelties that occurred in such places became so hardened or lived with themselves. I am glad we had the opportunity to visit here, but we were definitely ready to leave after seeing it.

We ate lunch at the cafeteria just outside the memorial, and then we headed to the Nymphenburg Palace that afternoon to end our day on a happier note.

The grounds were very impressive looking. Unfortunately for us though, we were obviously not there at the ideal season in which to fully enjoy them. The statues were all boarded up to protect them from the cold, there were no leaves on the trees, and the colors were all browns, grays, and muted greens. The swans on the water were beautiful though. A couple of swans came right up to us.

Here is the front of the Nyphenburg Palace:

And here it is from the back:

We actually would have liked to spend more time on the grounds and in the palace, but this place closes at 4:00 during the winter, so we actually didn't have that much time.

The inside was fascinating to see though. Several rooms were decorated in the ornate and elaborate Rococo style of the 18th century. This central hall was particularly elaborate.

The ceiling

The walls

You can also see Nate's cool ipod panoramic photo of this room here.

This room was called the Chinese Lacquer Cabinet. The chandelier, which dates from the 18th century, is made from rock crystal rather than glass. It is the only one of its sort here; all the other chandeliers in the palace are glass.

After seeing the palace, we went next door to the Museum Mensch und Natur, which didn't close nearly so early. It was a very nice museum, but not much was in English. (Luckily, both the concentration camp and the palace had lots of signs in English.) Austin enjoyed this more than the other places we had seen, which was good. We thought he would enjoy seeing the various rocks, dinosaurs, animals, and other exhibits, but as it turned out he mostly just cared about pushing the buttons that were set up to explain certain displays.

After the museum we went to an Italian restaurant for dinner, and then to another restaurant for dessert. We decided we wanted to try some apple strudel with vanilla sauce here. We were surprised when we finally had our desserts brought out to us to receive a full bowl of vanilla sauce with a piece of apple strudel in the middle of it. We think they should call the dish vanilla sauce with some apple strudel. It did taste good though, and was very filling.

Ulm Münster und Stadt Blaubeuren am Blautopf

Saturday we left our apartment and headed east for some sightseeing. We first went to the city of Ulm to see the Ulm Cathedral. It technically isn't a cathedral even though it is often referred to as such and is just as large as many cathedrals; it is just a church. It is famous for being the tallest church/cathedral in the world with the top of its spire reaching 161.53 meters (529.954 feet) into the air with 768 steps to the top. The church was originally started in 1377 mainly for the purpose of building a church inside the safety of the town walls. The other parish at the time was located outside the town's boundaries, which made attending church dangerous due to many wars going on at the time. Construction of the church stopped in 1543 when the (completely local) funding ran out and was not resumed again until the mid 1800s. The building, including the main steeple, was finally finished in 1890.

We went inside the church, but it was very dark, which made getting decent pictures difficult. It was another rainy overcast day, so good light was hard to come by. All the same, we enjoyed seeing the sculptural work and intricate stained glass windows.

Visitors can pay for the chance to climb the stairs to the top if they want. I had really wanted to do this, and I was pretty disappointed to learn that the stairs were closed after only 70 meters (not even half way!) due to the fact they were too icy after that point. We still climbed up to that point though. It probably was just as well we didn't go to the top anyway, since Austin seemed more than a little ready to be done with it all by the time we finished.

The stairs themselves were quite narrow (from what I understand though they are even more narrow at the very top) and most of them were wound in a tight spiral. In fact, I started to feel slightly dizzy on the way down from going around and around in a circle. Even from 70 meters, the view was spectacular. I would have loved to see it all the way from the top!

Austin & Nate at the first lookout point

Here is the view and the balcony from 70 meters.

After visiting the cathedral, we found a place to stop for lunch. Then we headed to a little town called Blaubeuren to see what is called the Blautopf (Blue Pot). The Blue Pot itself is goes down about 21 meters (69 feet) at its deepest point. There are a number of myths and folk tales concerning the Blue Pot itself, and the area seems to have quite a history. A monastery bathouse was build near the Blue Pot in 1510 that had a working heating system built under the floors, something that was quite an accomplishment at that time. Unfortunately for us though, the bathhouse museum was closed, as was pretty much everything else there. We were obviously visiting during the off-season.

Despite the rain, the waning daylight, and the cold wet conditions, I really enjoyed our time in the little town. I wish we could have been there longer. The Blue Pot was very picturesque, as were the few other things we saw in the area.

The building at the edge of the water is an old hammer-mill

Here is the old bath house, which is currently a (closed) museum.

We find it rather frustrating that we generally can't read most of the signs and other information at these places we are visiting. Our German is so limited, but most information is only presented in German. So, nearly all the information I have written here has been found from these places' online sites, often after translating it into English first, or from other online source.