DM and MM's Germany 2007 Diary

Day 13 - Mittenwald to Schwangau

Thursday, 3 May, 2007

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22:09 Room 40, Hotel Weinbauer, Schwangau

One note I forgot about last night's dinner: Between the main meal and ordering dessert we were holding hands over the table briefly and the waiter walked past, glanced in, and the next thing we knew the lights were dimming. One could almost hear him muttering, "Aaah, amore..."

This morning we rose at 07:00 and quickly had breakfast and packed our bags. As nice as Mittenwald was, it was probably our poorest hotel experience, with the smoky room, grumpy service from the old woman who appeared to own the place, and uninspiring breakfast, topped off by the grumpy woman only bringing out a basket of good bread rolls for a group of women who arrived at breakfast after us and then with whom she shared some apparently hilarious anecdotes, because they laughed uproariously while we were finishing our breakfast. She was probably telling them we were weird - we'd asked for a non-smoking room!

We left and carried our bags to the station, about a third of the distance we'd originally walked with them in the other direction. We bought tickets to Garmisch-Partenkirchen from the machine, which demanded €7. I tried paying with a €20 note to get some smaller change back, but was foiled by the machine not accepting notes higher than €10. Luckily we had €7 in coins, but this achieved the exact opposite effect of running us out of small change!

The train left at 09:36, according to the timetable, but had a cryptic inscription regarding what platform it left from, which I interpreted from the German abbreviations to mean platform 1 on weekdays, excluding Saturdays, platform 2 on Saturdays, and platform 3 on Sundays and public holidays. Being a Thursday, I assumed we should wait on platform 1. The only scary factor was that platforms 2 and 3 lay across two lines of track, accessed by walking across the tracks down shallow ramps, and if another train pulled in to 1 we would be blocked from reaching 2 and 3, and there were two trains arriving just before ours left. As we waited, a small crowd built up and everyone waited on platform 1, which we took as a good sign. But then I saw a man and a woman check the timetable and he clearly said (in German) "Platform 3" and pointed over there, and then they walked out to the street. Then a train pulled in from the Munich direction to platform 3. A few people walked over there, but none got on. Then someone asked the guard something, and they all returned to platform 1, so we breathed a sigh of relief and stayed put.

A few minutes later our train arrived from Innsbruck. Everyone piled on and it left soon thereafter, letting us wave goodbye to Mittenwald. Twenty minutes later the train pulled into Garmisch-Partenkirchen again, giving us a good view of what was presumably the Olympic ski jump ramp. We alighted and walked out into the street to see if we could spot an obvious bus stop for our bus to Schwangau. Not spying any, I inquired in the DB office, despite a big nasty sign outside saying the tourist information office was 10 minutes walk down the street - obviously they were fed up with clueless tourists like us asking them for information. Luckily though, my request was easy, and in German, so the guy told me cheerfully that it was just outside, to the right of the taxi stand.

So informed, we proceeded to purchase provisions for lunch from a bakery in the station, getting an assortment of four bread rolls by the "point and say 'eins'" method, as well as an apfelschorle for Michelle to drink. Thus provisioned, we headed out to the bust stop, pausing to take a photo of a bright yellow fibreglass cow painted with coloured hearts that was grazing peacefully on the footpath.

Two girls and a guy were sitting amidst a group of backpacks by our bus stop, and from overheard conversation it was clear they were American. With 20 minutes or so until our bus, I asked them if they were going to Oberammergau - where I knew from our bus timetable that we had to change buses. They said they were going to the castles near Füssen actually, and I said that was where we were going too, but there was a bus change at Oberammergau. This seemed to be more than they knew, so it turned out my fishing for information that we were in the right place was actually providing news to them!

The girls were from Tennessee and the guy was actually from Mexico. One said to me that they'd begun their trip in Köln, and they'd climbed the cathedral tower and she swore she'd seen enough spiral staircase to last a lifetime. They hadn't liked Munich much for some reason, and now they were here in Garmisch because one of the girls' dad had been to Germany 20 years ago and had told them, "You have to see the castles," and said they were "right near" Garmisch, at which point the other interjected and said, "You're dad didn't know what he was talking about!"

Our bus arrived and we all piled on for the 40 minute ride to Oberammergau. We passed through some gorgeous countryside, with gentle rolling hills covered in meadowy grass and scattered flowers, dotted with wooden hay-sheds, giving way to steeper hills covered with trees, and behind them soaring peaks of rock striated with snow. The bus took us up a steep winding climb up the mountainside to a high valley which was apparently Ammergau, where the tons of both Oberammergau and Unterammergau were. We didn't absorb much of Oberammergau, except that there were a lot of large crucifixes attached to houses, erected on freestanding poles, and scenes of crucifixion and other biblical scenes painted on to the exteriors of houses and other buildings. As the site of the famous once-a-decade Passion Play, I suppose it was to be expected.

On changing buses, I expected our next bus would go all the way to Füssen and we would have to pick the right stop out of five listed stops in Schwangau to get close to our hotel. So I asked in halting German of our bus driver if he knew which stop would be near Hotel Weinbauer. he replied in German - several times until I understood it - that he didn't actually go all the way to Schwangau, and that we had to change buses two more times to get there! I told the girls and guy travelling with us the news and they expressed surprise, but took it in stride. It seemed their entire trip had been run on a day-by-day basis and they were used to not really knowing what they were doing next.

The second bus took us through more pastoral countryside and tiny villages to a stop by a bridge over a deep, forested gorge. There we transferred to another waiting bus to continue our journey. This one took us to a stop by a large fire station, where yet another bus took over for the final stage of our one-train-and-four-buses trip. Again I asked the new driver if he knew which stop in Schwangau would be near our hotel and he implied (I think) that there was only one stop in Schwangau, so that was the one we wanted.

While looking at the bus route map on the wall of the bus, one of the girls came over to have a look too. I pointed out where we were, where we were headed to Schwangau, where they said they were going to Füssen, and where the castles were, slightly off the route to one side near Schwangau. She said, "Oh, so there's no point us going all the way to Füssen. We'd just have to go back to get to the castles." When I agreed I thought that was the case, she said that they may as well get off where we get off and make their way from there. I said I thought it was about a half hour walk from Schwangau to the castles, or possibly there was another bus to catch, and she replied that half an hour was nothing, as long as they knew where they were walking.

So when we finally rolled up to Schwangau and saw our hotel right across the road from the bus stop, at 12:46 after over three hours of travelling, they alighted with us. We could see Schloss Neuschwanstein in the distance, perched picturesquely partway up a steeply sloped mountainside. It looked to be a good hour's walk away to me. The others were a bit mystified as to what to do, but I noticed a tourist information office across the street and down just a couple of buildings from our hotel, so pointed them to it. They departed cheerfully as we turned the other way to check in at Hotel Weinbauer.

The friendly lady at reception gave us a choice of a room on the ground floor with a balcony and view of the castle, or one upstairs, larger, but with no balcony. We chose the balcony room and were pleasantly surprised to find I'd interpreted her German correctly and we did have a view of Neuschwanstein sitting prettily in the distance across a large flat meadow behind the hotel. The woman had said we had time to head up to the castles right away, as she gave us a hotel guest discount card. When I suggested the tours might be sold out already for the day, she scoffed lightly and said it wasn't that busy at this time of year.

So we dumped our bags quickly and headed back out to the tourist information place, only to find it closed from 12:30 to 13:30. So we asked the driver of a passing bus that pulled up in front how we could get to Neuschwanstein, and he indicated the stop across the road where we'd originally got off, and said the bus would be there in ten minutes. We crossed and waited, and the bus arrived as promised. Tickets to the castle were €1.30 each. The bus turned down a narrow country lane lined with trees and headed across the valley plain towards the castle. Michelle saw the girls we'd travelled on the bus with, sans Mexican guy, walking form some hiding place to the tourist office, which was just about to open again.

When the bus reached the foot of the hills and I expected it to start climbing up to the castle perched loftily above, the driver said that was it and told us to get out. Slightly mystified, we blundered out into a tourist mecca of obscene proportions, with a tiny street lined with hotels, restaurants, fast food places, souvenir stands, all crawling with Americans, Japanese, all manner of other tourists, and even the odd few Germans. Wandering amidst the wonderland like stunned rabbits, we discovered a huge, modern ticket sales building with long queueing corrals hawking guided tour tickets for the castles. Apparently this was the central administrative spot for tours and access to the castles up the hill from here was either by walking or paying what was no doubt an exorbitant price for a slow horse-drawn carriage ride that looked no faster than human footwork. Luckily there were no queues for tickets and I acquired these precious items with no difficulty, getting us on to guided tours presented in English at 14:45 for Hohenschwangau and 16:45 for Neuschwanstein.

As I left the ticket office, I noticed the Mexican guy running in to buy tickets for himself, sans the two girls. He had presumably walked here by himself immediately after our arrival in Schwangau, leaving the girls behind. We figured they had not actually been travelling together, but had merely met up and been going the same way for a while.

With some time to kill before our first tour, we wandered up the gleaming promised land of tourist traps, finding an enormous parking lot full of dozens of touring coaches. Beyond that was a gleaming jewel, a light at the end of the tunnel, a glittering turquoise blue-green lake sitting in front of towering tree-lined slopes and snowy Alps beyond. The Alpsee was a sight for sore eyes, a natural curative for the excesses of commercialism behind our backs, as we simply stood on the shore and soaked in the natural beauty. It was immediately obvious why the royal family of Bavaria chose to build their country retreats here, with views of this marvellous Alpine lake.

Rejuvenated, we braved the tourist crowds once more to take the 400 metre walk up the hillside by the lake to the entrance of Schloss Hohenschwangau, the castle that "mad" King Ludwig II had been born in. It was a rough and ready affair, painted an odd choice of yellow-orange, and about half clad in scaffolding and hessian as numerous workers crawled all over it like ants, presumably undertaking some restoration work. The waiting area for the guided tours of the interior comprised a number of connected courtyards outside the building, with various splendid views out over the Schwangau valley below or the Alpsee out the other side. A swan fountain of blackened bronze spurted water gently while a larger fountain consisting of four lions supporting an ornamented basin was not operating.

Eventually our tour number appeared on the electronic signboard at the entrance and we joined a number of other people for the English language tour. The guide was a jovial older gentleman with rounded face, small glasses, and a goatee beard, who spoke English well but with a slight German accent, and kept cracking jokes amidst his very informative commentary. The tour took us through several elaborately decorated rooms, beginning with the Queen's chamber on the first floor. The guide noted the King had a separate bedroom on the floor above, but it was okay because there was a "hanky panky" door hidden behind a mirror in the Queen's bedroom, that led upstairs to the King's. He said this was quite a modern thing, because in earlier times the King and Queen would actually have lived in separate buildings.

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