Neuschwanstein and Fussen

Neuschwanstein Castle

Hohenschwangau Castle

A few days ago we got to go to the Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau Castles. I've seen and heard a lot about Neuschwanstein in particular, but I never really knew what it was called. You'll probably recognize some of the pictures. The castles were built in the 1800s sometime, a lot more recent than I had expected. We toured the castles, along with a ton of other people. And we were there in the off-season. Our tour guide's first languages obviously weren't English, and so sometimes it was a little difficult to understand them. The first castle was found by the king when he was out hunting. He just found the ruins and built a castle on it. The family lived in that castle, Hohenschwangau while the other one, Neushwanstein, was being built. When it was finished, the king's son, now the Mad King Ludwig, moved into it. He died 170(ish) days later under strange circumstances. He was found unfit to rule, taken to Munich, and the next day they found his body in the river. Nobody really knows what happened. The tour of Neuschwanstein was a little short because only the bottom floor of the castle was finished before Ludwig died. The castles were huge, and really awesome. If you go to one place in Germany, this is where you should go.

We stayed in a little town called Fussen, a few kilometers from the Castles, and about a 10 minute bus ride away. It was just a little town, with a ton of trees and everything. It felt like a city had just grown in the middle of a forest, which is probably what happened. It was really pretty and green. That would be a really cool place to live except for two things: there wasn't an LDS church there, and very few people spoke English. I think there was even a ski/snowboard resort nearby, we saw the car lift things on cables going up to the top of a mountain.

There is a river going down one side of Fussen, and the water is like this cool bluish-greenish color. It looks really cool. There was also a mini, manmade waterfall. My mom read somewhere that every city has a waterfall, and that seems to be mostly true so far.

 We had to take a hike up to the castle, and this is the first view we got of it: You could imagine, we were pretty disappointed, but most of the castle wasn't under construction, so it ended up ok.

 Another few views of Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau.

We ate lunch in this clearing, and then we played soccer and frisbee while our mom slept on a bench. Just like a true hobo.

The view from up by the castles of Fussen.

This is what some of the buildings looked like in Fussen, as you can see, it's just a little city built in the hills. It was very cool.

There was a lake up by the castles, and so our mom had us all pose by it. The pictures actually turned out pretty well.

The view from Neuschwanstein back to Hohenschwangau.










Overall, this was a very neat stop on our trip, and I think it is my favorite place so far.