Ein Unglück kommt selten allein.....

I was literally about to die from fear
 cause that terrace is over a steep
ledge of death.

Although belated, my journey to Neuschwanstein is more deserving of a blog post than anything I have written.

The Neuschwanstein (pronounced Noee shvan stein) castle is the postcard castle of Germany. Begun by Ludwig II and later an inspiration for the Disney castle, it's appearance is far easier to digest than the name. Located in Füssen, it is over two hours from Munich, nearly three if you count the bus ride to the village of Hohenschwangau, where we had to buy our tickets.

Two other Americans and myself planned this excursion - and as it was our first, we did have some adventures.

First, we woke up a bit later than expected. It had taken us two hours to find out hotel the night before, due to some confusion of the hotel street name and the Munich public transit, and we went to bed late. But we were ready for some Bavarian tourism, especially after stumbling upon a yodeling performance the night before.

Can you imagine why sleeping may be
difficult with these things around?

So we walked casually to the bus station. I hadn't eaten, and expected to pick something up at the train station - and I might have, if we hadn't nearly missed the train to Füssen. After meeting two other American girls, we decided to try to get on their train ticket, but correcting an already printed pass isn't quite possible in Germany. After rushing to get our own group pass, we bolted for the platform, and leapt onto the train minutes before its departure.

Being that this was the only train to Füssen for the hour, the aisles were already congested with other tourists. Italian, French, English, Korean, Chinese and something vaguely resembling a slavic language were mashed together. After an hour of standing the heated train, the thick clusters of people, and the lack of food began to make me feel ill. As with the train, I was lucky in this case. An middle-aged Korean man, traveling with his family, had left his seat to stand. His wife offered the place to me, and I was able to relax until we reached the village.

Füssen is a small, typical Bavarian town, tucked into the mountains, with streets lined with tourist shops. We stopped at a cafe before taking a bus up to Hohenschwangau. It was here, that my purple poke-dotted, 2 euro umbrella vanished.

Time teased us again, as we nearly missed the bus to Hohenschwangau, where we then had to walk up a steep incline of souvenir shops and horse-drawn carriages to stand in line for tickets. We had not reserved tickets, because it didn't seem particularly encouraged online. It wasn't required. And so we stood in line for three hours for tickets that may be sold out by the time we reached the counter.

View from the Marienbrücke, which also freaked me out.

But we were lucky, in this instance, too. As soon as we bought our tickets at 3:00, the last English tour disappeared from the monitors. But still, we weren't done waiting - the tour wasn't until 6:15, and it supposedly was only 35 minutes.

So after poking in and out of souvenir shops, walking the nature trails and snapping photographs, we went to our tour. We went through only 3 or 4 rooms - the only ones finished out of the entire castle. One corridor looked like a cave, rocky walls with stalagmites and all. It took 17 years for numerous artists and designers to work on these rooms, and it isn't a surprise why. Every single detail, from the canopy of the bed to every inch of the walls were intricately painted or sculpted or embroidered.

I had looked at those overpriced tourist umbrellas.
 "Nah, it'll be fine". It was a looong way down.

The tour of the rooms took only about 15 minutes, with the rest being spent wandering in and out of the gift shops, watching a movie about Ludwig's unrealized production of another ridiculously overwhelming castle, or looking at the castle's kitchen.

Leaving the castle is when our luck turned a bit sour. As I said before, I had lost my umbrella, no doubt leaving it in the cafe. All day the sky had been bloated with what seemed to me to be a placid blanket of gray clouds. But as we began our 30 minutes trek down towards Hohenschwangau, the clouds had darkened and dropped everything. My scarf only shielded by face for about 10 minutes, and as we progressed down the steep trek, my glasses began to fog. At the bottom of the hill, we were completely soaked, all the gift stores were closed (so no umbrellas to be bought) and we waited for an hour for a bus that never came (but was scheduled to come).

So there we were - three Americans, drenched and freezing at 8:00 pm in a small German village, along with two Romanians, an English couple, and an Australian. We talked, called taxis, and took the train back to Munich together, our feet on the heaters at the side of our seats.

Roll call area at Dachau

To be honest, it was moments like these that made all the trouble and rain and cold worth it. Speaking to people from across the globe was more fun than seeing the castle. And after all the near-misses, it couldn't help but be an amazing adventure.

And this carried on to the next day - although our luck had run out entirely. Our phone plans expired that evening at 12 o'clock. We had planned to go to Dachau, meet with a friend and stay with her overnight. And although the day before was all near-misses, today our transport just didn't show. Whether it the train was late, or the the website was wrong, we weren't sure. But we went the long way around every time, and ended up hours late to Dachau.

About Dachau, it's difficult to say anything. The location is beautiful and green. Only the solemn drizzle of rain, the vast foot-ball stadium-size lot of gravel, and gates gave any sense to the lot's purpose. I can't say it was hard, because standing at the doorstep of the model for German concentration camps, walking in the same space of the brutalized and the brutalizers, isn't like any other feeling you will ever have. The inability to comprehend the atrocities that took place there make it difficult to feel at all. That is not to mean Dachau doesn't have an effect that isn't overwhelming. Visiting memorials like Dachau will tell you more about yourself and your values than anything else will.

And after such an exhausting time, we did end up meeting with my friend, thank God, and we spent the night well with her family's generosity.

Within two days we experienced the height of fantasy and the weighted corpse of reality. But these two extremes gave me more than I expected, and for that I'm grateful.