Snowboarding the Bavarian Alps
Trip Start
Apr 06, 2003
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Trip End
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Garmisch, Germany
Thursday, May 27, 2004
We are getting ready for a week driving around Tuscany and Umbria. But I hope to send another real short t-pod in the next few days with some cool pics of some weekend daytrips we've taken recently. We'll see if I can motivate.
We leave for Rome on Sat. morning. We can't wait! We're picking up a car and heading north. We'll be going to Siena first, spending a few nights there and visiting San Gimignano before heading to the countryside of Umbria. We are staying at the most awesome place, take a look...
http://www.letorridibagnara.it/inglese/main.htm
From there, we'll investigate some of the smaller towns of Umbria as well as Assisi. We hope to head over to Lake Tasimeno for a bit as well as ride bikes in the country. After that, we will go to the east coast of Italy to relax at the beach before hiking in a national park and returning back to A'dam and unfortunately, work. I'm sure the trip will be awesome and we are definitely looking forward to the food!
Anyways, finally, here is our t-pod from our snowboarding trip to Garmisch, Germany. We went with our Aussie friends Bruce and Ange. It was great. Take a look...
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WEDNESDAY
Julie and I had discussed spending a few days snowboarding in the Alps. Neither of us are great snowboarders but we thought the idea of snowboarding the Alps was pretty cool. We toyed around with a few different locations - from flying into Geneva and driving 2 hours to Mount Blanc, France to flying into Salzburg and after spending a few days in town, heading 2 hours into the mountains. We talked to a few of our friends about our ideas and Bruce and Ange were also looking to spend a few days snowboarding before the end of the season. Bruce and Ange have snowboarded in a few places in Europe already and thought a quick long-weekend in Bavaria Germany sounded like a nice trip. Bruce and Ange have a bank car so they offered to drive. Although it is a 9-hour drive, we thought this would be a fun road trip.
So the plan was for Julie and Ange to pick up Bruce and I at the office around 1:00 so that we could beat the traffic out of A'dam. Bruce was having a particularly rough day in the office and Julie and Ange had a mix-up in the plans so Ange got me and we headed to our apartment to get Julie. Of course since we were running late there was a truck double-parked but in Dutch fashion, Ange and I played it cool and waited patiently for the driver to return. We finally got Julie and then we went back to ABN AMRO to pick up Bruce. So far, we were an hour off schedule.
Bruce and Ange have a small Alfa Romero so it is not the most ideal car to take a 9-hour road trip in but the price was right so we roughed it. Bruce also had packed his own snowboard, which didn't fit in the trunk, so Julie had to fight the snowboard for space, the whole ride as well.
But the car was packed and we were ready to go...so why not stop for a smoke break. Bruce and Ange are smokers so before officially getting on the road, we pulled into a small parking lot so that they could get a nicotine fix. Luckily they respect us and know that smoking in the car probably would've killed us so I was happy to pull off for a smoke break whenever they wanted to - which incidentally was somewhat often but then again, we are in Europe and everyone here smokes like crazy. Anyways, I took this first stop just outside of the office as an opportunity to spread a little Nutella chocolate on a croissant and call this lunch.
After filling their lungs with crap and filling my belly with heaven, we were now off for Germany. The big mystery was going to be could we find music that we all agreed on? I was concerned we would have to endure 9 hours of Kylie Mingoue. Luckily, Bruce and Ange are not big Kylie fans. I knew we were in good shape musicwise when they switched the radio when a Phil Collins song came on and commented about how horrible he is. Thank goodness! We did hear Dido about a million times though - about 3 hours of our drive consisted of the 4 of us trying to remember her song "Thank You" and like clockwork, we always ended up sing Alanis Moresette's song instead. Anyways, we listened to Dutch radio for a bit until we made it to the boarder and decided that Germany radio was going to be even worse. Then we popped in some CDs, alternating Aussie, US, Aussie, US, etc. They had some good music that we had never really heard before - Chissle and The Calling.
We were making good time but eventually hit some bad traffic in Germany. Luckily, since we left so early we made it pretty far while it was light out. It wasn't until the sun went down that the drive started to feel very long. We decided that we would pass Frankfurt and then find a place to grab dinner - of course we preferred McD's, it's our favorite place to eat in all of Germany and the Aussies actually agree with us...although they call it Macca's.
So we passed Frankfurt and then started scanning the roadside looking for those beautiful arches. But we couldn't find them anywhere and we were all starting to get very hungry. So we decided we would bite the bullet and go into a roadside truck stop.
After witnessing one truck rip the side mirror off another truck and the strange German argument/discussion that occurred as a result, we dropped the car and headed indoors for what was expected to be some delicious German food.
And we certainly were not disappointed. They offered every type of meat, breaded and fried. There was nothing that I could eat so I went with my only option - horrendous spaghetti with red sauce. The spaghetti was actually put in the microwave right in front of me. Julie had a salad and hers didn't look any more appealing.
Before getting back on the road we went into the nicest restroom I have ever seen in my entire life. We paid 50 cents to enter through the automatic turnstile. The place was so clean I was disappointed that I didn't have to take a shit...I'm sure it would have been one of the greatest experiences of my life.
After leaving this amazing crappery, I noticed something else that made this particular roadside restaurant truly unique - there were photos of Sigfried and Roy everywhere. There were pics of them as young boys, as magicians, and even with them and what looked like local townspeople. I have no clue why this place was such a shrine but since they are German, I am guessing they must've lived in this crappy town at some point and this was the town's claim to fame. It was rather strange.
After the obligatory smoke break, we got back in the car and continued onto Bavaria. Incidentally, about 2 miles down the road we passed a McD's. Eventually we also passed the Autobahnkerk (the highway church). I didn't see it but I really would've liked to have seen what this was all about.
As we creeped closer and closer to Munich, I caught a few moments of rest as it started to become apparent that this 9-hour drive was going to run overtime a bit. It was now pitch black out and was really starting to feel long. Finally we made it to Munich and we knew we were only about an hour away. On a sidenote, Munich is an awesome city! I went when I backpacked in '97 but Julie has never been so we are definitely going to go back another time...hopefully for Oktoberfest with the Hesters!
Anyways, we continued through Munich and again I rested my eyes for a little bit. The next thing I knew, we had reached the town where we would be staying, Garmisch, and were trying to find the hotel that runs the apartment we rented. We picked up the apartment keys and were looking forward to getting to the apartment. The only problem was we couldn't find the apartment.
We hotel guy had drawn a very rough map complete with 2 very sloppy squares and a couple squiggly lines. One square was supposed to be the hotel, the other our apartment. He told us that the apartment was right by a gas station. So we found the gas station but had no clue how to get to the apartment. It took a few attempts before we realized that we were supposed to drive through the gas station and park on the other side along a river. I'm sure it wasn't as complicated as we made it but since we were exhausted from a 10+-hour drive and I was a bit groggy from being woken up from my nap, I think we missed some of the details.
But we finally made it to Garmisch and found the apartment. And what was my first observation? There was no fucking snow! What the hell? Now I know that when people think of snowboarding in the Alps, Switzerland comes to mind, Austria comes to mind, France comes to mind, even Italy comes to mind. Nobody ever thinks about Germany for snowboarding. So I was beginning to understand why that was. Garmisch is the highest mountain in Germany and was the host of the winter Olympics in 1936. Also, the other side of the mountain in Garmisch is Innsbruck, Austria so I was expecting that it would be fine but come on now, we didn't drive 10 hours for this. I mean there was no snow!
We didn't let this bother us. We figured that since it was so dark out we couldn't see the heaps of snow and mountains surrounding the village. We decided not to investigate any further since it was midnight already but rather, we unloaded the car and toasted our beers to what we were hoping would be a great weekend snowboarding.
The apartment was absolutely perfect (Apartment Alexandra via Hotel Aschenbrenner for EUR 50 per couple per night). Julie found a real gem. It was awesome. The only additions I would have hoped for would've been a fireplace and Jacuzzi - there's just something special about finishing a day of snowboarding with a Jacuzzi and fire. But I got over this quickly since the place was amazing and Bruce and Ange have been to many of these snowboard-type apartments and they seemed to be really excited about this one. It was a 2-bedroom that looked about 2 years old. It had a fully-equipped kitchen, a nice large den, and a large balcony. So after looking around and having a beer or two, we headed to bed.
THURSDAY
We woke up in the morning and felt a real sense of relief when we went onto the balcony for a bit of fresh air and saw the most amazing view of the snow-covered Alps. It was absolutely breath-taking.
We decided to get into the car and drive around town to see where it was that we were staying. The town was very cute - although Bruce and Ange said it was a bit bigger than the other places they've been snowboarding.
We stopped at the market to stock up on some quick breakfast things and a few other essentials - like a couple cases of Lowenbrau beer. It was actually interesting to see the beer section and to see how many of these were familiar brands...and I thought I hadn't learned anything in my 4 years in Wisconsin. In addition to beer and breakfast things, we picked up stuff for dinner since Julie was going to make dinner for everyone one night. On our way out of the grocery store I introduced Bruce and Ange to the type of weekend this would be when I relieved myself in the grocery store parking lot. C'mon, we live in A'dam, a city that's canals smell like urine for a reason.
Anyways, after the market we went looking for the tourist information center and got a bit turned around and ended up at one of the lifts. It didn't look too impressive and seemed a bit icy and barren. We also noticed that surprisingly it was not very crowded so at least that was good. I'm sure part of that was because it was mid-March and the high season was over. It was also a Thursday so we assumed by the weekend, it would be different.
But we did finally get back on track and found the tourist center. It was in the heart of Garmisch along a very nice pedestrian street filled with wonderful stores. The tourist center was helpful and gave us direction. We went back to the apartment and got ready for our first day of snowboarding (see Pics 1-3).
On our first day we decided we would take the Kreuzeckbahn gondola to an elevation of 1651 meters (5417 feet) above sea level. First we needed to rent equipment (EUR 63 for a 3-day snowboard rental) and get Julie a lesson (EUR 35 for a 1-hour private lesson). Julie had been snowboarding once before but only once and it was 3 years ago so she wanted a refresher course.
Also, on his last trip snowboarding in Italy in December, Bruce had broken his arm on his 1st day of a weeklong trip. So as we bought our lift tix (EUR 26 for a half day - since it was already 11:00) Bruce's leg was shaking so hard he looked like he was tap-dancing. When Ange asked if he was ok he tried to play it off as if he was cold but we all knew the truth. If it had been me, I would've been terrified and probably wouldn't have even wanted to go again ever so I give him a ton of credit for strappin' in again so soon.
So we parted way with Julie and Bruce, Ange, and I got on the gondola and started our day. When we got to the end of the gondola ride I was amazed at the scene. The base of the mountain was bare with hardly any snow or skiers but once you get to the top of the gondola, there's an endless winter playground. It was like a huge ski resort atop the hill. What I was expecting to see at the base of the mountain was at the top of the gondola instead, midway up the mountain.
The Alps were so crisp and rough looking. It's so hard to describe but they were endless. We were completely surrounded by beautiful whiteness. It made it enjoyable to fall while snowboarding because at least I got to look around and take in the scenery.
The conditions atop the mountain were perfect. The snow was wonderful. The runs were challenging but not too difficult. They were not too crowded. And the weather was sunny and warm. It was perfect! I did a pretty good job snowboarding despite not doing it for a few years.
We did the same run most of the morning. Julie was on the same run as us with her teacher. Every so often I would come by Julie to say hello. I think the instructor thought that was funny. I think he thought Julie was my daughter or something.
After Julie's lesson we met up with her and the 4 of us snowboarded together the rest of the day. Although she thought she should've been an expert snowboarder right away and almost cried a couple times after being frustrated from falling, Julie did a great job and eventually really gained confidence. Bruce initially was very disappointed with his snowboarding but he also really improved. Bruce was hoping to pick up where he left off skill-wise but I think by the end of the weekend, he felt like he was back where he was before he got hurt. Ange also did a great job. She was the only skier in the group but had a nice time. She was not really looking to speed down the mountain or anything...I would often see Ange taking big plowed turns across the entire run. It looked a bit boring to me but she seemed to have had a ball. And I did very well also. My confidence was really high and I even landed some nice jumps and made it off the ski lift all weekend without falling - a real accomplishment for me.
Each day we ate atop the mountain. There was a restaurant that looked just as you would expect an Alpine mountain restaurant would. Julie and I both had really great pea soup and a beer (EUR 3) our first day.
After skiing we packed the car with our snowboards and headed into town for a few beers. On our drive we passed a bar called Motherfucker Café. We decided not to go there. Actually, I don't think it said 'Motherfucker' but something else in German but it sure did look like 'Motherfucker'. We found another outdoor café that served the famous Munich beverage, Hoffbauhaus beer (see Pics 4-5). With the beer, we ordered amazing pretzels (EUR 10 total bill). They were so good!
The town was very cute. The street was busy with shoppers. The store fronts were very nice and upscale. Having the beautiful snow-covered mountaintops peaking just above the stores was quite the scene.
After relaxing in town over a beer, we headed back to the apartment where we had a few more celebratory beers and washed up before dinner (see Pics 6-7). We walked back into town and found another pub to have a beer. This time, we found a very local place. It was pretty weird and the soft porn paintings made us all a bit uncomfortable. So we finished up our drinks and headed outside to look at menus.
We found an Italian restaurant (Ristorante La Toscana) where we were the only people in the restaurant. I would liked to have had something a bit more local but nobody else was on board and it's tough to screw up Italian food...even for the Germans. We had pizza, pasta, and a few beers for EUR 42. It was a nice meal.
Anyways, after dinner we walked back to the apartment. Bruce and Ange, being bigger drinkers than Julie and I, decided to have a few more beers at the apartment while Julie and I went to bed. It took me about ˝ a second to fall asleep. This was a very full day and we were wiped!
FRIDAY
Friday morning began with a quick check of CNN to see what I missed in the NCAA tourney (see Pics 8-9). I was pretty sad to be missing the tourney but I figured since it wasn't going to be on TV in A'dam, we might as well leave town. But I still was participating in the bank's pool so I needed to track my progress. And after 1 day of games, I was basically out. Oh well, that was fun!
German TV is in German. They dub over the shows so everything is in German. So our only option was MTV. And we were pretty surprised to see that MTV-Germany shows full-frontal nudity. And not just woman but men too. Crazy. Again, I ask is Janet Jackson's nipple that big a deal. This was MTV on a Friday morning and there was a penis right there in the center of the screen.
We headed over to the gas station next door to pick up some fresh rolls. Surprisingly, they were good. So we had gas station rolls with cheese, really wonderful mustard, and of course, pretzels (see Pics 10-11). Yum!
With that, we were ready to cram into the car packed with 3 snowboards and a set of skis and head over to the lift again. This time, we decided we would take the Hausbergbahn gondola to 1340 meters (see Pics 12-13). Here we found a wonderful run, which we hit all day long.
The weather was still nice. I snowboarded in waterproof ski pants and a long-sleeve flannel - no hat, no goggles, no gloves (see Pics 14-27). It was perfect!
For lunch I had 3 potato pancakes and Julie had fish sticks (EUR 22), again at a restaurant atop the mountain (see Pics 28-31).
Since I slept for the final hour of our drive, I wasn't sure what the climb up the mountain was like. I guess I figured it would have been a steady climb like the SoCal mountains. But it wasn't like that at all. When you look down at the town below, it looks completely flat. In fact, the town is in a valley and the road the leads out of town and the towns nearby are all along the same flat plain. There was no climb up the mountain - it was as if the gondola replaced the climb normally done in the car. It was weird.
The day of snowboarding was so perfect! We couldn't get enough. We actually had 3 'last runs' of the day. After each 'last run', we were able to convince the skilift operator to let us go '1 more time'. In fact, I ended my last 'last run' by landing an awesome jump...and Julie and Ange were waiting at the bottom of the run to witness it. It was a great day on the snow (see Pics 32-35)!
Even Julie was a stud. She figured out how to go down the mountain with her left foot forward as well as right foot forward. I can't do that which is pretty frustrating. But we all did well. So we loaded back into the car (see Pics 36-37) and went to celebrate at a beer garden (see Pics 38-43) before heading back to the apartment where we listened to a little Phish and wrote some postcards.
While we relaxed, Julie whipped up an amazing dinner (see Pics 44-46). She made steak for the carnivores and salmon for me. It was delish! Unfortunately I missed the Wisconsin basketball game but we won so I can't complain too much. Did Indiana win its 1st round game?
SATURDAY
After mastering the mountain on Friday, we decided that we would try another run. This time we took the Alpspitzbahn gondola to 2050 meters (see Pic 49). I think we were a bit too arrogant because this run was crazy scary. It was overwhelming just riding the gondola up. As we climbed higher and higher, I began to wonder how on Earth we would even get down. The gondola was a bit older too so as we would clear a tower holding the gondola wire high above the trees, the gondola would sway. It was really freaky!
Once we got to the end of the gondola, it was even worse. The mountains looked so evil. The jagged mountainsides seemed like razors, just daring me to give it a shot. I was certain we had made a bad decision. Julie was freakin'! I could barely get her to relax enough to take a pic with me among the gorgeous surroundings (see Pics 50-51).
To begin the run, we had to snowboard across a t-bar skilift. It was really steep and adding moving obstacles to our path was not cool. It didn't help matters that it was starting to snow a little bit too. We basically all set off down the hill, plowing the whole way down (see Pic 52). I was freaked out.
It was really hard but we finally made it down however because we plowed the whole way down, we had trouble maintaining enough speed to make it through a flat and narrow opening that led to another steep hill (see Pic 53). The run continued to do this over and over - a very steep and scary hill followed by a very narrow and flat pass leading to the next steep and scary hill.
I eventually got to the point where I felt comfortable snowboarding along these very narrow and flat passes that clung to the side of a mountain. It was pretty cool zigzagging from toe edge to heel edge and back along these thin passes that were just a few feet wide before dropping down sharp edges (see Pic 56). Julie spent most of her time on this run unstrapping her boots and walking her board (see Pics 54-55). When we finally made it down, she was really upset. The rest of us were happy to be done but wanted to figure out how to get back to the run we had mastered the day before.
We made our way over to the other run, winding our way down the mountain the whole way. As we would inch closer to the other hill, we would get to some hills that looked really hard. Usually, we found that if we gave it a try, we could make it down. Maybe we weren't shredding up the mountain like the day before, but it did feel good to get down. This is not to say that we wanted to do the run again - we were happy to be down and moving on to something more our level.
And after hours and hours and hours and hours and hours, we finally made it all the way down to the base of the mountain (see Pic 57). Seriously, I think it took about 4 hours total. It was crazy but to think that we snowboarded all the way down an entire mountain is pretty cool and rather rewarding. Unfortunately, the lower we got, the worse the snow conditions were. There were many spots that were nothing more than ice patches and even worse, dirt patches!
But we did finally make it all the way down and started over. This time, we took the Kreuzeckbahn gondola up and snowboarded the run we did the first day. It was good because it redeemed all of our confidence and we enjoyed the remainder of our time on the hill.
I spent the day practicing my killer jumps (see Pics 60-62). I landed them all - except of course the time Ange was ready to take my pic jumping. Oh well.
Despite this being a tough day at the beginning, it ended up being a really nice day on the mountain (see Pics 63-70). After 3 days of snowboarding, I was happy with my progress and eager for our next snowboarding trip - possibly something in December with Bruce and Ange and a few more friends as well.
But before we could return our rented equipment and head into town for our daily celebratory beverage, we had one last obstacle to overcome. After getting off the gondola at the bottom of the hill, we attempted to exit the building where the gondola ends through an open gate. However the man who was running the gondola wouldn't let us out. He told us we needed to go through the turnstile. I have no clue why that would be but we were eager to get outta there so we followed his instructions.
So with all of our equipment returned, we went to town to get a few beers (see Pics 71-74). Having skipped lunch as a result of spending an unbelieveable amount of time struggling to get down the mountain from our early morning shit-run, we were all pretty hungry. Luckily the bar we were at had really good pretzels - what a surprise. Bruce and Ange were not huge fans of the pretzel but I probably could've spent my whole time in Germany eating pretzels. I told Bruce and Ange how I was craving one with melted cheese like Auntie Anne's but they seemed to be disgusted by the thought. Apparently pretzels and cheese are not big in Australia...maybe if this banking thing doesn't pan out, I'll open a pretzels and cheese shop in Sydney.
After washing up back at the apartment and packing up our stuff, we headed out for dinner. We decided that we would walk to the other side of town to go to some pub. Looking at the map, it didn't seem as long as it actually was. We walked through a residential area the whole way. It was pretty uneventful and almost boring. Once we got to our destination, we discovered that the pub was closed - doh! But we had trekked all the way over there so we grabbed dinner.
We had our last dinner in Germany at an Italian restaurant. I had a huge ass plate of gnocchi with pesto and Julie had penne with eggplant. We had successfully done it, a full 4 days in Germany without once eating dinner at a German restaurant. I had actually wanted to go to one since I happen to like trying to eat local food while on vacation but I couldn't get much support on this. Plus, Julie keeps saying that eating grilled salmon German style is not really the same as eating pig knuckles. Point taken.
Following dinner, Bruce and Ange were game for finding a small bar to get a few beers at but we decided to go home instead since I had begun to feel the effects of 3 days of snowboarding - Julie had been feeling these effects since day one. As she says, she was in so much pain, she couldn't even get out of bed to pee during the night the 50 times she normally does. Anyways, the walk home was not nearly as long, probably since we weren't hungry anymore. Julie and I hit the bed while Bruce and Ange worked on dimishing the amount of beers we would be bringing back to A'dam with us.
SUNDAY
We woke up around our normal time and headed into town for breakfast. While Bruce and Ange had coffee Julie and I looked at some of the souvenir shops. We bought a cool little nutcracker. We also bought a CD of German beer-drinking songs. Perfect for the 8-hour car ride back to A'dam.
So we headed back to the apartment, loaded up the car and left Garmisch. This was a perfect place for a long weekend. The snowboarding ended up being pretty great and the apartment and town were really nice. If there weren't a million other places to see, we would definitely go back.
But before going back to A'dam, we decided we would make a detour to see King Ludwig II's castles, Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau. The journey started off poorly as we started by heading in the wrong direction. It wasn't until we were about 15 minutes the wrong way that we realized our mistake. So Bruce pulled a U-turn in the middle of a 2-lane country road and we head back the way we came. Eating more pretzels and mustard the whole way, we wound in and out along the floor of these beautiful valleys beneath the Alps. There were running streams, green fields, and snow-capped mountains the whole way. Ever so often we would pass a crazy German cross-country skier. The road actually requires that we cross into Austria so Julie actually got to visit Austria for her 1st time. I can only image what a pain in the ass crossing into Austria would've been before the EU came along. Anyways, only a few more U-turns as Bruce made the mistake of listening to how I thought we needed to go and before long, we were there.
Because we had gotten turned around a few times on our way here, we arrived a bit later than we were expecting. The Rick Steve's guidebook recommended that we make reservation for the castles since the lines to get in can sometimes take hours. So we made 10:45 reservations to see the more picturesque of the 2 castles, Neuschwanstein, since we still had an 8-hour drive back to A'dam. We were also instructed to be at the ticket office 45 minutes before our visit since we would have to walk up a hill to get to the castle.
By the time we got to the ticket office, we were 15 minutes late. Knowing we would be pressed for time, they dropped me off to get the tickets while they parked the car. There was no line so I walked right to the attendant to get the tickets. She proceeded to yell at me for about 2 minutes for being late. She told me that we were not going to make it to the castle entrance in time to enter. I finally told her that if she stopped yelling at me and gave me the tickets, we could start our walk uphill and maybe make it on time but that if she continued to yell at me we would never make it. Fucking Nazi!
So we started up the hill. It was a rather steep climb but considering we were passing the donkey-drawn carriages, I figured we were making fine time. And in the end, the 45-minute climb took us 13 minutes. So we made it to the castle in enough time and even had some extra to visit the gift shop and pick up a few postcards.
The castle was gorgeous (see Pics 75-81). I had been there before while I was in Munich as a backpacker but we had decided not to go inside...we were on castle overload and short on cash at that time. Boy, did we miss out. This place was awesome! It is the castle that inspired Disney's Sleeping Beauty's castle at Disneyland/world. Crazy King Ludwig II had grown up in the area and just 5 years after assuming the throne as King of Bavaria at the age of 18, he began the construction of Neuschwanstein. This was September 1869. By 1884, King Ludwig was living in the castle. After building his "dream castle", he only spent 172 nights, or a quarter of the time available to him, in the completed castle before mysteriously dying in June 1886.
An interesting thing to note about King Ludwig, 5 days before he died, he was declared insane. Two days later, the first attempt to take the King prisoner failed. The next day, however, the King was successfully taken prisoner and he was taken to another castle, Schloss Berg. The next day he and his doctor, Dr. von Gudden, were both found dead. There is a lot of mystery about how they died. Was it a murder? Or a suicide? Or a combination of both? The thing I find interesting is why he was declared insane. I don't know anything about anything but my feeling is...
Many of the decorations in the castle are illustrations depicted music written by Richard Wagner. To say the least, King Ludwig was a huge fan. But I think Ludwig had a crush on Wagner. To add to my belief, Ludwig was engaged to marry his cousin. It's like he never fell in love with a woman but due to the time, when political marriages were necessary, he had to marry. But when push came to shove, he didn't love her so he broke the engagement off and never married. He tired to hide his love of Wagner but couldn't control himself and therefore was labeled 'mad'. Lastly, we have to remember that homosexual relationships were really not understood back then (see Van Gogh being 'ill' and cutting off his ear for Gaugin). Anyways, it's not a big deal and certainly not based on fact at all but rather my gut.
Anyways, back at the castle, it was beautiful. Not only is the exterior an absolute fairy-tale, the interior is pretty amazing as well. We were not able to take pics inside but the throne room was gorgeous. It is a huge room, dominated by sky blue walls with gold detailed frescos. It is really beautiful. There is a mosaic floor which has millions of stones designed to look like animals. Above the room is a huge gold chandelier, which weighs 900 kg and holds 96 candles. The funny thing is the room doesn't even have a throne. Ludwig died before it could be completed, but I would assume it would've been ridiculous.
The other cool thing was Ludwig's bed. It was made of wood and has a really cool 'crown' covering the bed's canopy. Basically, every detail of the castle was over the top, more so than any other place I had been. Simply put, if you have a chance to see Neuschwanstein, go and see it.
After touring the castle, we headed outside to goof around at a souvenir stand where Bruce and I tried on some traditional German hats (see Pic 82). Since Bruce and I work in different areas of the bank, we tried to scheme a way to justify classifying this trip as business-related and therefore, expensing it. There is a phrase within the bank called 'Building Bridges'. This is when 2 areas of the bank come together to find synergies. Bruce and I were 'building bridges' and we took a pic to prove it. Just so you know, neither of us actually expensed a cent of the trip.
We next walked over to Marie Bridge, a huge bridge that spans a gorge just outside the castle and provides a wonderful view. Unfortunately, the bridge is closed until May so we missed out on the view (see Pics 83-90).
So from there, we grabbed the car and headed home, via a stop at our favorite German restaurant McD's. The last bit of excitement was the ride, 9 hours back to A'dam. This included a stop at a gas station somewhere in Germany that was highlighted by a little black car complete with a driver who was wearing black pants with a clean white belt and a red fitted t-shirt over a stripped dress shirt. What a classy dresser. This same gas station also had some sort of meat wrapped in some sort of dough. It almost looked like a Bagel Dog. But it was ready-serve and was sitting in the candy section, almost like a bag of Skittles. This didn't sound too good but Julie did find an ice cream with Smarties that kept her busy for a few moments in the car (see Pics 91-93).
As we headed back through Germany, it began to rain lightly. This added to the beautiful scenery by creating a rainbow in the distance. The only thing that ruined the atmosphere was the horrible German radio. We sped our way home on the Autobahn, eventually making it back to A'dam. And just in time for me to listen to the Wisconsin basketball game on the internet. Unfortunately, the wrong team won. Oh well, there's always next year, right?
This was another great trip. Bruce and Ange were a lot of fun to travel with. They certainly like to drink, but they were fun. We have already begun talking roughly about going skiing with them again over the December holidays. I think a few more people are thinking of joining us too, so if anyone wants to ski Europe with us this winter, let us know.
Here are a few other things from our skiing trip...
T. T. M. Y. G. Hmmm
*** The restaurant atop the mountain also had tons of people who sat out and sunbathed on lounge chairs. It was kinda weird. It was like people took the gondola up the mountain just so they could sit in the sun and read.
*** Atop the mountain was also a beer garden. It was weird to see all these skiers relaxing with a beer high on the mountain.
*** In normal dog's-rule fashion, there were a few dogs at the top of the mountain. There was even one who chased his owner down the ski run while the owner skied. It was actually pretty cute.
*** There are poles in the ground that mark where the line to the lift starts. The poles were definitely way too close to one another so passing through them and onto the lift was pretty difficult. It was too difficult for one man in particular as his skies got tangled up with the poles and he went crashing. I think he might have been hanging at the beer garden too long but his buddies laughed hysterically, as did I.
*** There were almost no snowboarders. I guess the Europeans still look at this as a sport for punk kids and the lower class.
*** On your way to the ski lift, once you make it through the poles, you still have to make it through the electronic turnstiles. The ski pass had a bar code on it so you would approach the turnstile, enter your ski pass into the turnstile, and pass. The difficult part was the turnstile was pretty tight and you had to go through sideways since you are strapped into the snowboard. It was a major pain in the ass. In my opinion, it's a lot easier and - probably cheaper - to just have some high school punk check the ski passes manually like they do in the States.
*** I was feeling fine after day 1 of snowboarding while the others were really aching. I began to think I was a real stud...until the last day when I realized that I wasn't as cool as I thought I was. I was aching pretty badly then. I guess 3+ days of snowboarding took its toll.
*** Lots of little kids ducked under the aforementioned turnstiles. It was pretty funny.
*** There were some really great skiers. There were even a few who were practicing skiing on 1 ski. Damn show-offs.
*** In addition to snowboarding well, I never fell while getting off the ski lift - YES!
*** Julie was snowboarding one day and got a bit too cocky. She wasn't paying attention and fell into a hole on the side of the run. It was pretty funny. She was still strapped into her board and totally stuck. She looked like a turtle that was stuck on its back.
*** There was a US Army base in Garmisch. We kinda joked about the type of person who gets sent to Garmisch. What am I talking about, I would flee to Canada before I would go anywhere with the Army. Anyways, there were signs near the base that read "US Facilities". Julie kept wondering if that meant there might be a DQ nearby?!?!
*** Our apartment was no smoking but for some reason, it came supplied with ash trays. Strange.
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Well, that's it from here. See ya after Italy.
Hope all is going well with you.
-Stephen
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