Horror and Fantasy…Bavarian Edition

Jessica and I spent the first week or so of September wandering the streets of Munich and then walking across the Bavarian countryside. One of the first things we learned about Germany is that they don’t mess around on the masking front–they take COVID pretty seriously. We thought people were pretty good about masking in Italy (though less so in Dolomiti huts than in towns), but in Germany FFP2 or KN95 masks are required on all transportation and other similar public spaces. And unlike Italy, almost no one gets away with exposed nostrils or the like. We even went to a movie there and they spaced people so widely that there were about 30 folks in a theater made for about 250. So, overall, Germany felt pretty safe on the COVID front.

Munich was much as the guidebooks describe it–a very low key city. There’s lots of great stuff: art, history, etc., but the pace is relatively slow, the noise far less than expected, and the density very manageable. Wandering around Munich we particularly enjoyed the clashing architectural styles of various eras being mashed up against one another. There was everything from medieval towers to ultramodern edifices with a bit of everything in between. A few examples…

The same went for the underground, where there were some very new trains and some that looked like they were leftover from the 70s or 80s with their lovely wood paneling…

We also encountered some very amusing and unusual sights in our wanderings…

  • A mannequin being eaten by lobsters
  • The devil’s footprint in a church.
  • A boat in the sky that acted as a beer garden
  • A sheep made of concrete
  • The home of the future
  • A campaign sign with a fairly explicit “Fuck Nazis” message
  • And surfers. Yup surfers. Hundreds of miles from the nearest ocean, they’ve created an artificial wave in a tiny bit of river here. Surfers line up to take turns riding it for anywhere from 3 seconds to a minute-or-so before they tumble into the water and the next person hops in. For my friends who enjoy surfing: no paddling out!

One of the nicest spots was the Englischen Garten, where folks go to hang out for the day, picnicking, playing games, sunbathing, and sometimes lying in the tall grass nude–not a thing we see in the US quite as much.

We saw the famous Glockenspiel do its little show. It was fun, but a little underwhelming. Our walking tour guide had explained that there was a jousting bit where the local Bavarian knight defeats the Austrian one. When the two knights rode past each other without anything happening, I asked, “How are we supposed to know the Bavarian one won?” Seconds later, the knights made a second pass at each other, and you can see the Austrian knight getting knocked off his horse. Question answered.

One of the most fun spots in Munich was the Viktualienmarkt, with hundreds of stalls selling fresh goods from the region and beyond. We enjoyed some good pickles and learned about why the beer gardens, like the one pictured here, traditionally are planted with chestnut trees–they provide shade and a shallow root system to protect and cool underground beer storage as well as shading the customers from the sun.

Of course, we also investigated the darker side of Germany. I went to Dachau, just outside Munich for a short audio-guided tour and Jessica and I did a walking tour of Third Reich history in Munich as well. Unfortunately, I was a bit rushed at Dachau, several buildings were closed due to COVID, and the audio guide wasn’t quite as effective for me as having someone to talk to, so it didn’t feel quite as impactful as expected. I guess I feel the power of history most strongly in conversation (a feeling I’m sometimes aware of when I prepare a lesson I think will be boring, but get very excited about it when discussing with students). Or maybe I just didn’t feel it quite as deeply having visited another concentration camp just three years ago. Regardless, it was still quite horrific. The overwhelming deluge of numbers (Dachau was in operation for a long time and housed and murdered prisoners from dozens of countries, ethnic groups, and political persuasion) drove home the bureaucratic and industrial scale of the horrors of the Nazi era. Besides reading a ton and seeing the gas chamber and crematorium, three things I found particularly effective at Dachau…

  • A chess set that had been carved by one of the prisoners with a butter knife. It described how others had been made out of bits of bread or other items. This one was lovely, but must have taken forever to whittle down. It just shows how little these folks had to live with.
  • Before and after pictures of some of those imprisoned there: showing what they looked like before the war and after being liberated. The toll this took on survivors was clear.
  • A statue that reads something like “To honor the dead and remind the living.”

On our Third Reich tour, we learned quite a bit about Hitler’s rise to power, seeing former NSDAP headquarters and such. We also discussed the fact that the “stumbling stones” marking the former homes of Jews and other Holocaust victims–which are everywhere in Berlin, for instance–are completely absent in Munich. This is evidently because one of the major Jewish community leaders there opposes their use, especially because people step on the stones (they are imbedded in the sidewalk), which is insult to people’s memories. There were, however, a few signs around Munich, at the site of a former synagogue and a plaza dedicated to the victims of the Holocaust. The funniest bit of the tour was our guide pointing out how bad a lot of Nazi art was–especially pointing out a fountain that I had been looking at the day before thinking, “that’s not very well done…” After learning about the death and glorification of a number of nazis in the “beer hall putsch,” we learned that later, people had to give the Hitler salute when passing that spot, so many, instead, turned down the nearby “dodgers alley” to avoid having to show visible support to the regime (which, of course, got some people in trouble). Overall, it was an interesting, but disturbing, way to spend the afternoon.

After experiencing both the amusing and the horrific in Munich, we took a few days to head out into the Bavarian countryside. We selected a three day section of the “King Ludwig Way” to walk, a mellow cross-country route that ends at the famous Schloss Neuschwanstein and its nearby companion, Schloss Hohenschwangau.

Over three days we walked more than 60 kilometers (36 miles), nearly half of that all on the second day. It was probably the easiest “hiking” I’ve ever done. None of those days included elevation gains over 400 meters, and it was about half that on the longest day. To describe it as flat would not be an exaggeration.

That said, it was lovely. We walked through numerous little villages, on winding trails through the woods, passed a million and a half cows (I counted), and through neverending fields of bright green grass. In fact, we realized that harvesting grass is one of the main activities of the area, as that grass is used to feed the cows through the winter. All of this flat, pleasant hiking was with a backdrop of the Alps in the distance, the foothills in Germany and the high peaks in Austria. Here’s a bit of what it looked like…

Sometimes, the way was a little less well kept…

One of the little towns we passed through was Wies, whose Wieskirche is a relatively popular stop on various pilgrimage and tourist routes. It’s a bit over the top in it’s baroque decorations inside, while simple and lovely on the outside.

Of course, leaving Wies was a problem, as this cow had other ideas.

Along the way we stayed at a couple of hotels. One was gorgeous and had one of the best meals we’ve eaten over the past two months. However, it also had a group of employees who stayed up all night partying in the kitchen…right under our room. It took asking them to turn the music off twice (at 1:30am and again just before 3:00) before they finally listened. I’m truly becoming a grumpy old man.

Nearly every town had its own maypole. Some just featured representations of typical farm and life activities. But others featured logos of corporate or club sponsors. This one was right outside our hotel in Wildsteig.

We passed some interesting signage along our hike. First off were the milk-related signs. There was a set of signs celebrating and describing milk production along a circuit that overlapped with our trail for a bit. But, there were also signs (and painted cows) that were part of a coordinated protest demanding farmers be paid higher prices for their milk. All power to the cows (and their farmer friends)!

Besides cows, we also saw quite a number of friendly kittens. My favorite was this one that we came across in the woods at least a mile from the nearest town.

We also passed a series of educational signs about the moors outside the town of Prem, featuring a rather frightening character…

We also passed some less-than-helpful warning signs. One warned us not to fall into the reservoir (which seems obvious, right?), but the other warned us about…fast walking older women?

As we approached Schloss Neuschwanstein, the touristy-ness became a bit more obvious, as you can see from the decor in our hotel in Buching.

Then again, there were some obnoxious tourists sitting at our table playing King Ludwig-themed board games on their iPad.

Oh, wait. That was us. (Consider this stop one on the board game-based tour of Europe.)

Moving on…

The third day of our hike had some big highs and lows. First of all, our plans got thrown out the window. About halfway through the day, we arrived at the Tegelbergbahn, a cable car to the top of a nearby mountain. Our plan was to abandon the KLW, take the cable car up, and then hike down a trail with beautiful views over Schloss Neuschwanstein and Schloss Hohenschwangau. But, when we arrived, signs told us that trail was closed for repairs. Sadness. So, we took a more direct route down towards the two castles, stopping along the way for lunch at a little mountain-side hut serving hikers and skiers.

As we passed by Neuschwanstein, we decided to skip going up there today, since the next day we had tickets to visit Hohenschwangau and we figured we’d go see Neuschwanstein then. Unfortunately, we hadn’t been able to get tickets to go in there due to the limited number being sold during COVID times. In fact, I had been checking for tickets on my phone nearly every hour for a week, and while tickets had come up for other days and times, there were none ever available when we would be able to go. At least, that was the case until…literally 10 minutes after we passed the base of the hill where Neuschwanstein is located. I decided to check one last time, and voila! There were tickets available for exactly two hours from now! We bought the tickets and headed up the hill.

In case you don’t know, Schloss Neuschwanstein is the castle that Walk Disney used as a basis for the one in Disneyland. And the power behind it was the Bavarian King Ludwig II, who was somewhat obsessed with fairy tales and romantic ideas himself. It’s an absolutely stunning castle in a beautiful location, but it is also incomplete, construction having been abandoned after Ludwig was arrested and then mysteriously died. Here’s a few shots of what it looks like from the outside…

Unfortunately, they don’t allow photgraphy on the inside. The tour inside was brief–a very COVID-controlled audio tour (with ten socially-distanced dots we had to stand on). But the decor in each of the rooms was completely gorgeous while also being a bit ridiculous. For example, King Ludwig’s bed chamber had a ceiling with illuminated stars and moon, and servants had to adjust the size of the moon nightly to match the world outside. Most rooms were decorated with scenes from fantastic stories, outlining the life Ludwig seems to wish he could have led. Google “schloss neuschwanstein interior” to see a bit of what it looks like. Despite the slightly limited tour, it was still a wonderful place to visit.

After spending the night in the extremely-touristy, but still charming town of Fussen, we returned the next day to Schloss Hohenschwagau. This is the summer home that Ludwig II was raised in. Instead of fantasy tales, the artwork here focused more on historical figures and events (kings, battles, etc.), but it still was clear how the style influenced Ludwig’s desires in building Neuschwanstein. We learned about the servants crawling through tiny spaces in the walls to stoke the fires in each room’s furnace, and mused about the fact that there were over 150 Bavarian aristocratic families that contributed to one of the decorative gifts we saw. How could there be that many in such a small area? Didn’t anyone do actual work? Regardless, here’s some of what Hohenschwangau looks like, unfortunately, again, only on the outside.

After this last castle visit, we returned to Munich for one last night before heading off to Prague. And since you’ve read more than enough by now, I’ll save that for another day. Until next time…

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