Day 4

Castles, Towns, and Kings Oh My! That’s right ladies and Gentlemen; today’s journey is all about the Royal Castle tour with the “Grey Line” tour company. We started our day waking up bright and early to meet our tour group that was going to be taking us on a guided tour of a couple of the more extravagant German Castles. The two castles we visited were Neuschwanstein and Linderhof, with a stop at a small Bavarian town (Oberamagau – spelling probably wrong) in between. Well as we stood on the street corner waiting to board our tour bus along with all the other English Speakers (for this was a tour for German/English speakers) our guide appeared and was all smiles. “Hello ladies and gentlemen. My name is Clark, Kent or Griswold, whichever you prefer.” He said jokingly. Well everyone loaded into the bus and off we were. Our first stop was Castle Neuschwanstein. Our bus trundled down twisting mountain roads till we finally reached the fairy tale castled tucked away in the Alps. This castle was built by Mad King Luidwig the II of Bavaria. He never actually finished building this 4th of 16 planned castles. The other royal Bavarian family members ended up arresting Luidwig (spelling probably wrong) on grounds of him being mentally mad, in other words he was needlessly squandering the 600 year old Family fortune. Well back to our journey, we were able to go in and around the castle, or at least all the parts that were completed before the king was arrested. Well after we toured the mad king’s fantasy castle we traveled down a ways to a small Bavarian town, Oberamagau. This town is famous for putting on “The Passion Play”, a world famous play of the story of Christ. The true legend behind why this tiny town has put on this play for hundreds of years every 10 years, all starts with death and the plague. When the black plague had been sweeping through Europe killing 1/3 of its total population, a certain tiny town was severely affected. A lone Swedish soldier came limping into Oberamagau one day and within the week, 80 towns people died of the plague. The town was shocked and afraid, so they reached out to god with a promise and a plea. They plea was to protect the survivors of the town from the plague, and the promise was that they would put on a play of the life of Christ every 10 years. No one from then forth has ever died of the plague in Oberamagau, and to this day ever since the many hundreds of years ago the town has put on the play of Christ’s story every 10 years. Well after getting our fill of the beautiful tiny town and its many homey little shops and handmade icecream goodness, we took off for our final destination. Our last stop was at the castle Linderhof, which was as opulent as they come. I personally wouldn’t really consider Linderhof a castle; it was really more of a palace. Castle or not, the amount of wealth displayed inside was stunning. Gilded wood carvings gleaned from every corner, and valuable’s valuables were displayed on every shelf. I’m pretty sure the royal family made quite the logical economic decision in ridding themselves of this extravagant king when they did. Well our tour bus finally trundled its way back to the central train station in Munich where we had first boarded. We said our goodbyes to Clark, our tour guide, and started to think about what we were going to have for dinner. Eventually, we ended up choosing to eat at the Hard Rock Café in Munich for some good ole’ American comfort food, after eating sausage after sausage in other German restaurants. We ended our day with a wild taxicab ride back to our hotel in which I was in fear for my life right up until we stopped at the hotel entrance. We stumbled into the hotel room and promptly passed out once again from another day packed with Germany at its finest.