Deutschland... Austria... whatever!

Yesterday was quite an adventure!! Gigi, Brian, and I decided to go view Ludwig's castles in Bavaria. Here is a recap of our travels.


Schloss Linderhof

We left from our apartments at the SI Centrum around 9:00 am or so. We drove a couple of hours through Munchen (Munich) until we got to Garmisch. From there, we navigated our way to Schloss Linderhof. The tallest mountain Germany, Zugspitze, can be seen from these photos, but the clouds are covering its peak.






We stopped at a restaurant on the side of the highway. Contrary to the U.S and all the fast food, they offer a real nice meal at the rest areas. The three of us had soup and split a plate of schwinebroten und kartoffel (pork and potatoes).





When we got to the castle, I happened to overhear a couple talking in American English. The guy was trying to take his wife's picture by the castle, so I offered to take one of them together. Just out of curiosity, I asked where they were from. They told me they were from St. Louis and had a niece that was attending Mizzou in Columbia! The guy was wearing a red budweiser shirt, which I hadn't really even noticed until after they mentioned it. The woman told me that she did some sort of marketing for the hospital in St. Louis and seemed exceptionally proud of me for also choosing marketing as my major. The two of them had been there for two weeks and were leaving the next day. What a small world!


















Austria

Once we finished taking pictures at Schloss Linderhof, we asked the guy at the Parking area which way to turn to get to the other castle. He told us to go right, so we turned and looked for signs. A few miles later, we saw a sign that said we were leaving Deutschland and entering Austria! We were so confused but we noticed that the city of Reutte, which we saw on the map earlier, was just south of Schwangau where the next castle was. We trucked on through and decided to stop and take a picture. Here you can see Lake Plansee. The water was so clear and beautiful, it was absolutely breathtaking. Bikers were passing often on the road, so I tried to catch one with my camera.












Schloss Neuschwanstein

Once we made it to Reutte, we followed the signs back to Deutschland. When we saw another sign for the castle, we got back on route and found our way. This castle is the one that Disney used when modeling their logo. When you arrive, you have the option of hiking up to the castle or taking a horse and carriage. We took a steep, 35 minute trail to the Marienbrucke. This is a bridge that overlooks the Neuschwanstein castle. It was quite a difficult hike, but the view was worth it. We took one more trail to get to the actual castle and took some pictures of the outside.















you can see the bridge we were standing on in this last picture.



Unterammergau

After a couple of hours at the Neuschwanstein, we decided to stop by a co-worker's house to say hello and drop off some gummy bears for his son. In order to avoid the expensive tourist trap, we found a local restaurant called the Gletscherspalte and had dinner. After our meal, the three of us each had a piece of the most delicious apfel strudel. It was the perfect ending for such a long day.



By then it was 9:30 pm, so we headed back to Stuttgart. We used the GPS in the car to guide us, but ended up taking two very strange shortcuts. Both of them took us off the main road and through a one-way farmer lane. Our car was turning on all the automatic lights outside of the farm houses as we passed, it was really scary! When we made our way back to the autobahn, we hit a stau (traffic jam). At that point, Brian and I were half passed out in the car and Gigi was kind enough to get us through and back home. We were in the stau for an hour or so and made it home around 1:00 am.

All in all, it was a great adventure. I hope to have more pictures soon as taken by Gigi, but feel free to visit my flickr site. You can see more there! "Click me for more!"