Sunday, June 10th (Fussen, Germany and then Switzerland)

We woke up early (5:43!) this morning to beat the tour buses to Konigsschlosser, the King’s Castles in Southern Germany, about 2 hours outside Munich. The Konigschloss includes two castles Schloss Hohenschwangau, built by the Bavarian King Maximillian and Neuschwanstein Castle built by his son “Mad” King Ludwig. Max’s castle is a big yellow eyesore built on a small hill just above the small town of Fussen (actually, it is really pretty nice and I wouldn’t mind having one of my own, but it pales in comparison to his son’s pad and its iodine yellow color doesn’t help. Max’s son “Mad” King Ludwig lived in a fantasy world most of his life, building castles inspired by Richard Wagner’s operas. Neuschwanstein (aka “the Neusch”) was in turn the inspiration for Disneyworld’s Cinderella’s castle. Hopefully we’ll be able to post a pic or two of it, because it is really incredible and difficult to describe. The Neusch looks down on Max’s castle, has a giant waterfall for a backyard, and looks out over… well everything. Too bad for Ludwig, he only got to live in it for 180 days. He was declared insane, stripped of his kingship and found dead floating in a lake outside Munich shortly after. The Bavarian government converted the castle to an attraction and had tourists visiting six weeks later.

After visiting the castle we did a little hike to a suspension bridge and lookout point in the mountains above the castle (Carla was a bit scared of heights crossing the bridge but toughed it out and we got some great photos as a result). On the way out of town we stopped to see another waterfall and grab some pizza (we were both getting a little sick of various “wursts” and “schnitzels”) and the smell of Italian food just sucked us in as we walked by. Very tasty except for a couple of flies who kept interrupting us.

From there we drove to Zurich, Switzerland and said goodbye to the Autobahn (I didn’t get to give it the 150 mph sendoff I hoped though since we drove mostly backroads from the castles to the Swiss border.

I think Switzerland has longer and larger tunnels than it has mountains. It feels like half our trip has been underground. We had a little trouble finding our hotel in Zurich since it is only 2 months old and not on any maps or GPS. During our search, the weather turned ugly all of a sudden and we started to get HAILED on! Concerned about our new paintjob we followed the Swiss lead and parked in one of the tunnels until it let up. When it let up, we decided to cancel our Zurich reservation and just keep driving to Geneva where we could speak French and spend two nights instead of just a stop-over.