Castle breakfast

Camping Bus through South-Eastern Europe (Hohenschwangau)

After a couple of exhausting nights of packing, we left our home town with summer weather to camp on a Bavarian rest area with pouring rain. When we got out of the car, it was so chilly that we needed 3 layers of clothes. Luckily, the rain gave us a small break to get our trolley rain-proof ready so our three girls didn‘t get wet on our rainy walk to the castles.

We followed the recommendation of the tourist info to skip the long hike up to the castle of ‚Neuschwanstein‘ (where entry tickets were already sold out anyway) and rather spent some time in the ‚Museum of the Bavarian Kings‘.

At the entrance of the museum, a sign told us, we could only enter with FFP2 masks. Stupidly, we had forgotten to bring ours. A couple from Baden-Württemberg told us, we should try to get in with our regular surgery masks. They had gone out to eat yesterday and people with surgery masks where accepted, although FPP2 masks are obligatory throughout Bavaria. Well, we were unlucky and had to buy FFP2 masks (for 2.50 € each!!!) at a tourist shop. (Alan’s broke the next day!) Another visitor at the museum even adviced us arrogantly: „That‘s what the internet is for!“, making fun of our ignorance and bad preparation and making us feel even worse.

In the (expensive) museum, we followed signs with cartoon lions, leading us through the exhibition. We enjoyed answering the lions‘ questions by looking carefully at the exhibits. We were rewarded with a paper crown and a very nice box of coloured pencils and crayons.

Magda participated in a colouring contest. She coloured in king Ludwig II, who commissioned ‚Neuschwanstein‘ as his idea of an ideal medieval fortress. He only got to live there for a couple of months, before the castle was fully finished. Because he died at an age of only 40 under unclear circumstances. Just after he was declared mad and incapacitated. The reason for this was the high debts the king had gotten into due to his expensive exotic constructions. Among others, he was planning a Chinese palace, and a hot air balloon with a peacock-shaped basket, being pulled over the ‚Alpsee‘.

‚Neuschwanstein‘ was originally called ‚New Fortress Hohenschwangau‘. The „old“ ‚Hohenschwangau‘ is the yellow castle just next to ‚Neuschwanstein‘ and was turned into a summer residence by Ludwig‘s father king Maximilian II. This is were we hiked to after the rain had stopped.