Ich Bin Ein Jenaer: Neuschwanstein and Munich

I forgot to mention that on the way to Munich we drove on the autobahn. This road has areas with a speed limit (usually around 120 kph) and areas with no speed limit. The challenging thing about driving on the autobahn is just the huge variance in speed between the three lanes. Most places we went there were only three lanes. In the right lane you had the semis and buses going about 60 mph. We usually stayed in the middle lane going about 100 mph and the people in the left lane would pass us as if we were standing still. You would just be trucking along at 100 mph and a nice audi or bmw or a crappy old car would just go flying by. You had to really check the left lane and the speed of the cars before you decided to pass anybody.

So anyways, we woke up early on Saturday morning to get to neuschwanstein. We were still an hour and a half away and wanted to get there by 8 (the ticket booth opens at 8 and the first tour is at 9). We were a little late (we got there at 8:30) but there was nobody in line and hardly any cars in the parking lot. It was great. I highly recommend renting a car and going early. As we were leaving around noon, we passed the ticket booth and the line wrapped around all the queue markers and then extended for another block and a half down the road.

That castle is beautiful. It rained on us the whole time which helped everything really cool surrounded by the clouds. The lady working in the gift shop at the gate house asked where we were from. When we responded Utah, she got kind of excited and asked if we were mormon. It turns out that she has family that is Mormon that lives in salt lake. It’s a small Mormon world. While we were talking to her a lady came up speaking Spanish and asking where to go. I was able to use my Spanish with a lady from Spain, that was fun. I guess after I started talking to her the lady working in the gift shop got all excited and asked the other byu people if I learned Spanish on my mission. Also, this was really the first time that I’ve been around americans outside of our group. It was kind of weird hearing so much English.

We toured the castle and they rushed us through, I guess you have to in order to deal with all of those crowds. It was cool to see but they wouldn’t let us take pictures. Afterwards we hiked up to the bridge in order to take more pictures. That bridge was a little rickety. The boards making up the bridge moved up and down when you walked on them and there were at least 500 people on the bridge. We tried our luck and it lasted another day. After the lower castle we were a little castled out and decided to head to munich for the rest of the day.

On our way, Mckenna realized that there was a really cool rococo church about 5 minutes out of our way in Wies so we stopped. It doesn’t look too impressive from the outside but I remember being shocked as I walked inside. It’s impossible to do it justice in pictures but I tried my best. When we got to munich we paid a euro to go to the top of the st peterskirche tower. After climbing about 20 stories of stairs we got to stand on a balcony wrapping around the tower that was packed with about 200 people. The crowd wasn’t moving too quickly (mostly not at all) around the balcony so we ducked out after half a rotation. I wouldn’t really recommend this excursion unless you want to pay money for a great calf workout. We stopped by the marienplatz and the fraunkirche that has the devils footprint. According to the legend the architect tricked the devil into thinking there were no windows in the chapel (you can’t see any from where the footprint is because of the pillars) but since there actually were windows he was tricked and couldn’t enter the chapel so he stomped around and made this footprint. That’s the gist I got from Wikipedia. There’s probably a better source somewhere. We made sure to watch the bells chime at the marienplatz and see the clock do its dance.

By this time we were getting a little hungry so we headed over to the hofbrauhaus (apparently a world famous restaurant that I didn’t know about, I’m not as well cultured as I thought). However, the restaurant (a bar really) was completely full. To get a seat you just muscle your way in and find an empty table. You have to be very close to the table when it vacates because there were huge crowds roaming through all the aisles hunting for a table. We gave up after a while and headed over to the English gardens. We got to see a surfer riding the wave in the river there. There was only one, probably because it was raining (again). We headed back to the hofbrauhaus but again, no luck. We looked for restaurants close by but they were all amazingly expensive. I guess that’s what happens when they’re surrounded by rolex and tiffany stores. We headed to our hotel and after checking in, finally found a place to eat. When we finished and got back to the hotel it was again around midnight.

Proof the camera doesn't matter. I took this picture on my phone as an afterthought as I was leaving the bridge and it's better than all of the pictures from my nice camera.

The castle on the way up. Everybody was making fun of me because it took me a long time to see it.

At the castle wall

The not-so-rickety bridge after all

Two castles. Ray you can stay in the yellow guest house below when you come visit our new apartment.

Check out that gut.

The castle that was actually lived in

Wies pilgrimage church. This town was just a little farm town, no real city center, but with a really nice church. How would it be if this was your weekly chapel?

Inside the Wies church

The organ in the Wies church.

St peterskirche. this is the church where we climbed to the top of the tower.

Frauenkirche. the church with the devil's footprint. As you can see all the side windows are blocked from view. The main window you can see would have been blocked by a high gothic altar.

The devil's footprint:

In a version of the legend, the devil made a deal with the builder to finance construction of the church on the condition that it contain no windows. The clever builder, however, tricked the devil by positioning columns so that the windows were not visible from the spot where the devil stood in the foyer. When the devil discovered that he had been tricked, he could not enter the already consecrated church. The devil could only stand in the foyer and stomp his foot furiously, which left the dark footprint that remains visible in the church's entrance today.