Day 10

Day 10
I’m still freezing my ass off. It’s about 45 degrees F here, 9.5 C. Yeah, it’s rather cold. It sucks because I *still* can’t drink hot chocolate or tea and I want some frigging hot chocolate and/or tea right now!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! I think some happy jackass gets up every day and rings the bloody church bells at 7 am. We heard them yesterday and today. The happy little fool rings them for 5 minutes. It wouldn’t be so bad if the church bells weren’t right outside our windows.
Today we got up and drove to Neuschwanstein. In the middle of a picture, our camera battery died and the back-up camera was dead. Bad day huh? At least we were able to get a panoramic and a couple of shots of the castle before it died. But this castle. My god. I don’t know how to describe it! It’s big just for the sake of being big and only one-third of it was completed over seventeen years. Mad King Louie spent less than half a year total in the castle and he was found dead in the pond a few days after the first one-third of the structure was completed. Of that one-third, maybe 10 of the rooms were completed. Mad King Louie knew how to build a castle. Good Golly. The hike to get to the castle was unbelievable. The completed rooms in the castle showed A: how crazy this guy was, B: how much he liked to spend the state’s money, C: how obsessed with Wagner he was and D: how anybody will do anything the king says do.
The room that is supposed to show tact, decorum, holiness, and spirituality ended up being a parody and really really super gaudy. No pictures were allowed in the castle, so yeah. This room was brightly painted and the end of the room that had St George slaying a dragon looked like St George killing a dinosaur. The ceiling on the other side of the room that had Jesus and his disciples made me want to go grab a Bob Marley CD and jam out to reggae music. It was odd.
His bedroom: oh my god. His bed took 4 years to make because the top of the canopy bed has a freaking gothic church. The royal toilet is really a throne. It’s a plushy green canvas throne with a hole in the middle. Cliff wants that for his bathroom at home. *groans* They had automatic flushing toilets (nice huh?) and running water in the castle in the 1870s-80s. The castle even had pipes running hot water through them warming the castle. Rather modern thinking.
After the bedroom was the living room which was also pretty gaudy. There were over 100 swans in the room so it was also called the “Swan Room”. As all rooms, it was heavily influenced by Wagner and because King Louie was trying to save money, he didn’t have tapestries for his walls. He had hand painted canvases hung on the walls. It’s good to be the king. 10 pts if you can tell me where that comes from.
After that comes the man-made cave that was based on yet another Wagner opera. This nice American lady was asking another tour guide if was a real cave and she was nice and said no, it’s man-made. Then nice American lady said but it’s based on the opera from Wagner right? Wagner with a w sound, not v sound. I could have died. Cliff muttered it’s Vahgner you retard. You’d think that someone who is traveling Europe, going to this castle would at least have the knowledge that it’s not Wagner, it’s Vahgner. The tour guide has been pronouncing it right from the very beginning and this lady made a complete ass of herself and said it the American way. I could have died.
Last finished room we toured was the music hall. Nothing but Wagner influenced and each painted scene was based on a scene from another opera. This dude *really* loved him some Wagner. Geeze Louise. Sadly, Konig (King) Louie didn’t live to hear any music in this hall. It was completed the day after he died. It was the story of one of King Arthur’s knights and very well done. The acoustics in the place must be amazing. I’d love to be able to go hear some Wagner or chamber music played in that hall.
Over all, it was a rather nice day. Colder than hell. I think this would be the downfall for me living over here. They’re giving snow for higher altitudes this weekend. WTF???????? It’s only 8, but I think I’m gonna curl up with a blanket and a book and read for a while. Later!
Me.