I'm not sure what happened exactly, but for whatever reason my alarm decided not to go off this morning so we definitely overslept... whoops! It wasn't a huge deal, but we did have to hustle to get ready in time to meet up with our tour group at the Hauptbahnhof by 9:15. Neuschwanstein, the castle that King Ludwig II build and Disney copied for the Cinderella Castle, is located in a small town near the German Austrian border called Füssen. It's about an hour away from Munich's Hauptbahnhof. The castle King Ludwig II grew up in, Nymphenburg Castle, is located in this town as well.

Part of the reason we decided to pay the extra money to go with a tour group is because we had heard that the tour the castle provides is less informative than a crappy free audio guide that you could find online. Considering that the history behind the castle and the king himself is what I find most interesting about the castle, we figured a real tour would be worth it. Way back in 8th grade when I started taking German, my teacher, Frau Lu, offered an optional extra credit assignment every week. It was called "German Speaking Dead Person of the Week" or GSDPW for short. The first "GSDPW" was King Ludwig II. Some people claim he was crazy, others maintain that he was mainly eccentric and didn't like being in the public eye. In any case, the Bavarian ministers were not happy with how much money he was spending and had him declared insane. They removed him from the throne and took him into custody. Two days later he was found dead in Lake Starnberg with the doctor who had declared him insane. His death was ruled suicide drowning, however this ruling is quite suspicious to say the least... for one thing, the doctor was also found dead. Ludwig was also quite a strong swimmer, and the two were found in waist-deep water. There were also signs on the doctor's body of struggle and strangulation...

Anyway, back to our tour... Nathan and I were both dozing off on the train ride to Füssen and when we woke up, we were in the midst of the Alps in Füssen! The castle itself is obviously beautiful, but the fact that it's nestled in the Alpine of the foothills is what makes it stunning. We took a bus from the train station to the bottom of the hill and were given a few minutes to grab something to eat. Nathan and I each got a bratwurst, and I have to admit that ours (Thüringen bratwursts) are MUCH better. I think I'm going to have to import Thüringen bratwursts when I go home to Michigan, because I'm pretty sure anything from Oscar Mayer will taste like dirt by comparison now.

After grabbing food we sat and listened to our guide tell us a bit of Bavarian history. We have the same guide from our tour yesterday, which is great because he is really interesting, knowledgeable, and entertaining to listen to. Unfortunately I've been sucking at updating this blog lately, so I don't remember most of the details, but we learned a bit about King Ludwig I and his family, the Bavarian ministers, various wars King Ludwig II got dragged into, etc. After the history lesson, we started walking up the hill/mountain. There is an optional horse and carriage, but it's really not a bad climb. Maybe 20-30 minutes or so, depending on how fast you walk. We didn't have too much time to dawdle, though, because tickets to get into the castle are literally valid for that precise minute. If you're a few minutes late, you don't get in. Sooo German ;]

The outside of the castle was absolutely beautiful!! The inside was never completely finished—King Ludwig II died before they could complete it—but the rooms that were completed and that we were allowed to see were stunning, especially the Grotto. I would recommend googling some pictures; we weren't allowed to take any inside the castle. The information from the tour totally sounded like a recording, like we were warned, so I was pretty happy we had decided to go with a tour guide. The tour itself lasted about 30 minutes... then it took us about another 30 minutes to weave our way through the countless gift shops... and then we were back outside and ready to go to the bridge!

The bridge offers what is by far the best view of the castle. It's extremely high up and doesn't look very stable, so I was a little nervous about going out on it. But once I got up there and saw the view, I didn't mind at all! I was so busy taking pictures that I didn't realize Nathan wasn't next to me for a good five minutes. When I found him, he told me that he was afraid of the bridge collapsing. I couldn't believe that I was okay with him when he wasn't...especially since he loves roller coasters and I HATE them. I dragged him out on the bridge anyway, though, and I think he was glad I did so that he could see the view =]

We stayed up on the bridge longer than the rest of the group, so we kind of had to hustle down the mountain to be back to the meeting spot in time. We took the scenic route on the way down...aka we went through the gorge. It was SO beautiful! The plants were lush and green and the water looked so inviting—Nathan and I could have spent an afternoon just hanging out here! But we had a train to catch to get back to the city... my friend Susan, who I met in Krakow, is studying in Munich currently and wanted us to come join her and her friends for the opening of a club patio later that night.

I passed out on the train again, and when I woke up we were back in Munich! We headed right back to our hostel to shower and get ready for the night. I looked up the directions from our hostel to the club on google maps. It didn't look too far, so we figured we could just walk even though Susan had told me to take the S-Bahn. POOR DECISION. We walked for about a good 30 minutes., and I wasn't really certain if we had passed the street we needed to turn onto or not.. And of course, I had forgotten to write down the name of the club, so we couldn't ask anyone for directions to it either... Then we saw a sign that had the club's name on it along with a bunch of stores, so we decided to walk towards the direction it was pointing in. There was a guy walking a bit ahead of us dressed all in black and with chains... like Berlin punk in Munich... He turned left, and because we could hear music coming from that direction we followed him. We found a club, sure enough, but let's just say that it did NOT look like our scene at all... I was thoroughly confused because the sign for the club we were looking for seemed like it was pointing in this direction, but there was simply no way that this could be where Susan wanted to take us. We retraced our steps a bit, and followed a group of people our aged dressed in regular clothes around the building and up a couple flights of stairs. & there was Klangwelt!!

It was so nice to see Susan again! The club itself was really cool, too... Jena is a relatively small town, so there aren't any clubs like that here. Even the one we went to in Erfurt wasn't nearly as cool or big in comparison to this one. We only stayed until 2ish because we had more sightseeing to do the next day and didn't want to be completely dead, but I think we would have both loved to stay longer. Oh well, it was a fun night out regardless.... and we didn't have to deal with dumb obnoxious American girls! Whoohooo =]

Tomorrow we're going to go to the Alte Pinothek and Neue Pinothek, which are two really cool art museums in Munich. Then we want to check out this fish market we saw on our tour on Friday. I haven't had fish in AGES and it looked like Heaven... and I think we're going to meet up with Susan sometime in the afternoon. Our train home leaves at midnight and we'll be back in Jena at 5am Monday, so tomorrow will be quite a long day!