Hohenschwangau: Exploring Castles & Mountains

Neuschwanstein from the road upon first-approach.
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From the Deutsche Bahn (DB) train station ticket-counter at the Munich airport, I purchase a ticket for EUR 19.80 (about $25 ) to the train-station in Füssen, the town nearest my destination of Hohenschwangau. I then go downstairs and catch a Schnellbahn (fast-train) to the stop at Muenchen-Pasing. I then transfer to a Regional Express train that takes me the rest of the way to the Füssen station, which is about 70 miles south of Munich. The total journey by train is 3.5 hours. The views of the rolling pastures and rural houses and barns south of Munich are really picturesque. Everything seems to be kept, as my friend said after looking at these photos, "Just so". The experience of rolling through this scenery is very much like watching a clearly detailed painting done in a decided set of colors unfold before you. The green, carefully manicured fields, the neatly kept and uniformly red, terracotta tiled roofs, and the unabashedly content cows, this place appears a bit more perfectly painted than the picture of similar rural surroundings is near my home. Aside from the pervasive, wafting scent of cow manure through the windows, the train ride was very pleasant and allowed me a good amount of time to rest my legs. I did have a potentially volatile encounter with the train-conductor, or at least sensed the tension building, when I was asked to show my ticket during a routine spot-validation check and couldn't manage to locate it in my bag for almost a full minute. I assured him I did have it and asked him in German to please allow me an extra moment to produce it. I found it pretty fast and showed it. He gave me what I would describe as a respectfully acknowledging glance later on in the trip, which I took to mean everything was cool. The lesson of this is "always have your train ticket ready to show for inspection". The penalty for being caught as a Schwarzreiter (more or less, a Dark Rider, i.e. a passenger through deception) is around EUR 40 payable immediately to the inspector, plus the cost of your actual journey's ticket-price, with a mandatory dose of public humiliation. There are no broken down farming machines or automobiles, no old billboards, no trash piles, and no dilapidated structures cluttering the view of the landscape here. The farm and livestock industry looks to be thriving in this place. The view approaching the Allgäu mountains is impressive once you are far south enough to see them from the train.

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The town of Hohenschwangau is nestled into the foot of the mountains. Though people do live here in some very quaint private homes, the hotels, restaurants, souvenir and gift shops located on Alpseestrasse represent the majority of buildings in the town center which is situated roughly between the Castles Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein.

Ihre Fahrkarte, Bitte!

There is a regularly operating horse-drawn carriage brigade that transports visitors to and from both castles for a small fee. There are also buses going from the center of town to Neuschwanstein, and to the nearby Marienbruecke (Marien Bridge).

On the train from Munich to Fuessen
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On the morning of the 8th, I made my way to the Hohenschwangau ticket office on Alpseestrasse, claimed the time-stamped tickets for both castles (called a Königsticket) that I'd reserved two months prior, and walked up the hill on the path to Hohenschwangau castle. I waited in the courtyard for a tour-guide to come outside and announce the entry for my time-slot, but I never saw him - or at least not until fifteen minutes later, and then I went up to the turnstile to go through with my ticket and he advised that my scheduled tour had already begun and it was too late to go in. A nice middle-aged German couple, who were the only ones aside from me standing there at the turnstile, politely argued on my behalf, in German, with the guide, reiterating that there had been no one there at the turnstile (neither tourists nor guide) at my English-language tour time-slot of 9:30a.m. (i.e. so how could I have known to simply go through and into the castle at that time?). They suggested that I go along with their tour, if I didn't mind getting the narration in German, and the guide agreed that this would be fine and added that I could alternatively wait until the next tour in English at 10:30a.m. I expressed my sincere thanks to the couple for trying to assist me, but I decided to instead walk down to the village, have a cup of espresso and then head on up to the other castle, as I didn't want to risk being late for that tour at 11:00a.m. as a consequence. Neuschwanstein was what I really came to see. Still, I did manage to get a lot of great photos of the exterior and courtyard of Hohenschwangau.

On the train from Munich to Fuessen
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I make my way up the mountain via the long, paved road to the more majestic Castle Neuschwanstein. Jutting off from this main road travelled by the tourist-buses and horse-carriages to and from the castle, there are a few quiet forest paths leading to and from the town. I take the road on my walk up, but I will take one of the trails through the dense trees on the way back down. Unfortunately, photos of the richly decorated interior of the castle are not allowed, though I do get some better scenic shots of the town and surrounding landscape from the castle windows. I conclude my tour of the castle, have a cup of espresso and piece of cheesecake in the castle's cafe, and walk back down the mountain road to the town, taking the first side-trail I find to my right. The lower-layers of fog have lifted, for the most part, and made the forest brighter. The foliage is very lush, and has some of the tallest trees I've encountered in shere numbers like this. It's damp from the rain last night and the foggy conditions this morning.