Beautiful Castles, Long Hikes

Waking up at 6:30 this morning was not easy since I talked to my Elon friends until really late last night/early this morning. It was totally worth it though! I showered, quickly packed and threw some lunch and a few snacks in my backpack. I had wanted to get to AJY around 7:15 so that I had enough time to put my stuff in the suitcase. Heidi, Maressa and I decided to share a large suitcase so that we each didn’t have to bring a bag. It worked out pretty well. I’m glad I didn’t take a ton of stuff because after they had put everything in, there wasn’t a ton of room left for me.

Anyway, I ended up getting to the bus right before 7:30 (the time we were meeting to leave) and I pretty much ran there. Everything worked out fine though and I had plenty of time. SO happy I live so close! I would have preferred to have my own seat, but there were none left by the time I arrived. I sat with Charis and across from Heidi and Katie Wolfe.

The bus ride was INCREDIBLY long! We stopped for a break about two hours into the trip. I decided to buy something else for lunch while we were there since I had only packed a Nutella sandwich this morning.

We arrived in Füssen and saw the Neuschwanstein castle in the mountains. I can’t believe that my family and I were here seven years ago. After parking we had a little free time and at our lunch by a gorgeous lake. It is actually the lake where they found crazy King Ludwig dead. They say that he drowned, but it is thought that he may have been killed. The water was absolutely beautiful and we could see straight to the bottom! It was also open for swimming, but none of us did that!

The first castle we hiked up to was Hohenschwangau (Ludwig’s father’s castle). The view from the castle was breathtaking. It overlooked the lake and also had a great view of Neuschwanstein. This was a summer castle where Ludwig would come with his family. We went on a tour in German. The tour guide was slightly hard to understand since she spoke Bayrisch Deutsch (German with a Bavarian accent). The pronunciation of some words is a little different, but I got the gist of what she was saying! Most of the rooms were pretty small, but of course elegantly decorated. We couldn’t take pictures inside, but definitely snapped a few out of the windows!

We had a little break after walking back down the hill and I bought a few postcards. Next was the big challenge: Hiking up to Neuschwanstein. The hill is steep and very long. You also have the option of taking a horse-drawn carriage up to the top, but of course we didn’t do that. I remember when we did this seven years ago Derek and I complained most of the way up! It was warm outside so we were all sooo sweaty! Once we got close to the top we had to hike up an even steeper hill to the Marienbrücke. There is a bridge there were the best pictures of Neuschwanstein are taken. Super tiring, but definitely worth it. There wasn’t a cloud in the sky so the pictures were PERFECT! They don’t even look real! Next we headed to the castle to take our tour. It was a really short tour since only 1/3 of the castle is complete. King Ludwig died before it was finished. I wish we could have taken pictures inside, especially in the room with the throne. There was gold EVERYWHERE and they told us that the chandelier weighs 2 tons! Wow! Even though I had already been on this tour, it was cool to see again. I think I’ll be framing some of the pictures I took there.

We were all super tired and hungry after walking back down from the castle. We hopped back on the bus and headed to Lindau where our youth hostel was. It wasn’t too long of a trip, but pretty much everyone slept the whole way there! Lindau was really nice. First, it’s an island and second it was BEAUTIFUL! The youth hostel was really nice and I shared a room with Charis, Maressa and Heidi. That was really cool because we could just leave our stuff out when we left instead of having to worry about other people being in our room.

After we were all settled in, the group walked to the main part of town to find some dinner. AJY gave us 12 Euros so we had a lot of options of places to go. Half of the group went to an Italian restaurant and the other half went somewhere else. It was about 9 o’clock when we finally sat down because Dr. Tracy kept showing us different places in the town. That was sort of frustrating because we just wanted to eat!! We ate outside since the weather was so nice. I had some kind of cheese tortellini and it was so yummy! Heidi asked if I had enough to eat (in German) and I didn’t know how to say that I wasn’t too full, but instead comfortable. So in German I said “Mein Bauch ist bequem” literally meaning my stomach is comfortable. You totally can’t say that in German, so we had a good laugh about it. It doesn’t sound too funny when I write it, so I guess you kind of have to know German to think it’s funny! We just went back to the youth hostel after dinner and got ready for bed. Charis can imitate people really well and started talking like one of her roommates who has the sweetest little voice. I could have sworn that she was actually there! It was really funny because her German was pretty much perfect when she talked like her roommate. We couldn’t believe it! We laughed and laughed and laughed for the longest time. Heidi had fallen asleep and I can’t believe we didn’t wake her up! We asked Charis to talk like different people in our program and then we guessed who she was trying to talk like. I can’t believe how good at that she is!