Neuschwanstein

Yes, I was there. Have you ever woken up the morning after an incredible night and wondered if it had all just been a dream? That’s kind of how I feel about this entire last week. But on the other hand, I’m still in England, everything around me is still beautiful, and I still have so much left to see and do… is it possible to have a dream within a dream?

I suppose you could say I am feeling a little overwhelmed at the moment. That being said, I cannot promise you that this blog will flow in any sort of logical manner, as my brain is going in about a hundred directions at once. Maybe I should talk about Neuschwanstein, as that is one thing that does stand out fairly easily. We got out of the conference around noon on Friday, leaving an entire afternoon and evening open before leaving on Saturday morning. Thanks to a bug in their ears placed not so subtly by myself earlier in the week, our friends from the Mildenhall wx flight (who had rental cars and their families with them) decided to go to Neuschwanstein that afternoon, offering their extra seats to MSgt B and me.

The weather had been absolutely gorgeous the whole week we were there… until Friday. When I woke up that morning and opened my balcony door hoping to see the sunrise on the peaks that I had been enjoying every other morning, I couldn’t even see the mountains. Low cloud ceilings and fog had come in overnight with a vengeance. It was like the lodge was inside a cloud. My enthusiasm only slightly dimmed, I told myself that maybe it would clear out by the afternoon. Well, not so much. It was raining when we hopped in cars and left for the castle just after 1pm.



The drive took about an hour, and actually took us through Austria as a shortcut and then back into Germany, which I had not realized would happen. Having not prepared my already overworked brain for this additional experience, I just sort of stared out the window in shock as we drove through Austria past immense dark silhouettes of mountains disappearing into the pea soup of clouds and fog. I can only imagine how the scenery would have looked on a clear day. Perhaps the clouds were a good thing… if it had been any more beautiful, my head might have exploded.

The rain stopped and the fog had cleared slightly by the time we got close to the castle, but the clouds were still low and thick. Before I expected it, Capt R looked casually up through the windshield and said “Look, there it is.” I couldn’t see it at first because of the angle, but when he turned into the parking lot, I looked up the mountainside and there it was… blurry through the lingering mist and close to the cloud ceiling, but standing there like a physical version of all the pictures I’ve admired and had in my head for the last several years. My trance was broken when Capt R pulled into a parking space and a tree blocked my view, so I turned to look at MSgt B. He was already giving me a knowing smile and said “Yes, it’s really there.”

I jumped out of the car and quickly found a clear area to stand and take some pictures while the others were getting their kids out of the cars and into strollers. MSgt B came over and took my camera to get a couple shots of me with the castle in the background, but I had a hard time turning away from it. When the others were ready, we walked into the little town to the information center to buy our tickets. The winding, tree-lined road up to the castle is pretty steep, and is listed as a 40-minute walk, or you can pay to ride a bus or carriage. We all decided to walk, but the pace of the group with strollers and young kids quickly became a torturous snail’s pace for me. MSgt B took pity on me and we walked ahead, and though I tried to stick to a normal walking pace, we made it up the mountain in half the recommended time. (If you’re starting to think that I owe him big time, you are right, but remember that we are not even at the end of the day yet…)

There is an area just before you get to the castle with a few overlooks, gift shops, and food stands. We waited here for the others and I took pictures from the overlooks despite the view being degraded by clouds and fog. We actually ran into our friends from the Spangdahlem wx flight at this point… I had forgotten they had mentioned possibly going here as well, but it turned out they had tickets for the exact same tour time that we did. Once the Mildenhall families caught up, we all walked up to the castle and took pictures around the outside and front entrance area until it was time for the tour. The ones with strollers decided to stay outside to avoid the hundreds of stairs in the castle, but the rest of us followed the tour guide inside.



It bothers me that you are not allowed to take pictures inside the castle, because I can’t possibly describe everything we saw in there as it deserves, but I know I will not forget any of the rooms after rooms of paintings, woodwork, mosaic tiled floors, arched ceilings, and everything that looked straight out of a royal fairy tale. The tour only covered the main four floors of the castle, because much of the massive building is actually unfinished; Ludwig mysteriously drowned before construction was complete. I asked the tour guide if people are ever allowed up the towers, and she said there are special tours on Mondays and Thursdays that you can request to go up the second-highest tower. Good to know for next time.



The tour ends, not surprisingly, in a hallway with a gift shop. By the time I finished looking out all of the windows (we were still pretty high up) and picking out a painting of the castle for a wall in my house, we had lost the Spang crew. I called Capt R to see where the Mildenhall guys were, and he said they were walking around town with the kids and would probably find a place for dinner soon. Having been here before, he suggested we walk over to a bridge he knew of that had a great view of the castle, then meet them in town for dinner.

After a slight wrong turn that took us down a different trail, we found ourselves looking up (way up) at the bridge we were supposed to be on. Oops. Backtracking, we finally made it to the right spot… and it was worth the hike. This bridge was obviously the spot from which many photographers have captured the castle’s profile, because it was gorgeous even against the persisting gray clouds. The one downside of the view was that there was scaffolding covering the side of the castle facing the bridge, presumably for some kind of restoration work. But I wasn’t too upset, the whole view was still stunning. Without the clouds and fog, I can only imagine what a backdrop it would be, I bet you could see mountains as far as the human eye would allow. It was a difficult scene to tear myself away from, but I reminded myself that I owed it to my travel buddy and that it was probably past time to meet the others for dinner.

We actually made to down to the restaurant before they even ordered, so that worked out really well. After dinner, we walked back to the cars and I looked up for one last view of Neuschwanstein. It was dark by then, but the castle was lit up like a spotlight, and the contrast against the dark mountains was so beautiful it almost took my breath away. I was afraid it wouldn’t show up in a picture, but surprisingly enough, it did.




When we got back to the lodge, almost everyone from the conference was hanging out downstairs in the bar area for one last night before we all left in the morning. That was really fun, and I enjoyed the time with some old friends I knew back at Barksdale who had since moved on to USAFE assignments, plus the multitude of new friends I had met over the week. I hate to gloss over that part, and since I have already made this the longest blog in history, I think I better save it for tomorrow, because the people I met and experiences I had with them deserve more than a quick summary. They are a lot of the reason my brain is having trouble believing I will go back to work tomorrow and MSgt B and I will be the only ones there who know what an incredible week it was. I owe him a lot for sticking with me the whole time, and though he says he enjoyed everything we did too, I recognize that there were a few times he might have preferred hanging out with some of his old friends instead of a bouncing-off-the-walls Lt. So I am thankful to him for that, because he was an awesome travel buddy when he didn’t really have to be.



So, more to come about other aspects of the conference, and here are links to one photo album from the middle of the week http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=309610&id=701905001&l=f13b3b5d21 and one from the day at Neuschwanstein http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=311414&id=701905001&l=752aa4728c. If you actually finished reading to the end of this blog, thank you for sticking with me also! :)