Fussen - September 9-12
Once again, it’s travel day. Blaine had arranged for a taxi to pick us up at 5:45 AM. He had specifically requested a larger taxi for 4 people plus luggage. When the taxi arrived. it was not big enough to fit all of our luggage, although I think we could have arranged it better if the taxi driver had let us. He wanted to just take 2 of us, but we said no. He was not happy!! The porter on duty at the hotel called and ordered another taxi, and it had plenty of room for us.
When Blaine and Bill bought our tickets at the train station last Wednesday, they were only able to get transport to Munich. Blaine had to buy separate tickets from Munich to Fussen. That becomes important later in the story. The journey today was going to be a total of 13.5 hours. Our first stop was Florence. We had enough time to buy some food and drink before catching the next train to Verona Porta Nuova. After an hour layover, we boarded our next train to Munich. Because we had purchased first class tickets, we had assigned seats on the 5-and-a-half-hour train from Verona Porta Nuova to Munich.
As it turned out, the woman sitting with Blaine and Jeri saved us from having an even longer day than we expected. Her name is Ina Von Ber. She is the founder of the Ambassadorial Roundtable. Here is a quote from the webpage. “The organization has quickly established a reputation as a trusted convener with proven ability to facilitate trade, advance cybersecurity cooperation, create international job opportunities, foster collaboration between international academic institutions, cut time and business costs by maintaining close global relationships with foreign governments and orchestrating meetings with high level business executives to obtain sustainable goals set by industry.”
Her stories of meeting world leaders, politicians, and high-powered business executives were fascinating, and made the five-and-a-half-hour train ride pass quickly. As we were about an hour from Munich, Ina was looking at our connections from Munich to Fussen. We were supposed to catch a train from Munich to Buchloe, and then switch to another train to Fussen. She told us that our connection from Buchloe to Fussen had been cancelled! After a quick search for alternatives, she found another train for us to catch in Munich that would get us to Fussen. Thank you, Ina.
We arrived at Hotel Hirsch around 8 o’clock that evening after a wet walk from the train station. The hotel was built in 1904 and has gone through a number of renovations throughout the years. During World War 2, it was confiscated by the Nazis. After checking in and freshening up, it was straight to the hotel restaurant for a delicious dinner and well-deserved drink. We really lucked out with this one as well. Beautiful hotel, and great location.
Tuesday September 10 - Blaine and Jeri woke up early to get a start as we had to walk down the road to get the rental car from the Hertz office. After a wonderful breakfast we started out. Jeri was skeptical about the walk, because it seemed that we were heading into the forest, but after about 30 minutes we came upon the office. Bill and Karen had just finished breakfast when we got back. We have reservations for Neuschwanstein Castle at 11:45, so we headed there early in order to park the car and catch the bus that takes you up to the castle.
It was raining pretty hard today, so we had to find shelter while we waited for our tour number to be called. Once inside, our tour guide handed us small radios, which enabled us to hear her through her microphone. She was pretty dry in her commentary, and didn’t really ask for any questions, but the castle tour is still fascinating. After completing the tour, we decided to walk to Marienbrücke (Mary’s Bridge). It offers a beautiful view of the castle. Unfortunately, today was bridge was really crowded. The boards of the bridge seemed to flex a bit so we didn’t stay on it very long! Blaine was able to get a pretty good picture of Bill and Karen, with the castle in the background.
We next drove to the cable car that would take us to the top of Mount Tegelberg. The Tegelberg has been a hang-gliding area since the 1970s and a paragliding area since this adventure sport became popular in Germany. We watched a woman, who obviously was new to the sport, paraglide off the mountain.
Once back at Fussen, we walked around town and stopped at Restaurant Ludwigs for dinner. The food was ok, nothing special. As we walked around town after dinner, we came upon a real pillory in front of Gasthof Krone. We told Bill to get in it for a picture. I don’t think he realized how heavy and tight it was, because once he was in it, he could not escape. The people sitting in the outdoor tables were laughing as Karen, Blaine and Jeri were in hysterics!
Wednesday September 11 - Have I mentioned how fabulous the breakfast buffets have been!! After breakfast Blaine and Jeri decided to do some laundry. We didn’t even know there were laundry facilities here, but Karen ran into a woman who was just finishing up her laundry and told her where it was. After Karen did their laundry, Jeri suggested they visit the Museum of Fussen. Everyone went except Blaine, who stayed at the hotel to rest his back.
After our experience at Restaurant Ludwigs, we decided to have dinner in the hotel bar. The food was fabulous both nights that we ate there. After dinner, Jeri had to visit the ladies’ room, so Blaine, Bill and Karen headed up to their rooms. We both discovered our room key cards wouldn’t work. We assumed the hotel had mistakenly deactivated them. Blaine and Bill headed back to reception to get the key cards reactivated, while Karen waited in the hallway outside our rooms. Jeri caught up with us at reception and Blaine and Jeri headed back to their room. Bill did the same.
The next morning at breakfast, we found out why our key cards wouldn’t work. Apparently, Blaine, Bill and Karen got off on the first floor without noticing and were trying their keys on the wrong rooms. When Bill got back to his room, he turned on CNN and waited for Karen. After about 40 minutes, she hadn’t shown up, so Bill went looking for her. Karen had been sitting on the first floor, in the dark (because the hall lights go off if there is no movement) waiting for Bill to return!!! The funny part is that when Bill went looking for Karen, he left his key cards in the room. They had to go back to reception to get new keys. This time the manager just escorted them to the room and let them in!
