Neuschwanstein & Zurich

Neuschwanstein

We left Prague early on Sunday morning (this time around we went to the right train station from the get-go) and arrived in Munich around 3:30 in the afternoon. It was a long train ride. But being it the last day of Oktoberfest we decided to go back there that night to be able and enjoy for the last time the beer brewed especially for the occasion. And contrary to what we were expecting the place was not that crowded. We were able to easily find a place to sit ourselves and order a beer while we listened one more time to the songs that get played over and over and over and over again the whole day, every day.

The trip to Zurich was always in the back of our mind but we did not really make any plans for it. We finally made the decision to go on Sunday afternoon. On Monday morning we packed lightly and headed to the main train station to try to rent a car. The first 3 car rental companies did not have a car available, the 4th one had one available starting at 4PM and then the 5th one we went to -Enterprise- had one available immediately. After filling all of the paperwork we were driving ourselves out of Munich around 1PM: my brother as the co-pilot and me as the pilot. The strategy was for me to drive since I could understand what the signs said and for my brother to be in charge of the GPS he brought me: one of those GPS systems that you connect to the laptop. The plan was to drive by the town of Füssen in Bavaria and stop at the Neuschwanstein Castle on our way to Zurich. And so we did. After stopping to have something for lunch on the road we arrived to Neuschwanstein sometime between 4 and 5 in the afternoon. Visits to the inside of the castle were not possible anylonger because of the time. However, our intention was always to see the castle just from the outside. I really do believe that the castle is more beautiful on the outside (the building itself, the setting, its location, its surroundings) than on the inside. Since King Ludwig II died before the castle was finished he never got to live in it and therefore it never got to be decorated and furnished as he intended it to be. Ok, so it was sometime around 5 o’clock and the castle’s inside was closed. This also meant that the buses that take you to the top of the hill where the castle is located were no longer running. This in turn meant we had to walk ourselves to it. After walking for about 25 minutes (uphill) we made it to the always beautiful, stunning and breathtaking Neuschwanstein.

Trail to the Neuschwanstein Castle

We get to the top and my family realizes they needed a restroom. I wasn’t really counting on that. We see a guard; I approach him and ask him about the closest restroom. He explains to me where it is located and we head back to the location he pointed out to us but find it to be already closed once again because of the time. So we head back to the location of the guard and I asked him if there were any other restrooms nearby. He tells me that unfortunately the only other restrooms are inside the castle but that he cannot let us in because the castle was closed. He then asked me where we came from since he had overheard me talk in Spanish to my family. He also told me that even though he did not speak Spanish he could recognize this is was the language we were talking. And he just continued to talk and talk and talk: in German. He told me how he had to wait until everyone had left the castle, tourists and employees, and then go back and make a last round to make sure there was no one inside, how when he works the night shift he has to make 3 rounds inside the castle, how in the summer he comes to work in bicycle, how much he likes his job because he gets to meet people from all over the world and talk to them as long as they can talk some German etc etc. Since the whole conversation was taking place in German my family had no idea what we were talking about. I could only see my family’s eyes opening wider and wider and their faces becoming more and more concerned and worried. My brother later confessed to me that a couple of minutes into my conversation with the guard he turned to my mother and told her “Mami, I think getting to the restroom is going to be somewhat complicated”. But I wasn’t that mean to them: after a couple of minutes I started translating to them everything that the guard was telling me so they could realize he was just giving me a lot of information about himself and about the castle and not giving me directions to get to the restroom. The conversation was actually very interesting. He told us a lot about the history of the castle, its construction, about the King etc. We also had the chance to ask him a lot of questions for which he always had a very thorough and detailed answer. My mother, who loves all these stories, was thrilled asking lots of questions. That is how we found out for example that from the 2 castles located in this area (the Nueschwanstein and the Hohenschwangau) one of them belongs to the state and the other one still belongs to the family, how on August 25th (the birthday of King Ludwig II) there is a firework show which includes a display of the letter L for Ludwig II, how Ludwig II body is buried in a church here in Munich (until that day I had no idea) but his heart is buried in another town in Bavaria. After saying good bye to the guard we walked to the Marien brücke (bridge) for the most amazing view of the castle. After taking lots of pictures we walked back down and made it to the car…and to a restroom.

Marien Brucke -- View of Neuschwanstein from the bridge

We arrived in Zurich somewhere around 10 o’clock at night after driving thru Austria and crossing the almost non-existent border with Switzerland. Oh, but I must first make a stop and tell you what happened as we were driving on the last segment in Germany. From Füssen we took –as directed by the GPS- a state road that took us through a couple of small towns before taking us to the freeway. So I’m driving through one of the towns and we are all very much into our conversation when all of a sudden FLASH! A bright light dazzled us. We were all like “What was that?!?!” My brother then starts to laugh and tells me he thinks I was photographed because I was going too fast (according to him I was going over the speed limit). Of course my first reaction was to deny it and complain why the driver in front of me did not get flashed since he was going as fast as I was. We later realized that since we were driving through the middle of a town the speed limit was somewhat between 30 and 40 km/hour but I honestly don’t know how fast I was going at the time. As of today I still don’t know if I got a ticket or not. Carlos tells me that the flash means a picture was taken and someone should be getting a ticket; however, he tells me that sometimes the camera is full and even though it flashes the pictures does not get saved or that sometimes the car that is photographed is the one in front of you but you still do see the flash. So I’m really hoping this is the case. Maybe it is just wishful thinking on my part but like the saying we have in Spanish goes “la esperanza es lo último que se pierde” (hope is the last thing you loose). What bothers me is that I have never ever gotten a ticket in my life. I’ve been continuously driving for about 15 years now and I am very proud to say I have never even been pulled over by a police (well, except the one time I was driving the FPL-EV (Electronic vehicle) to go field check a job site, with an expired tag, and got pulled over; however, I did not get a ticket. That is the only one time). So as I was saying, what bothers me is that I have never gotten a ticket in Miami, where I for example have driven over the speed limit, to now come and get a ticket for speeding in the country that is famous for its roads or freeways not having a speed limit. It’s quiet a paradox; actually to a certain extend it is an embarrassment. Oh well, what am I to do now??? It is what it is. The damage is done so we’ll just have to wait and see what happens. I’ll keep you posted. By the way, the no speed limit thing works only on certain sections or segments of the expressways and it is wonderful. I love it. People here do something that is so hard to believe (when you come from a place like Miami): they use the left lane of the expressway only to pass a car and then they get out of it (I’m being somewhat sarcastic of course) and this is the time, where on the most part, they use the no speed limit option. Once they pass the car they don’t stay there holding back the other cars that want to pass other cars.

Zurich Opera House ---- City Center

Lake Zurich

So we arrived in Zurich somewhere around 10 o’clock at night with no hotel reservation. Luckily we had the GPS which had a list with the names and addresses of several hotels around the area we arrived into. After about an hour of asking from one hotel to the next for an available room we were able to finally get one thanks to the help of one of the employees at the Novotel Hotel who called a couple of places for me to try get us a room. Zurich, even though is the most populated city in Switzerland with about 351,000 inhabitants, is a rather small city. And in a recent study conducted by a consulting firm it was found that it offers the highest quality of living among 250 cities in the world from the 5 continents. We woke up early on Tuesday morning and headed out to Lake Zurich. It was then off to the city center, Bahnhofstrasse with all of its designer shops (only to window shop) and the pedestrian zone. I found Zurich (and I guess Switzerland as a whole is like that) to be extremely expensive. We were all in shock!!. The exchange rate that day was 1.09 Swiss francs per 1 US Dollar. The starting price to have a simple sit-down lunch at a restaurant at the city center was around 20 francs. We even walked into a McDonalds thinking that eating there would not be as expensive only to find out that a combo was 11.50 Swiss francs. So instead we went to the supermarket purchased a baguette, ham, salami, cheese, a potato salad, a pasta salad, chips, cookies, something drink and had ourselves a really good picnic right before heading back to Munich.

Picnic--somewhere in Zurich