Mad King Ludwig's Castle
15 July 1998
Early the next morning we crossed
back into Germany. Just over the border in a town called Fussen, were the
two castles of Mad King Ludwig. We had already decided we didn’t want to
tour both of them. One is a yellow castle that Ludwig grew up in.
The other is a white castle he built later but hardly lived in at all, and is
the one Walt Disney’s castle is patterned after. It is also more popular
with tourists. George said he would much rather see a real castle and
avoid most of the tourists, so we went to the yellow one. They share a
parking lot, and then you climb the hill to the west for one, or to the east for
the other. We didn’t see anyone else climbing that big hill to the west,
but there were two other families who came in after us and sat down to wait for
the next tour. There were tours in German quite often, but we didn’t know
how long we would have to wait for an English one. We met a couple there
from Argentina, and we all decided to go ahead and take the next German tour.
George would translate for me and this other lady, and then she would translate
into Spanish for her husband. Just as we got ready to go on the German
tour, they announced an English tour starting in 5 minutes. We all laughed
in relief and went back and got in the English line. George had taken his
camera of course, but after we got inside they said no picture taking. He
was using fast film, so he didn’t need a flash. He just left it hanging
around his neck and pushed the button whenever the guide got out of earshot.
We had no idea what pictures he got till they were developed. We could not
go back down the same path, but had to walk the long way around, at least a
couple of miles.
I did say he just pushed the button without aiming or focusing!
You can see the white castle in the center of this picture.
The white castle is to the far left, and the yellow one to the far right.