As is often the case on first nights going to Europe, our sleep was fitful. Church bells kept going off every fifteen minutes or so, which didn’t help. Apparently it’s Ascension Day, a national holiday in Germany and Austria. As we would soon find out, lots of things were closed. Major supermarkets, restaurants, and pharmacies were shuttered for the day. This also resulted in some extra traffic on the roads later on, which was not ideal.
After grabbing some pastries at one of the few bakeries open on this day, we retrieved our rental car. Our first order of business was to check out Füssen’s most famous landmark – Neuschwanstein castle. Being well known, and recognizable, we found ourselves with thousands of other tourists. The closest parking lot was full, and we had to walk in from the second furthest relief parking lot.
Getting an actual tour of Neuschwanstein was out of the question. No tickets were available until later in June. That being said, we only really wanted to see the outside anyway. The hike up to the well-known Marienbrücke (Mary’s bridge) took us about 25 minutes or so. Upon finally arriving at the bridge, we barely looked at the castle since we were more focused on getting out of the way — a sentiment not shared by say 98% of the other people on the bridge.
We spent a little bit more time on the bridge walking back the other way, but it’s hard to enjoy it when people kept invading our personal space when there were indeed other places to spread out. For whatever reason, everyone decided that it was preferable to be on top of each other instead of spreading out. Nicole and I got to discussing the downside of visiting sites that are deemed “must-sees,” whether that be because all the tour companies share the same itinerary or things all of a sudden become trendy due to social media or being featured in a movie or on TV. Whatever the reason, it ruins the thing that we’re all supposed to see.
As I was telling Nicole, most people probably don’t even really know what they’re looking at or why it’s famous. Neuschwanstein has an interesting albeit tragic story behind it. Bavaria used to be its own country in the 19th century, and King Ludwig II rose to power at the ripe age of 19. Like many 19 year olds, he didn’t really fancy himself one for politics and all that nonsense. He was way more into music, theatre, and building fairytale-like castles. These pet projects were viewed as a bit eccentric and combined with his introverted nature led his detractors to refer to him as the “Mad King.”
9 out of 10 doctors who never met him to do a proper diagnosis of “madness” agreed. He was eventually deposed/maybe murdered by the Proud Boys. That last part is inconclusive, but King Ludwig was almost certainly gay (the passion for music and theater should have clued people into that, but 19th century sensibilities weren’t ready for such radiance and resorted to name calling and possibly murder). Neuschwanstein was never fully completed before his death, but would later inspire Walt Disney for some other fairly well known castle designs — attracting a similar number of tourists as Neuschwanstein. Disney was never viewed as mad, despite creating an even greater number of fairytale castles.
Anyway…we got back on the road toward Innsbruck and immediately hit traffic that added another 45 mins or so to our journey. This seems to be becoming a trend. Nevertheless, the Austrian border was not far, and we soon crossed into the birthplace of Wiener schnitzel, Red Bull, and 2025’s Eurovision Song Contest winner. We eventually stopped along the way at a rest stop where Nicole had a pretzel and I had a large würst. After another 30 minutes or so on the road, we were finally pulling up to Innsbruck.
Its central area was relatively dead given that most stores were closed today. There were still a few cafes doing good business, and a very large farmer’s market, but otherwise not much to offer Bricole, everyone’s favorite celebrity couple. We continued on to the outskirts of Innsbruck to Swarovski Kristallwelten — a sort of weird theme park for Swarovski crystals. The parking lot was full of tour buses. Nicole wanted to see a creepy-looking water feature topiary thing there. Luckily we didn’t have to pay for all the other strange exhibitions nor deal with strange tourists as we were only interested in the fountain.
Leaving Kristallwelten crystal-less, we continued our drive to Rattenberg to check into our hotel. Rattenberg is not nearly as much on the tourist trail as our other stops and that was a nice change of pace. Most restaurants were closed for the holiday which was a bit concerning, but we did find a decent restaurant for Wienerschnitzel just down the pedestrian zone of our quaint neighborhood.
As we got back to our hotel, we attempted to figure out the remainder of our trip which also includes tomorrow. Tired of traffic and tourists, we are reevaluating our original plans. Where will we sleep tomorrow? Come back later and find out.
passports & pepto bismol 