The Romantic Road - part VI

  Fussen, Germany
Sunday, October 28, 2007

We were reaching the pinnacle of our journey as we drove through the placid emerald lakes and those great wooded pyramids piercing the low clouds that were the Bavarian Alps.  The air was drier and cooler, and it smelled of wet pine cones and smoky wood, and if you stopped breathing for a second you could hear your heart pulsating.  This was the fairytale domain the Romantic Road was all about. 
 
Fϋssen is an alpine town resting on the banks of the River Lech just 5 km's from the Austrian border. Surrounded by immaculate mountains, forests and lakes, Fϋssen becomes a hot-spot for hikers, trailers, mountaineers and outdoor enthusiasts of all sorts all year round.  For the rest there're the incomparable views of the Schloss Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau, probably the most famous castles on earth.


 
We arrived in this enthusiastic little town while the sun was going down, so we found our hotel, an old country-manor-turned-inn with views of the verdant hills, and settled for the night.  For dinner we found a warm restaurant in the centre of the town serving a fusion of romantic German and Mediterranean dishes amid candlelight, red flowers and low music. 
 
The next day, a foggy one, we drove down to the Köningstrasse which led to the site of the King's Castles.  We were the first ones there, so we paid our 17 euro tickets for both castles and waited for our Hohenschwangau Castle tour guide to begin.  It wasn't until about 30 minutes later and a protest on my part that we realized that Daylight Savings time had become effective since that morning, and our weary watches had not been synched.  So when we thought we had awoken at 8am we had actually done so at 7am.  No wonder. 



With another 30 minutes to wait for the guides to begin, we sat on the castle courtyard whose smoothened cobbles almost seemed to have the imprint of hooves and chariot wheels from centuries before.  The fountain of an imaginatively contorted goose to the east looked on to Neuschwanstein Castle just on a mountain opposite.  It was surrounded by silver haze but a curious sun was trying to peak out from behind it, covering the castle in a magical white glow.  I prayed for that sun to make a proper appearance later on the day.
 
Finally our tour of Hohenschwangau Castle began, with a nice German guide who seemed to be in accordance with me that forbidding photographs in a tourist site was ridiculous so he allowed our camera clicks; he only asked that we were not too conspicuous in front of his colleagues.  From his clear explanations we learned that the castle had been the childhood residence of none other than Ludwig II, our lovelorn Bavarian king.  Ludwig's Father, Maximillian II began works on the castle on top of the decaying ruins a medieval fortress constructed by a family of knights in the 12th Century.  With a father that fell in love with some old medieval ruins and built his castle on top of them, how could Ludwig not turn into the imaginative role-playing eccentric that he was? Blame the parents, I say.


 
The rooms were not as lavish as I had imagined, displaying noble woods over gilded bronzes.  The walls and ceilings were decorated with frescos of scenes from Tristan and Isolde, and depicting moments from the epic works of Wolfram Von Eschenbrach, a 13th century German knight and poet.  The corners of walls and ceilings were decorated with Neo-Gothic elements like plaster spires and quatrefoil reliefs, tracery ribs and intersecting vaulting conjuring the high views of Gothic cathedrals.  Through the windows carved in pointed arches were the most magnificent views of crystalline lakes and their thirsty woodlands.  
 
Romantics of the 19th century were known to have a weakness for all things medieval and so a Gothic Revival trend in art, literature and architecture had flourished around this time particularly in Germany and England.  In London it was under the patronage of Sir Horace Walpole with buildings like Strawberry Hill, and A.W.N Pugin who provided the gothic details for Westminster Palace.   


 
After King Maximillian died and left the throne to an already quixotic Ludwig, the castle naturally continued to be his place of residence even though remodelling and redecoration were overseen.  Finding Ludwig an heir was the state's most important task but he seemed aloof towards the candidates presented to him and women in general.  Amid talks of homosexuality, Ludwig finally got engaged to Duchess Sophie of Bavaria but their engagement only lasted a few years until he broke it off.  His personal diaries later found talked about his struggle with homosexuality and his desires to remain pure to his Roman Catholic faith.  
 
We exited the castle after a short but informative visit.  The air was still as icy and sharp as it had been before but a few warm sunrays began to appear from behind the un-budging mountain fog.  Below us a thick quilt work of autumn colors patched the ground and we descended the rocky hill where the egg-yellow walls of Hohenschwangau Castle stand.  From across the valley, on the highest hill around, was Ludwig's other castle, his unfinished symphony, and it was already getting crowded.