1 day, 2 castles, 3 steep climbs, 1 giant blister and 1 single-serving friend (King Ludwig’s Castles; Germany)

Fussen

I went to Fussen for one day to see the two castles there: Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein. Fussen is a cute Bavarian town and a great place to base your exploration of the two Schwangau castles. The town has restaurants and shopping and other things to do, which Schwangau doesn’t really have. Additionally, Fussen has a small castle up on the hill towards the back called High Castle. This has nothing to do with The Man in the High Castle sadly. But it is photogenic with that and mountains as backdrops.

In Fussen, I stayed above an apothecary on the main shopping street leading toward the castle. It was tangentially related to Crazy King Ludwig as the apothecary in the building back then had worked with the King and the furniture in my room was original from that time (2 beds, table and chairs, and a wardrobe cabinet). There were pictures of Ludwig and laughing faces as decorations. It was a great space with a mini-kitchen and refrigerator stocked with a few drinks (2 colas, 2 apple drinks, and 2 water bottles) and creamers for the coffee and tea that were provided. The room also came with two chocolate bars, a Fussen bus card (that is how you get to Schwangau), and there was a bakery around the corner that opened early in the morning with the best danish I’ve ever had (peach and raspberry with a wonderfully crispy crust). There are restaurants of many types, so you can have pretty much anything you want to eat there.

Neuschwanstein’s Hill

The trip to the two castles from Fussen is easy. The bus stop is right outside the train station. That bus takes about 10 minutes to go up to the base of the mountain in the town of Schwangau. From there, you walk for about a half-hour or 40 minutes to get Neuschwanstein or about 10 minutes to Hohenschwangau.

While climbing the hill to Neuschwanstein the first time, I ran into a woman named Samantha who was also trying to get a good picture of the castle. I had my Pixel Google-Fi phone and it was working, and hers wasn’t, so we tried to follow the walking path google suggested. We climbed to the castle but then realized we’d bypassed the route to the bridge, and when we got back to it, realized the sun would set before we’d make it there and back, so gave up. She was happy that she at least got some good pictures. So my single-serving friend went on her way.

I climbed it the next morning attempting to get to the bridge again and found a sign at the top that the bridge was closed for repairs, which I could confirm later from inside the castle as there were no people on the bridge. The third time I went up, I rode the horse carriage, twice is enough and I had a big blister on one foot already.

The horse carriage is a great way to get up to the top, particularly if it is snowing, or has snowed. See the view I had on my trip up on YouTube: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=szShvBJuLyk

Ticket timing

If you bought tickets to enter the castles, make sure you are on time for your tour. When the time of your tour is shown on the signs, you can get through the turnstiles, and for 4 minutes afterward. After that, your ticket will no longer work.

Hohenschwangau

There are just a few rooms on the tour of Hohenschwangau. Tours are by an audio guide with a human shepherding you from room to room. They send a signal to each device as you go by to play the correct audio. Because of the number of people on the tours, the rooms were full. So it was hard to move around to see the things that were mentioned in the audio. The last family member who lived there had a wheelchair and had a now unused lift installed in the stairwell – it hasn’t been used since the early 1900s when he died and the place turned into a full-time museum.

Neuschwanstein interior

The Neuschwanstein tour is similar but given in multiple languages and cued at the same time. NWS tour – similar, but in all different languages, and all cued at the same time by the leader. Ludwig’s bedroom was gothic, the rest of the castle was medieval style. He didn’t get to finish it, because when he was 40 he was arrested after several people who didn’t know him stated that he was insane and unfit to rule. Later he went for a walk with a psychiatrist and the two of them were found dead in a lake. Today there is still debate as to whether he was merely eccentric or truly insane.

There is a video display in the castle showing what some other rooms and the planned chapel that weren’t completed would have likely looked. Everything in the castle is multi-colored and ostentatious. The dining room mural was a battle, but there was no blood because that wasn’t the romantic thing to do. Just imagine having a banquet in a room with bleeding people all over the walls.

Both castles have a nice view of the other. For the most part, nearly everything is in protective boxes or behind plexiglass walls in Neuschwanstein. They’ve started a similar protective process for some things in Hohenschwangau.