The day we arrived in Garmish, we went to go figure out what we wanted to see in the two short days that we were there. One of the things on the must-do list was to see a real castle!!! :) Since being in Germany, we had driven by many castles and seen them from afar but this particular castle is special!! This castle is called the Neuschwanstein (pronounced new-sch-fawn-stein) castle and just so happens to be the very castle that Walt Disney designed Disney's Cinderella castle around! And boy can you see the similarities! It is beautiful!! So without further adieu, here is a couple pictures of the castle!!
Now they are doing some construction on the castle so please ignore the scaffolding on the castle but isn't it pretty!!! And boy does this castle have an interesting history so everyone, grab your popcorn and drink because here goes your history lesson ;)
A very young King Ludwig had this particular castle and two others built during his reign.
On August 25, King Ludwig was born. Ludwig loved to read and his favorite thing to read were the german fairytales. He was fascinated with them! So Ludwig would go around telling everyone that when he was King of Bavaria, he was going to build a "fairytale" castle. In 1864, Ludwig's father died very unexpectedly, leaving Ludwig to be the king at the very young age of 18. Now Ludwig was not ready to be king, who would be that young?? I know I could barely be queen over my responsibilites as an 18 year old, I cannot imagine being in charge of an entire country! Now Ludwig's father had not prepared Ludwig to be a king or taught him his responsibilities to rule a country so this poor boy was left to his own devices. What does he do?? Goes into debt 45 million marks(now I tried googling what that is equivalent to the present day's currency, but couldn't find much. But leave it up to your own imagination- its ALOT of money!!! ) and starts construction on three different castles at one time!! This boy was not kidding about his castles! The other two are nice castles, and one was used as the family "get-together" spot but Neuchwanstein is his favorite! He kept true to his word and designed the entire castle around fairytales. Every room is designed around a different fairytale and has some of the most elaborate paintings on the walls that you could ever imagine. Unfortunately-they do not allow you to take pictures inside the castle so despite the REAL STRONG desire to break the rules...I was well behaved and didnt. hehe! So you will have to make a trip to Germany or google the castle to see if you can find pictures of the inside. Anywho continuing on.... So this young king blew through his inheritance money like it was monopoly money to build these castles. Around this time, the country of Germany started moving into a more democratic government and although the King was still "King" he didn't have many responsibilities or say in what was happening throughout the country. This truly upset Ludwig and he became quite depressed so he put everything he had into his castles. Ludwig supposably really liked his privacy because NOBODY was allowed to visit this castle. Not family or relatives, no girlfriends and he was never married. He lived there alone with his servants.
This castle was under construction for 17 years before more tragedy hit. On June 10, 1886, King Ludwig was declared by the government as mentally insane(which from my understanding was not true. They did not like that Ludwig was young and irresponsible-I mean come on! What did you expect?! He was served his ruling on a silver platter with a ton of money and no guidance?! Of course, he did what any VERY young adult would do....he spent it!! haha.) and they took him from his beloved castle and institutionalized him. He did not last long there. Less than 24 hours later, King Ludwig went on a walk with his doctor and they never returned. They were both found dead in a nearby lake. The tragic fate of the doctor and King Ludwig was never discovered. To this day, they have no idea how they died.
Because King Ludwig owed SO MUCH MONEY, the government people canceled all contracts and stopped construction on the castle immediately. This beautiful castle was never finished!! The even more tragic part is that it took 17 years for the castle to be "liveable" so King Ludwig lived in an "apartment" attached to the castle. By the time he was able to move into his beloved home, he only lived there 7 months before he was dragged away from it!! How depressing!! Out of his three castles he had being built simultaneously, only 1 was fully finished and that castle was used for family gatherings and such.
Well that is the story of the castle. What do you think? I am not a history person by any means but actually found this really interesting!! :) As you can tell by the above pictures, the castle is built into the side of a mountain. When we arrived there we had three options to get up to the castle. We could walk up hill the two miles to the castle-and at 34 weeks pregnant I very quickly declined that invitation. I was trying NOT to go into labor on this trip. hehe. You could take a horse drawn carriage-and although this appealed to me and the "fairytale" aura of the trip. But it was AT LEAST a 45 minute wait for the horses and we didn't have that kind of time! haha The third option is the option we took and we took a bus to the top of the mountain and then walked to the bridge where I took the above pictures of the castle :) On the way back though, since it was downhill I agreed to walk and boy, I cannot get over the beauty of Germany! Its gorgeous! So the three pictures below were on our hike down. :)
The last few pictures were from our trip up to the castle. Because we took a tour bus to the castle, there were other things that we stopped and saw and one of the most spectacular was this little church! Now honestly, I don't remember the history story behind this particular church but as you can tell by the pictures, it is one of the most elaborate, intricately painted churches I have ever seen. We walked in and just jaws were on the ground!! So enjoy the pictures of this BEAUTIFUL church!!
Last but not least (and I am a bit backwards in talking about this, because this was actually the first place the tour bus stopped us on) was a town called Oberammergau. They are known for two things, the first being their woodcarving skills. They have carvers from the black forest that carve some of the most beautiful pieces of out wood. They are most known for their "cuckoo clocks. Now for those of you who don't know the history of these clocks, the people of the black forest, in 1640, were desperate to find a source of income for their often bigger families because the small income of farming was not sufficing. So they started manufacturing simple wooden clocks that only had one hand to tell the time. About 100 years later, the first "black forest" cuckoo clock was made and quickly made an incredible and triumphant march across the world and very soon began to supply the bread and butter for thousands in the community! These clocks are CRAZY expensive but amazingly made and Julian is well determined to purchase one before our time in Germany is over... hehe. Here are a couple pictures of us at one of the "black forest" shops.
I have pictures among pictures of carvings from the shop but i can't upload them all, so check facebook. I will post more there :)
The other interesting piece of history that Oberammergau known for is what is called the "Passion Play." Here is a very quick history lesson behind this very special play.
During the black plague, the mayor of Oberammergau became very concerned for his townspeople, not wanting his little town to be wiped out by the plague. He posted guards around the entire town and the residents were not allowed to leave and no one was allowed back in. One day, a young man, who was from this town but living in a neighboring village was homesick. He decided that he had not yet been ill, so he couldn't possibly have the plague and wanted to go visit his family. He found a back way into the town, snuck in and went home to see his family. They were very happy to see him but very shortly after his return, the whole family became ill. As we all know, the black plague spread very very quickly and soon many of the townspeople became very very ill. They mayor was desperate to find a solution and he invited the entire town to the local church to pray. The mayor prayed to the Lord and asked God to heal them. If He did this for them, they would share the life, death and resurrection of Christ. From that day forward nobody else in that town died and the town came up with what is known today as the "Passion Play." it is held every 10 years and is a HUGE production. It occurs for 5 months and is a seven hour play-with a meal time break. The last one was held in 2010 from May to October and is performed 6 out of 7 days a week. Audiences come from all over the world and the play in 2010, was 99% sold out each and every day it played-a total of 102 performances. Only members of the town are allowed to participate in the play. The town believes that the play should be as authentic as possible so nothing artificial is allowed-no makeup, no wigs. So for the year prior to each show, you are not allowed to cut your hair or shave.
I thought that was a very interesting piece of history and Julian has also made plans to hopefully attend the 2020 showing. We shall see what happens :)
Well that is all I have for now. I really need to go continue unpacking this house!! We are hoping to have it completed by Sunday at the latest. Have a wonderful day everyone and I will have Part 3 up sometime in the next two days!! Part 3- Dachau Concentration Camp!
No comments:
Post a Comment