July 8- Julie’s Birthday at Ludwig’s Castles

Oberammergau is a small town that we fell in love with back in 2001 when we made a whirlwind trip through Germany. It is best known for it’s Passion Play which it holds every ten years. It is also known for the many murals that decorate the walls of the businesses and homes, for wood carving, and for its Bavarian charm. We are staying in a pension that is decorated very much like the other buildings in town. Inside, it smells a little like Grandma Jung’s house and the color palette of much of the décor seems to come from the 1930s-1960s. It gives it a homey feel.

We ate breakfast in the cozy dining room this morning. While Julie was working on getting a little laundry done for the rest of us, the girls made her birthday cards using the doodle pads and markers that they brought for the car rides. Scott tried getting more of the blogs uploaded.

Our first stop today was Hohenschwangau Castle. We bought our timed tickets for the English language tour, and strolled around the grounds (and the gift shops) while we waited for our tour’s number to be posted on the signs. The castle was where the famous King Ludwig II grew up, and was built by his father in the 1800s. The castle contains much of its original furniture and objects d’art. The walls are all painted in the Romantic style with scenes from German myths and history. It was a little embarrassing to only recognize a few of the many scenes, but Scott was intrigued that the Catholic rulers of the area had Martin Luther painted as one of the heroes in the scenes. We saw the queen’s chambers on the first floor and the dining room and princes’ chambers on the second floor. In spite of how large it appears on the outside, the castle seems relatively small on the inside because it was more of a get-away castle for the royal family. The main palace was in Munich. The rooms are fascinating and richly decorated nonetheless.

We then caught a horse and buggy to Neuschwanstein Castle. The two horses pulled our carriage most of the way up the hill. When we got out we got a quick lunch of bratwurst and pretzels, and hurried to the castle for our timed tour.

Neuschwanstein is possibly the most famous castle in Europe. We loved it when we came here in 2001. Those who are reading this blog who know our house would recognize it from the huge wall hanging that we have over the stairs in our living room. Everyone else might know it as the most “Disney-like” castle outside of a Disney park. That is not a coincidence. The “mad” King Ludwig had the castle built because he loved the ancient German sagas from Richard Wagner’s operas and fancied himself one of the knights of ancient yore. He was a 19th Century Romantic, and even though many people might think that the castle was built in the high Gothic period of the Late Middle Ages, it was actually built after our American Civil War. The castle’s charm lies in the fact that it is intentionally built as the perfect fairy tale castle, and yet, it is also a very personal statement by Ludwig, and for his own ego and enjoyment. There are few buildings in the world that are so completely an expression of the unique personality of their owners while still being so emblematic of the times that they were built in. Thomas Jefferson’s Monticello is one of these rare personal expressions of a world view that also shows visitors the inner workings of his mind. Ludwig’s Neuschwanstein is similar in that way. No one else would build a castle like this one. No one else could have.

Neuschwanstein’s rooms are decorated even more sumptuously than Hohenschwangau, and once again the walls are decorated with murals from German myth and history. Dad challenged Anastasia to find as many swans as she could in the castle because Ludwig used it as his personal symbol. Our tour group was very large, too large for many of the rooms. We saw the king’s throne room (though his throne was never built), his bedchamber and living room, as well as the theater he had built for command performances of Wagner’s operas. Scott thought that we passed quickly through some of the rooms that we had seen more of in 2001, perhaps because of the number of people on the tour. Either way, most of the castle was unfinished when Ludwig died, so there isn’t more than what we saw.

After we exited the castle, we trudged up the hill further to the bridge where so many of the beautiful pictures of the castle are taken from. In spite of the climb, the bridge is the easiest way for most people to get a panoramic view of the castle. Back in 2001, Julie complained that Scott had tricked her into making the climb up the hill, but she forgave him when she saw the incredible view of the castle. Today, it was Julie that was excited to see the view again and Scott who was reluctant to start the trek up the hill. Unfortunately, we were all disappointed to see that the whole side of the castle that faced the bridge was covered in scaffolding. (There seems to be a lot of construction in Europe this year.) We should have expected it because we saw some of the workers tinking away at the stone by the windows as we were on the tour. When Julie asked the guide about them, the guide said that the workers were repairing cracks that had been developing in the walls.

We walked all of the way down the hill, and Daddy told the girls that they should be looking for fairies and elves in the woods as they went. If there is any castle that they would gather near, it would be this one.

When we got to the bottom, we drove to a surprise for the girls. It was a long summertime luge run, very near the castles themselves. The wheeled sleds are first pulled up a hill by a towline. Then, they coast down a long metal track, swerving through swooping curves. The riders can control their speed using the break lever between their legs. Anna rode down on one sled, while Emma and Julie rode together on the second. (Scott was taking video and pictures.) They liked the first ride so much that they tried it again. This time, Julie tried to see how fast they could go, and she and Emma were flipped in one of the turns. Julie skinned her knee a little and Emma scraped her finger, but they both quickly scrambled back on. Dad’s picture shows that they were both smiling as they rounded the last turn, and all three girls said that the ride was a “high” for the day.

We arrived back in Oberammergau to stay at the same place we did last night. We walked to dinner and enjoyed the murals on some of the houses. Anna and Emma both liked the Rotkäppchen House, which has pictures of the story of Little Red Riding Hood, and the Hansel and Gretel House. We went to dinner at the Alte Post hotel, where we had eaten and stayed back in 2001. We had schnitzel and noodles for dinner, and Julie had crisp apple strudel for her birthday cake. The waitress got a kick out of how Emma was telling her sister to say, “Danke,” when the desert came. All three girls played a happy game of follow the leader back to the hotel. It was a really good day, and a happy birthday for Julie.

July 7- The Eagle’s Nest and Dachau

We didn’t really intend to have a Third Reich day in Germany, but this day turned out to be one.

We reluctantly left our gasthaus outside of Salzburg and drove to Berchtesgaden. It is in the little part of Germany that juts into Austria, so it was very close to where we are staying. It the place known for the Kelsteinhaus, Adolf Hitler’s retreat, known to Americans as “the Eagle’s Nest.” Julie wanted to see the place, not so much because she was interested in Adolf Hitler, but because the area is supposed to have gorgeous views of the mountains of Germany and Austria.

We drove a winding road up to what seemed to be a pretty high altitude. Still, we knew there was much further to go, and we were only at the place where we would buy tickets and catch the bus ride to still higher altitudes. Even though we were rode up in a pretty comfortable new coach, the ride up was a little hairy as we zipped up the narrow mountain road. We knew it wasn’t true, but at times it felt like the road was almost as steep as the funicular rails we’d ridden recently. Eventually we got to the spot where the bus let us off, but there was more elevation to cover. We walked through a long, dark and very chilly tunnel to a shiny brass elevator that zipped us up to the building that was the Eagle’s Nest.

You might expect a place that Hitler had used as a personal retreat to have a feeling of evil hanging over it, but this place was very pleasant. In fact, Hitler was barely mentioned at all. There were more pictures of Eisenhower and Omar Bradley hanging there than of Der Fuhrer. It may be because German law forbids the use of anything that might be interpreted as Nazi propaganda, including the use of swastikas and Hitler’s image. The stone building has been redone as a restaurant, and is a very pleasant place to visit.

We weren’t going to eat there, but like most of the other people that came, we tramped around the mountain top, first slightly below the building, then on the stones and paths that rise above it. The view of the mountains that surrounded us was amazing, as was the view of the valleys below. We could see all the way to Salzburg, and could clearly make out the long white building of the fortress that we had visited two days ago. You have to look up at that fortress from wherever you are in Salzburg, but from here, it looked so far down! There was no snow on the peak that we were on, but there was some on the neighboring heights that didn’t seem to be too much higher than us. A short path led on to heights above the restaurant, and we explored the odd rock formations that jut out from the peak.

While we were on the mountain, the weather was cool but sunny. Ominous looking clouds started to roll in just as we were ready to leave. We could see the grey wall crawl down and across from nearby mountains. As we got to the bottom, we could see that the peak we were on had just been swallowed whole by the foggy mass. At the same time, crowds of people were starting to swarm up the mountain, but we knew that the amazing view that we had just enjoyed would be completely obliterated for them. We certainly appreciated the fact that we had gone up early.

From there we drove a little ways to Munich, and ate a lunch at a rest stop along the way. Brats and pretzels were for Dad. Mom had some schnitzel. The kids got “kids meals” because they were giving away SpongeBob inflatable rafts with each one. (Here, SpongeBob’s name is SpongeBob SchwammKopf, which translates as “SpongeBob SpongeHead.”) The kids meals came with pommes fritz (French fries) and these little meatball things that looked like “hush puppies.” We’re not sure what kind of meat it was, but it didn’t seem like chicken or fish.

We then went to the concentration camp site at Dachau, which is northwest of Munich. Believe it or not, it was Julie that wanted to go to this site, not Scott. There was a drizzling rain most of the time that we were here, which created an appropriately somber mood.

We weren’t sure what to expect here. When you first arrive, you come to a visitor’s center that is not unlike the kind that we have seen at many national parks and Civil War battlefields across our nation. (In fact, the prison camp at Andersonville seems a reasonably close parallel to the kind of thing being memorialized here, though there are important difference to be sure.) There is a movie that is shown, but the guides told us that it was not really for children. After the visitor’s center, you enter the grounds of the camp itself, through the infamous gate that still carries the words “Arbeit Macht Frei,“ (“Work makes you free.” -- The Nazis always claimed that they were putting worthless people into these camps in order to instill a work ethic into them.) A few of the main buildings still exist, and throughout these buildings are large displays in both German and English that cover a variety of topics. The museums displays were tastefully done and very detailed. The first set was a rather in depth look at how the Nazis came to power. Julie noted how visitors to the memorial had scratched Hitler’s face out of most of the pictures. The prisoners’ arrival in the camp was described in the very building where they were stripped of all their clothes, personal belongings and dignity. Other exhibits examined the history of the camp itself and the various phases it went through, the lives and varieties of the people that were interred there, and the tiny little ways that they tried to resist. Most of the places that were used as barracks for the prisoners are gone, but there are one or two that are left. Inside one can see recreations of the types of beds and living space that the prisoners had. There are also several memorials built on the part of the grounds that was originally used as the assembly area for roll calls. One of these memorials has the phrase, “Never Again,” written in several different languages.

Scott was particularly intrigued by a display about how music in the camp was used by the Nazis to try to break the prisoner’s spirits, and by the prisoners to try to keep a little of themselves from their oppressors. There was a particularly moving story about a Christmas service. The witness to this said he could “never again experience on earth” what he heard as the prisoners from many different countries took turns sharing the carols from their homelands in their native languages. (Which should also remind us that Jews were only one of many groups that were interred here.)

It turns out that Dachau was not the site of the mass gassings of prisoners. That happened at some of the other infamous death camps like Auschwitz. However, there were many brutal murders there, and still many more deaths from the disease and mistreatment. The brutality and heartlessness of the guards at Dachau was infamous among the oppressed people of the Third Reich and a point of pride of the SS.

We tried to explain to Anna a little bit about what we were seeing as we went. It helped that we had just watched the Sound of Music, and she knew that Nazis were bad people who wanted control over good ones. Emma just patiently endured the visit.

After Dachau, we had planned to go to the famous Hofbrauhaus that is one of Scott’s favorite places. The visit to Dachau and the rain had both dampened our festive spirit. When we ran into traffic problems in rush-hour Munich, we stopped trying. Physically tired, emotionally spent, and frustrated, we worked our way south to Oberammergau, where we had a room waiting for us and called it a night.