Hey, look! A castle!

From a lot of places in Fussen,  which is right on the Austrian border at the foot of the Alps, you can see Neuschwanstein off in the distance.  Maybe you would eventually get used to it, but for the days we were there it remained a pretty crazy sight.

This is the view from one of the streets in Fussen we walked every day into the center of town.

Here's a different closer view from the Marien Brucke (Mary's Bridge).  It was raining so a few raindrops are on the lense.

Mad King Ludwig II had Neuschwanstein built on old ruins starting in 1869, but he died in 1886 and the work stopped so it's actually partly unfinished.  The inside that is finished has lots of weird details like a hallway that's fashioned like a cave and the most intricate carved bed canopy you've ever seen.  The king was a super fan of the composer Richard Wagner so most of the rooms are in some related to Wagnerian operas.  The aforementioned cave hallway is one of them.  We had a very matter of fact tour guide who started speaking German by accident at several stops of the tour. Ludwig's childhood home of Hohenschwangau is right next to Neuschwanstein and in some ways I found it more interesting because people actually lived there for most of the 1800's.  It also had really cool ceilings.

I, personally, find Hohenschwangau more fun to say as well.

Say it with me: Ho-en-shvan-gau

Fussen itself was a pretty nice small town in Bavaria, but most tourists just use it as a staging ground for the castles.  There are lots of places to buy lederhosen and dirndls. 

The food here is really good, but really heavy and basically all meat so sometimes you want a salad instead, but from my experience, avoid that impulse and just eat more schnitzel.  Get the salad when you are sure it won't be weird and unsatisfying.  

Oh, the beer though, you can sit down at just about any eating establishment and mumble "wiesbier" in unconfident German and you will shortly have half a liter of deliciousness in front of you.  You don't even mention brands, they just bring you whatever they happen to serve and they're all great.  Every place seems to have a brand preference,  sort of like how you can only get Coke or Pepsi at places in the States.  If you just said "I'll have a beer" at a bar in Boston they'd probably say, "That's nice, we have about 60, which one?"

Well, I've rambled long enough for now.  More to come.