What. A. Day. We woke up early to take the bus from Garmisch-Partenkirchen to the Neuschwanstein Castle, which turned out to be almost 2 hrs away taking that specific bus. The guy at the Info Centre here gave us the timetable for that same bus so that we would be able to get home as well. We arrived at the tiny village where the castle is at 11:30, and low and behold, the tickets were already sold out for the day... Not ideal. We thought with it being the off-season, things would be slow. Oh, how wrong we were.
We tried to make the best of it and walked up the mountain to the castle and were able to go in the courtyard to take some photos before hiking to the bridge that crosses a very steep gorge with some great views of the castle. (Sidenote: this bridge was not my idea of fun. There were tons of people crammed on it, shoving, flailing selfie-sticks, and the boards were not fixed very well, so there was a lot of motion that I did not deal well with haha.) Case and I climbed higher on the mountain to escape the crowds and to find some good look outs, which was a good idea!
Afterwards we headed down to catch our bus. Wrong. The timetable the guy gave us was incorrect and a bus to take us where we needed to go didn't come for another 2 hours. The influx of tourists was pretty unexpected, we learned from the lady working at the Info Centre there, and as such all of the cafes and restaurants had absolutely no space. We were turned out of a few places trying to find a spot to warm up and have a coffee, so that wasn't too enjoyable, because it was quite cold out!
Finally the bus we needed to catch showed up. We got on after clarifying with the driver where we needed to change to get back to Garmisch, and waited until that stop. Another couple and Case and I got off at this so-called "bus stop". Disclamer: it was a wood shanty on a roadside turnout off the highway in the middle of nowhere. The only other infrastructure we could see were two farm houses on the hills. We started visiting with the other couple, Cindy and Scott, who we learned were from Nova Scotia. Thank God for fellow Canadians. Scott actually worked at the airforce base at Cold Lake for 9 years and was familiar with our area! He also worked for NATO here in Germany, so bless his soul, he could speak some German. As much as we loved visiting, we all started to come to the realization that a bus definitely should have shown up by now. It was quite dark already and we were all freezing. By a stroke of luck, a tour bus stopped and a woman and her son were cleaning it out before heading home. Scott went over to ask her about the bus situation and our suspicions were confirmed: no bus was coming. Our driver dropped us there knowing he had missed the connection. We definitely thought we were screwed, but Catherine, the driver, turned out to be an angel sent from above and offered to drive us to Oberammergau where they were staying. Cindy and Scott graciously offered to let us stay with them if we couldn't find a way home, but luckily we were able to catch the last bus outta there!
We couldn't think of any other strangers that we would rather be stranded with, and we're so thankful to them for just being good people. We shared a lot of laughs and received some great travel tips, and hopefully shared a few of our own!
 |
| Neuschwanstein Castle |
 |
| Pictures from the outside are all anyone gets, as Cindy told us you weren't allowed to take any photos of the interior anyway! |
 |
| Basically a real-life fairy tale. |
 |
| This as is good as it's gonna get for an inside picture |
 |
| Not super impressed by this |
 |
| But this was worth it |
 |
| Looking down in disdain at all the tourists who got tickets... |
 |
| Just enjoying some time in the Forbidden Forest |
 |
| It was cold up here! The frost stayed on the trees all day. |
 |
| Cliffs don't phase him (see previous adventure) |
 |
| Take the same pics of me, please |
 |
| LIES. |
Comments
Post a Comment