grapes, sweat, stairs, and lemon gelato

That pretty much sums up my Cinque Terra tour with Walkabout.  For those of you who know me now, you might be surprised to find out that I didn't grow up watching a ton of T.V.  It's something I grew into recently thanks to the power of Hollyoaks marathons on E4, Irish-language drama on TG4, 5-hour breaks between classes, and good friend recommendations.  (If you're in the market for some great shows... last month's marathon: Firefly.  This month's: Merlin)  Anyway, I did grow up watching Rick Steves' Europe on PBS.  I loved his dorky voice, the way he says "locals" and does embarrassing awkward things all the time.  He took me on adventures from my living room, and I used to jot place names in the margins of journals and textbooks.  It was always my dream to find one of the little, obscure places he always seemed to visit between cities.  They just seem so much more appealing to me than the big tourist trap cities. This was me living the dream...

The Cinque Terra is actually five little villages on the rugged coast of the Italian Riviera.  And, no, it's not quite the little spot I've always dreamed of where I'm the only tourist around for hundreds of miles and a family takes me in and feeds me and we laugh and have a good time.  (Yeah, dream on, Jen.)  There were tourists, and a few of them were aggravating, and, as with any guided tour, I was skeptical about the truthfulness of what I was being told, but that doesn't change the fact that my Cinque Terra experience was exactly what I was looking for.  What I wanted was a beautiful hike down ancient paths, with some element of adventure, completely solitary, socializing on my own terms, enjoying things on my own schedule, BUT with someone to get me there and back safely with no stress on my shoulders.  Walkabout gave me that.

The day started off early and ended late.  7am bus call, 9pm return.  I was immediately adopted into a family of Americans who fed me breakfast (thank you!) and thought I was pretty badass attempting a Eurotrip all by my onesies.  (Except, at that point, I was so beyond attempting.  I was succeeding, dammit!  Hear that?  That's the sound of my ego inflating.)  Somewhere in the first village, I met an older Canadian woman who was also Eurotrekking alone and had done so multiple times.  I found I really enjoyed her company and attitude as well, so for most of the trip, I hovered somewhere between Family Time, Fellow Badass, and Just Me.  Later on, I met a cute Irish couple over gelato who took me in for a while...made sure no one forgot me on the docks, y'know.  :)  I spent a lot less time alone than I anticipated, but none of it was forced.  I wasn't forced to listen to stupid frat bros talk about stupid frat bro things, like how the Czech Republic is such a ~*man's*~ country because of all the ~*meat*~ and ~*beer*~.  Lord, I am such a misanthrope.

Anyway, the company was much better than expected, but hands down, this was one of the strangest, most exciting places I traveled this summer.  The crystal blue ocean, vivid plant-life, terraced vineyards, boxy buildings all the colors of a pastel rainbow stacked one against the other... Because I was on a tour, paying people to keep me safe and get me home, for the first time since Germany I felt I could really lose myself in my imagination.  Since everyone walked at a different pace, there were times when I was completely alone.  In the villages, I would pretend like I was some sort of Bond girl in a luxurious, sexy dress that flapped stunningly in the crisp ocean breeze as I peered over a bridge...or maybe I was a street urchin, stealing bread and filching pocket-watches just to stay alive.  On the rugged trails, I was a brilliant archaeologist, underestimated by my sexist male colleagues, determined to prove my worth and bring back the ancient artifact.  You may think I'm crazy, but I'm telling you, it is so much fun...

This is, however, not a tour for everyone.  There is a lot of walking.  There is significant topography.  It is hot.  If you are a newlywed, trekking with your partner, be prepared for strife.  There was a fresh-married couple on the trail behind me for a while and I could have sworn the girl was going to file for divorce at the end of the trip.  She was afraid of heights.  She was hot.  She was tired.  She wore sandals when they clearly state on the website to wear real shoes.  And it was all her husband's fault.  Man, was she cantankerous.  I think she would have had an easier time if she didn't waste all her energy yelling at her husband, but I digress.  The sun is strong.  The stairs are many.  It is arduous, but that is exactly what I wanted.  For all I talk of safety, I don't want to stay in a safe, tourist-trodden bubble.  I want to be like Rick Steves--awkward and adventurous!  I want to be able to look over a cliff face and feel my life.  The Cinque Terra was perfect for this.  The whole point of the site is that it represents nature and humanity struggling to strike a balance.  Landslides knock out trails; railings and warning signs don't exist.  The land is only as tampered with as necessary to promote the life and culture of the communities.  There may be many tourists, but it's the tourists that are forced to change and push themselves--not the land.

Also, highlight of this adventure: I got to swim in salt water!  I'd been looking forward to it the entire day, and when we finally got to the beach I was so excited, I just stripped down to my bra and underwear and splashed on in!  (I knew I wanted to swim, so I brought a change of clothes... and a rain coat, an extra water bottle, and I stole some bread from the lunch restaurant as a snack.  Always prepared--the mark of a true explorer!)

So, to cut a long entry cut short:

#1 I would definitely recommend the Walkabout tour.  It's a bit expensive, but they get you where you're going, give you as much company and information as you desire, and don't force you to do anything except walk (which, they can assume is why you're on the tour anyway) and be at the tracks on time to catch the train.  Plus, a delicious, local (as Rick Steves would say) lunch is provided.

#2 Don't wear jeans and do bring sunscreen.  Trust me, I broke both these rules.  The only thing I did right was to bring a water bottle.

#3 Go to the Cinque Terra.  :)  Do it!

der tod in venedig...

JUST KIDDING.

No one died when I was in Venice, but there was a vaporetto (water-bus) strike the day I arrived, and so my first experience of Venice included waiting in gargantuan lines with my big, awkward luggage then cramming myself and that luggage onto an extremely crowded boat, dropping it on someone's foot, getting yelled at in Italian, and being dropped off on the wrong side of the canal.  By some divine act of Providence, I managed to locate the hostel after only about thirty minutes of aimless wandering, looking like some dumb (sweaty) American...which, in this case, I suppose I actually was.  Shaaaaame.

Anyway, I'd like to say the rest of my experience in Venice was easier, but that would be a lie.  I quickly found that Venice with a map in your pocket is pretty much the same as Venice without a map in your pocket.  My day began as my days in Europe always began: with me being cheap.  To get to the hostel, I'd only purchased a one-way bus ticket, and I wasn't about to pay for another one to get back to the train station to make a reservation for my trip to Florence the next morning.  (Attention!  Italian trains require a reservation.  So if you've got a EURail pass and you've been enjoying hopping on and off DB and OBB trains at will, don't forget to make a reservation for your trips in AND OUT OF Italy.  You will see later how this gets me in trouble...)  No, instead of buying a ticket, I decided to walk.  To walk.

This...was a horrible idea.  Not only was this the first new city of my solitary adventure, it was a pretty crappy place to start trying to navigate without any prior knowledge of the streets.  One of the coolest things about Venice is also the most aggravating.  In most cases, the buildings butt right up against the main canal, so following the water to any destination is virtually impossible.  Every little bridge over the smaller canals could be every other little bridge over the smaller canals.  Unlabeled alleyways break off from main roads until suddenly you find yourself on a dark and narrow street, the sun blocked by impossibly tall buildings, with no clue how you got there until suddenly a bright square opens up in front of you with bustling tourists, street vendors, fountains, and church bells.  You'd think you'd be able to find this on the map in your pocket, but... Alas! poor traveler, you cannot.

Had I the time and the courage, I might have loved this.  I recently finished a book called The Water Mirror by Kai Meyer (it's actually called something else in the original German, but the title escapes me now).  It's set in Venice and there are mermaids and alternate worlds beneath the surface of the canals.  There are master thieves and stone lions and--oh, boy, it's just super cool.  Suddenly, after reading that book, the claustrophobia and anxiety of Venice were replaced by all the magic I should have took the time to feel when I was there.  Because the city is really, really cool.  Everything about it tantalizes the imagination.  There are no streets--just sparkling, aquamarine canals.  There are masks everywhere (probably a tourist trap, but I like to pretend like I'm living in Othello's Venice).  Did I mention there are no streets?  People will say you can do Venice in few hours, but I beg to differ.  If you want to be stressed out and lost and scared all the time, you can do it in a few hours.  If you want to take your time, stroll down alleyways and try on every single mask you see, and really soak in the beauty of Venice, take at least a day and a half.

Before I go, here is a nice list of my top tourist tips regarding Venice (some repeated [and worth repeating] from the rest of the entry]):

#1 Make reservations for your transportation out the minute you arrive in Venice, especially if you'll be leaving by train on a very busy travel day.  (Note: Where tourist-happy cities are, every day is a busy travel day.  Remember, tourists are on vacation and won't be needing to be at a job during the week.)  Don't believe me?  From Florence, I needed to get to Bern, Switzerland.  I waited until the day before to make my reservation.  I could only get as far as Milan.  Learn from my mistakes!

#2 The best way to see Venice is by vaporetto.  Unless you have time, confidence and a GPS, don't expect to be able to walk the streets of Venice with sure feet, especially when it comes to getting from one section of town to another.  What you should do is buy a 24-hr-or-so water-bus pass and just hop on and off along the canal.  Most things worth seeing are near a bus stop.  You can hop off and explore the area, and then follow the yellow signs painted on the buildings that will point you back to the vaporetto.  (Be careful!  The yellow signs will direct you to different sections of Venice as well [i.e. Rialto] but they are not always easily visible [sometimes they're up high on buildings] or even consistent [you can turn a corner and reach a fork and not see a sign])

 
#3 Don't be alarmed if the vaporetto workers are on strike.  They have a pretty thankless job and people can be pretty rude to them.  They (and other transportation workers) go on strike often, but this does not necessarily halt services.  It usually just delays them, and popular areas will still be getting pretty consistent service.  (For example, there is always a bus that will stop at Rialto.)  Mostly, you can predict a strike by holiday weekends.  If there's a holiday on Thursday, there will probably be a strike on Friday to make it a 4-day weekend... Plan for time-delays.
 
#4 Enjoy your time there!  Try not to be a big, electric ball of stress like I was.  Also!  Be prepared to walk up a lot of stairs to cross the big bridges.  And watch out when it rains!  Streets are stone-paved, which means they're super slippery... I nearly kicked it plenty of times in my tractionless flip-flops!  Safety first!

#5 Gondolas are mad expensive.  I overheard a group of English teenagers arguing a price with a guy and he was like "Six of you--fifteen euro each" and an angsty boy stalked off from the group saying "I'm not gonna spend bloody fifteen euro on a boat ride" while his girlfriend(?) pranced after him, whining about how he oughtn't leave her alone and blah blah blah.  God, I love eavesdropping.  Anyway!  The point is... if you're cheap like me, or are traveling alone and don't have five other teenagers to split the cost with you, ask about being taxied across the canal.  It's not a 45 minute romantic lounge down the canal, but you still get to take your picture and say you were on a gondola.  (I didn't do this--a girl staying in my hostel did, and she said it was only, like, two euro or so)...

So, that does it for Venice.  I hope you enjoyed our first taste of Italy.  Next time, I'll try to whine less.
Next destination: Cinque Terra

fast immer ein kind

Welp, folks, I'm as far behind in my Really-Expensive-Why-Did-I-Buy-This-Might-As-Well-Use-It travel journal as I am updating this blog, so you will have to suffer an abbreviated post on Salzburg.  By no means does this mean I did not enjoy myself there.  In fact, it's one of the few places (minus Dresden) I actually wish I could have stayed longer.  What I'm going to do now is tell you that if you're ever in Germany, you ought to take a trip down to Austria and visit Salzburg (and Innsbruck, and Vienna, but those are still dreams of mine yet to be realized).  In fact, I'm going to tell you that I'd be extremely disappointed in you if you didn't visit Salzburg if you ever have the chance (or the chance to make the chance).  It's a relatively small, easily-accessible city whose pastel skyline is as beautiful as its musical culture.  You can see the whole city in a day, but why should you when you can languish in its decorated churches, go to a concert, read a book in the gardens, eat ice cream every day up at the Festung?  If you do make the same mistake as me and book Salzburg as nothing more than a stop-over destination, here's a nice, organized list (because who doesn't love lists?) of things you might and absolutely should not miss when visiting Salzburg.

#1 Kapuziner Monastery: I was actually surprised at how close this look-out point was to the hotel I stayed in the first time I was in Salzburg about seven years ago, which was directly off Linzer Gasse.  This may seem like a funny observation to make, but it was a walk I always wanted to take, but also always decided against because "it's too far."  That's how I've justified missing out on this for so many years.  It's just amazing how you can distort a memory with a lie, but no matter!  I fulfilled a dream this trip, and it was worth it!  Not only was the view fantastic, the walk, overlooked by statues of saints, was a pleasant one.  Also, I met a really nice woman and her two children.  "Englisch oder Deutsch?" she asked me, and I told her in German that either would be just fine.  We started talking, because she happened to be from Ohio and she'd studied at Salzburg when she was at University.  Of course, I only know one school in Ohio that has a program in Salzburg, and it turns out she is a BGSU alum!  One of my old German teachers had gone to BG, studied in Salzburg, met her husband there, and used to prod me to follow in her footsteps.  Alas, I chose Oberlin...

#2 Festung Hohensalzburg Another awesome view I missed seven years ago, and from here you can really see everything.  It's a bit higher than the Kloster, but the walk is less scenic.  You can, of course, take the train up, but if you're cheap like me, you'll sweat it out, and you won't buy the audio guide.  (Though, if you're interested in the history, I think it'd be cool to get one... I think it was only 2,50 euro...)  Anyway, there's lots to do up at the top.  You can take pictures, wander the grounds and read the history of the place, or sit back and relax by the mountains with a beer or ice cream (or both--as I found out, this is not an ideal combination.  Beer: it's a learning experience.)

#3 Churches Despite what many may say, I do not adhere to the "seen one, seen 'em all" philosophy when it comes to churches, especially Catholic churches.  If you have the time in Salzburg, go into them all, maybe even catch a Mass if that's your thing.  If not, check out the Cathedral and the cemetery at St. Peter's Church.  They're both relatively close and breathtaking.  The pure white of the Cathedral walls, and the details in the carved relief and colorful frescoes, while extravagant, somehow avoid appearing heavy and overwrought.  On the contrary, entering the building from the tourist-crammed square outside, one feels a sense of lightness, and regardless of belief, an unexplained awe washes over you.  Sit a while in here and allow yourself time to stare--and eavesdrop.  (Money-saving technique #549: Eavesdrop on tours, but be sneaky about it, okay, and don't tell anyone I sent you.)  As for the cemetery, it's an experience just as magical.  Modest wire structures rather than towering stones rise from the earth.  Graves seem tightly packed and overgrown.  There is often more than one body from a family buried in a single plot to save space.  There are some famous people buried here, so eavesdropping or finding yourself a walking tour might be a good idea if it's your first time... (Also, go in the church if it's open!  It's gold and shiny and amazing!)

#4 Mozarts Geburtshaus Do not--I repeat: DO NOT skip this!  This was my third time in Salzburg, and only my first inside this beautiful yellow building, whose modest facade could never suggest what amazing treasures lie in wait just beyond the threshold.  This was honestly the best €6 I think I spent spent the entire trip.  What was really interesting was that the exhibit focused less on his music and more on his life and family.  Letters, tiny violins, portraits, grade cards, gifts--that's what you see as you browse the rooms while the music of Mozart and his father sets the mood.  Regardless of how mythical people claim the movie Amadeus is, I would just like to announce that all I could hear when I was reading his letters was Tom Hulce's sweet voice, and I'll say that counts for something.  He did such an amazing job capturing the playfulness you can feel in Mozart's music and writing.  Example: he wrote a whole letter to his father in alphabetic riddles.  To his wife, he wrote a letter, for the most part, detailing all the silly, ridiculous things he did to her portrait when he was on the road (which, added up, totaled about 1/3 of his life).  Evidently, he was pale and lacking in social graces, but you can see in the way his sister and wife loved him that he had to have possessed some sort of endearing childishness... Speaking of his sister, Nannerl Mozart, she was an excellent musician in her own right and many of her brother's earliest compositions were for her music books.  Also, she seems to have had impeccable insight into her brother's personality, writing once "Außer der Musik war und blieb er fast immer ein Kind" (Outside of the music, he was and would remain forever a child).  Brilliant!

 
#5 Watch The Sound of Music and prance around Mirabell Garden No, really, I'm serious.  The Sound of Music was filmed in Salzburg and most hostels/hotels will play it daily in the lobby or common space.  It's always cool to watch a movie and be able to say "I was there!" or to see a place and be able to say "Wow!  That was in This Movie or Other!"  Plus, while traveling alone, I will admit that the "I Have Confidence" number really touched my heart and made me shed a few tears.  (Shut up, I was afraid of going to Venice the next day, okay?)  Anyway, the Gardens are where the Do-A-Deer scene was filmed, and there are plenty of beautiful flowers to stop and sniff, and some hilarious (drunken?) gnome statues no one should miss!

So, there you go, folks!  My Top 5 Things To Do In Salzburg, but there's plenty more to do!  Go up Untersberg--even if it's cloudy, it's fun to be up there, freezing in June, stepping in snow while wearing sandals.  I didn't go up there because I've had horrid luck and left a camera up there in the bathroom twice--TWICE!  Clearly, I was not meant to remember Untersberg through photographs.  See a concert!  There are plenty going on every night, and Salzburg is known as the city of music so it'd be kind of blasphemous to not hear some excellent music.  (Yes, I am guilty of blasphemy--just means I'll have to go back soon!)  Also, go shopping.  It might be a bit expensive, but I think they had some of the best tacky junk ever...  I mean, who doesn't want a wooden Mozart doll to hang in your car?  (By far, this is my favorite souvenir I have ever purchased.  It even surpasses the sword I bought in Toledo when I was 12...)

Anyway, the children of Captain Von Trapp wish to say goodnight to you.  So long, farewell, Auf Wiedersehen, adieu and all that jazz.  Next update: Venice!

timecapsules.

Reason #178968 Why I Love Film: It really takes you back.

I mean, it really takes you back.  On Saturday, I went on an accidental 6mi walk with my friend Oksana.  We hadn't quite meant for it to last around four hours, just like I didn't quite mean to have my barely-shod feet cemented in pond-mud when I went chasing after a small leopard frog at the end of our walk.  What happened is what usually happens when Oksana and I get together: we couldn't stop talking.  We touched on everything from amazing book series, high school memories, phantom beavers...  Relevant to this post, however, we both realized that we had film to develop.

We undertook this task today.   I knew mostly what would be on mine two rolls since they were only one year old, but her disposable cameras were four, some even five, years old.  We handed them over to be processed, went out for frozen yogurt, spent an unnecessary (but totally necessary) amount of money at a used bookstore, and then headed back to pick up our pictures.  Just like tiny time capsules, with each seal broken, we were suddenly escorted back to an older, ostensibly simpler time.  She had pictures from our first tubing trip down Darby Creek, when my hair was still ridiculously long and my waist ridiculously smaller.  Our last day of high school, our last ever chance to open the door of portable classroom B-2.  There were smiling pictures of people we could barely remember, waddling penguins, Christmas trees wearing slippers.  Every time she moved one to the bottom of the pile to reveal the next, our faces lit up and we laughed.  I said "Oh, my God" like a broken record.

Well, anyway, my smallest roll of film (only 12 exposures) featured Oberlin, and mostly my first Josh Ritter concert last Fall.  My friends and I sat in the balcony, pretty far away, so you really can’t make out much of his face, but the organ pipes in Finney Chapel .tower majestically over the audience.  Even with  my minimal talent, I've also played on that stage, under that organ.  How many audiences those pipes must have seen!  And then there is Tank, my humble abode for one and a half years.  The sun is shining as we eat on the lawn.  It’s open mic night, so there are people dancing in the background, people singing on the porch.  Everyone looks happy.  Everyone was happy.

It really made me think.  We get so caught up in the moments of our lives that we don’t realize we’re happy.  I’ve shed so many tears at Oberlin, for crushed dreams, friends who have passed, turned down invitations, academic insecurities.  But in only 12 frames I managed to capture so much of what I often forget.  Good music, good food, green lawns, historic houses, smiling faces…  It was a gentle reminder that i’m going to go back in the fall, and it’s going to be okay.  So, this is where I want to say that film is better than digital.

Why?  Well, I'll tell you why!  Unlike digital where you have a mistake margin of 600,000 pictures on your memory card and the ability to see and delete the crappy ones to make room, with film each frame is precious, not to be wasted.  And you don't get to say "Oh, I look bad!  Delete it!  Let's do it again!"  With each candid frame, you relive the moment just as it was when you hit the button--the original laughs, not the recreated ones.  Even through the smiles, you can see sadness if it is there.  The colors are real, the face are real.  Every sense is captured on film.  Even the developing is an experience--for me, sometimes of love, and sometimes very much of hatred.  Nothing is more exhilarating to me than to flick on the lights in the negative room, finally open the developing tank, rinse the negatives, and then unroll them, revealing the thumbnails of your success.  And nothing is more heart-wrenching than unrolling a set of 36 blanks--wasted time, wasted chemicals, lost memories.  You run into the enlarger room and can make prints for hours of any size.  It's your choice, and your fault if it screws up.

I'm not saying I don't like digital images.  I don't think I would have been able to deal with wrestling my flim camera and my laptop all the way around Europe, and I don't think I'd have been able to fit that much film in my suitcase.  All I'm saying is I don't feel the same connection to digital images, where all I have to do is copy & paste from my memory card, then resize if I want to, maybe play with the color settings a bit (make it look like I don't have a zit on my chin, y'know)... There's no sense of a battle fought and a battle well won, and I don't have anything to hold in the end.  And, most importantly for this post, there is no element of surprise in digital images (if there is, it is almost minuscule).  When I take old digital photos to be printed, I know exactly what I'm gonna get.  When I look at my digital images, it's hard for me to feel any satisfaction comparable to what I feel when I look at the very first picture I took with my SLR, the very first picture I developed.  I can remember where I took it, how I felt when I took it, who helped me develop it, how nervous I was...  And then I can look at what I can do now, and it makes me so proud!  It's been a long time since I had the luxury of marveling over negatives, so pardon me if I sound a little lovey-dovey.  It just... well... it really takes me back.  :)

könig des mondes, der märchen

Very few characters in history have excited me more than King Ludwig II of Bavaria.  Alright, let's rephrase a bit.  Very few characters in European history have excited me more than Ludwig II.  On a superficial level, this probably has more to do with the fact that I am not well-versed in European history than any ultra-special exclusivity of my VIP list.  However, there's also something deeper about it.  The fact that, almost five years later, I'm still enchanted is testament to that.  Apart from James Madison and Bobby Kennedy, he's one of the few I've actually managed to read more than half a biography for over the long, hot, humid Ohio Summers.  So, as I made my fourth trip up to Neuschwanstein in the middle of a thunderstorm (ironically, with no intention of paying for another tour of the interior--yeah, I know, rotten idea), I began to wonder... why?

at least the weather added to the drama of the view?

It was about a 2-hr train ride back to Munich from Füßen, and, instead of listening to the American sisters sitting across from me complain about their too-big ice cream bars and uncomfortable seats (which is a lie--I love DB train seats! Trenitalia is a different story all together...), I decided to drown them out with some good ol' Schumann on my iPod and ponder that very question.  Why is Ludwig II so fascinating?  Lucky for me, there was a special exhibit, as part of the Bayerische Landesaustellung at Herrenchiemsee, that set about to explain just that.  With so much water under my proverbial bridge, it's hard to recall exactly what I drew from the German reading materials, tour, and audio guide I was provided (that's what I get for ordering my Inselkarte auf Deutsch!), but I can break it down into three easy bullet-points...

1) He was a child.  At the very entrance of the Götterdämmerung exhibit, there was an amazing quote from him that ran a little like this: my self (the German word he used was 'das Innere' and I still can't think of an appropriate equivalent) is as sensitive as photo paper--every image, every experience leaves an impression that will last a lifetime...  When his father died, he was only 19, two years younger than I am now, still only beginning his university education.  So suddenly, he was wrenched out of that world of safety and experimentation and made king of Bavaria.  I guess it was a little like how the US felt when JFK was elected.  Here was this youthful, bashful, handsome, intelligent boy being crowned your leader--like any teenager, the nation begins to feel invincible and anything seems possible.  And that, I guess, fit in with Ludwig's image of himself as well.  It was all a fantasy--where heroes triumph and evil is left to dust.  He hated, despised, abhorred warfare because it interrupted these fantasies--it was cruel, expensive, and deflated morale.  I think that's what Wagner meant to Ludwig.  Through his operas, Ludwig was able to escape to the murals of his mother's castle at Hohenschwangau, where heroes existed and damsels in distress awaited rescuing.  Everyone has fantasies.  The only difference is that not everyone has the luxury of living them even after they're older.

 

this was the book i managed to read half of four summers ago--i just think he looks so sweet & innocent on the cover

2) He was a paradox, and historians love a good contradiction.  Here was a young boy, tossed into a situation beyond his years, in an age of increasing republicanism, who desperately wanted to be a divine, absolutist ruler like Louis XIV.  In an age of technology, he wanted to believe in magic.  "I don't want to know how it works," he said of technology, "I just want to see it work."  He had outdated beliefs about kingship, yet he remained popular with his people for a surprisingly long time.  He had some of the most technologically advanced castles in the world with electricity, multi-colored lights, heating, running water, and yet he didn't seem really to care how it functioned.  Torn between two worlds and aging (in an older man such eccentric, childish delusions were no longer acceptable), he tried to keep his world united and remain forever young.  And, as if we needed one more piece of irony to complete this point, two months after his death, his noble family made the decision to open the castles to the public against his last wishes in the hope that it would further convince the Bavarian public that their king had been a total nutjob.  In fact, it did quite the opposite, and he remains beloved--if even more so now than before.

the castle at herrenchiemsee was built, as a tribute to louis xiv, to be a lager-than-life homage to versailles

3) He was an artist.  So many kings and princes want to be artists and they pour their treasuries into commissions and parties, to which they will try to entice the leading artists of the day.  But Ludwig poured a great deal of his funds, impressively, into his own art.  Everything he created was a symbol, a work of genius.  He wrote poetry, designed buildings, made drawings, played music (unless I'm getting him confused with Frederick the Great, which is entirely possible)... He seemed to do it all.  It was an escape for his imagination that only seemed to grow as he did.  Near the end of the exhibit, there was this satire between Ludwig and Wagner, where two actors argued the question of whether either of them could have existed without the other.  Ludwig starts by talking about the opera house he wanted to build, which pops up as a bubble above his head.  But then he gets distracted and more and more bubbles begin to pop up until the screen is full of his ideas.  And then, just like that, they all shatter.  When the people walked through the glittering sanctuaries of their king ,they of course saw an eccentric, but, what's more, they saw an artistic genius.  Instead of condemning him as the nobles and wished, his castles ensured him a spot in the historical memory of Bavaria, probably forever.  God, I love history.  Don't you?  :)

this is the first room you walk into on the tour and it just takes your breath away.  the rest of the rooms that were completed don't disappoint.

As far as visiting Herrenchiemsee goes, I would definitely recommend it.  It's more off-the-beaten-track than Neuschwanstein and your ticket also includes a visit to a monastery and probably other things too that I missed for want of time.  Personally, I had the hardest time getting there.  I missed my first train, and then indecision kept me on the next train and I missed the Prien a. Chiemsee stop.  I decided to continue onto Salzburg, where I dropped my bags at the hostel and then sprinted back to the train station.  I missed the next train, so I caught the next next train.  Due to some drunk Irishmen (of all people to meet on a train in Austria) that unsettled some of the other passengers, our train was late arriving in Prien and I missed the little train that would take me to the ferry, so, again, I sprinted (about 20 minutes) to make it to the docks in time.  Thankfully, I did end up making it, ordered my ticket, and made it to the castle in time to catch my tour.  Phew!

it's an amazing boat-ride--clear blue waters, a view of the alps, a crisp breeze...!

So, if even after all that unfortunate bustling about, I would still recommend Herrenchiemsee, you know it had to be good.  The Landesaustellung exhibit is open until October, I believe, so if you're in Bayern or Salzburg and looking for a good day trip, GO FOR IT!  They've opened the unfinished rooms of the palace for the exhibit and you get to see cool things like old sketches, his Christening gown, photos, letters, and movie portrayals.  Included is great insight on what it was like to live in Bavaria at the time.  Five stars to Herrenchiemsee, I'm telling you.

(He also has another castle in Oberammergau [?] called Linderhof, which I also recommend.  Seriously, just do a Ludwig tour if you're in Bavaria.  It's what I would have done if I had one extra day.  If you need any convincing, here's a picture of Linderhof from when I visited it four years ago...)

And with this, my friends, we can officially leave Germany and enter Austria.  Huzzah!  I'm sure you're all excited!  :)  Until next time!