FAIRYTAIL CASTLE GERMAN ALPS

Day 154 (FIVE MONTHS AWAY TODAY!!!!!)


Neuschwanstein Castle (said: new swan on stone castle)

Today was the day we decided to go and realise our fairtales!

We went to Neuschwanstein Castle which is Ludwig´s fairytail castle and also the castle that was the inspiration behind Walt Disneys Sleeping Beauty...and also the castle that featured in Chitty, Chitty Bang Bang!

And what a story surrounding this castle. Ludwig 11 was quite the character. He was apparently gay and died of a mysterious death (they found him floating in the river when he was only 35!)

But anyway...about the castle!

Its about 2 and a half hours from Munich (the train ride was beautiful as we approached the Bavarian or German Alps though!) and ohhhh when you see the castle you become quite breathless.

And just when i was thinking nothing could impress me anymore. Well this did. Its SO GORGEOUS! See the picture above??? Nestled against the German Alps?

Isnt it just amazing.

Its the most wonderful castle ive ever seen thats for sure and weve seen a few lately!!!

It took about half an hour to climb up to it..sloping upwards all the time...but once we got up and inside it was just INCREDIBLE.

Gawd....Ludwig knew how to design and decorate a place thats for sure. It was just so pretty and artistic and not just something youd get blown away just because of its grandeur but its something that is actually BEAUTIFUL.

The highlight and hence the name of the castle, was also the beautiful swans in the castle. He had swan drawings, replicas, and swans everywhere..even on the chandaliers! And they were tasteful and mirroed their gracefulness and elegance.

I could have stayed forwever looking at the designs in the castle. And the paintings, and the floors and decorated ceilings. And Greg was impressed by the doors (he LOVES doors!!!!)....gosh...it had everything!

There were only 18 rooms out of a planned 100 that were finished. And they were pretty much devoted to his love of Richard Wagner. The muscian. He even build a singers hall and a cave just so he could watch Wagner and other muscians come and perform for him.

Apparently he was such recluse that he planned to watch from his cave! ANd the cave was something else..it really was a cave in a castle!

This castle was a real highlight of being in Munich i tell ya...it was such an effortto get there (five hours of train travel and 10kms of walking) but it was so worth it..the lakes were so beautiful, the valleys, the waterfalls and valleys...

A fairytale castle in a fairytale setting for sure...

And Mum, you are right, since Switzerland, weve been in the land of the fairytales! The scenery in Switzerland, Austria and Germany are just so .. magical.

This area, because its full of swans on the most glassy and mirrory lakes, is apparently also the very place where Tschaikovskz was inspired to write The SWAN LAKE too.

Sooooo beautiful......

Its a fitting way to end our last night in Munich, Bavaria.

Were sort of looping in and out of Germany and Austria for the next couple of weeks and depending on what the weather is like tomorrow, we´ll be in either one or the other of the countries...

Europe is SO COOL the way you can get around hey? !!

Gosh! Travelling is FUN!

DACHAU - THE RESULT OF HITLERS POWER

Munich, Bavaria, Germany

Day 153

DACHAU

Dachau is the gruesome result of Hitlers rise to power. Its a building which is a concentration and extermination camp. It was the first built concentration camp and is about 15kms west of Munich. And just to clarify, as our guide also did, Hitler was Austrian. He was not German.

We caught a bus to Dachau with a small group and it ended up being a long sobering day. Ive read the history books, watched the documentaries, and grown up knowing about the callous acts of Hitler but it was going to Dachau that really cemented my view about how inhumane he really was.

Our guide for the day turned out to be a young woman who had Russian parents and grew up in Israel. She is jewish.

Her first hand view may have certain bias but going to Dachau, seeing the camp, reading the stories and realising the evidence made this place more than a death camp. It was a memorial for all those who were sent here under the pretence of being ´protected´. Hitler called it a Protection Camp. People were sent there during the years of building up his so called Workers Pary, the Nationist Socialist Party. Or in reality, simply, the Nazi Party.

If a person opposed the party`s beliefs they were sent there.

The first prisoners were political opponents of the Nazi regime. Thez were the communists, social democrats, trade unionists and occasionally members of conservative and liberal political parties.

The first Jewish prisoners were also sent to the Dachau concentration camp because of their political opposition.

In the following years new groups were deported to Dachau: these included homosexuals, gypsies, members of the Jehovah's Witness, and priests. There are pictures at the camp to reflect all these groups.

In the wake of the so-called Reichskristallnacht ("The Night of Broken Glass"), more than 10,000 Jews were sent to the Dachau concentration camp.

The amazing thig is, this camp was built before the onset of WW2. It was constructed in 1933 in readiness. Hitler had a plan laid out. This was the beginning of a terror system in Dachau that cannot be compared with any other state persecution and penal system.

From 1938 onwards, the Nazi movement became directed against other European countries and this was reflected in the prisoner groups within the camp. Austrian prisoners were deported to Dachau. Prisoners from the Sudeten German areas followed. In 1939 came the Czech prisoners.

And after the start of the war more prisoners from Poland, Norway, Belgium, the Netherlands, and France etc.

The German prisoners eventually were less and less. The largest national group was formed by the Polish prisoners, followed by prisoners from the Soviet Union.

Originally the prisoners were used for slave labour, building roads etc and later it became a death camp.

Overall, more than 200,000 prisoners from more than 30 states were imprisoned in Dachau.

In the movie we watched it said there were 30,000 recorded deaths at Dachau.

And besides the 30,000 recorded dead, thousands of prisoners who were not registered lost their life at the Dachau concentration camp.

They died of starvation, disease, exhaustion, degradation, from blows, and by torture; they were shot, hung, and killed by injections.

The medical experiments were horrendous. A doctor called Rauchen did medical experiments on the prisoners..including altitude experiments and malaria tests. They died after these experiments.

We also saw the gas chambers which were not in use at Dachau as they already had so manz dzing there. It was a model for other places like Auschwitz.

IN all, it was a quite depressing day, but it was an experience we were glad to have because we realised how real it all was, how horrific mankind can truly be, and how atrocities have happened and do happen, that are not in our control.

We left there wondering if we should go to Auschwitz as planned....

We´ll deal with that once in Poland.

It is truly real life at its worst.

And i guess, we are so lucky we were not part of it.