Catching the train to Munich was easy.  We even got to sit in our own little train room to watch one farming village after another blur on by.  So far it’s been a pretty stress-free trip.

But, wait, there was a bit of stress thanks to a lil Swiss, retired history lecturer our guide to Neuschwanstein Castle.

He demanded that we ask questions. After a few folks got shot down with long, harsh responses.  Ericka pipes up with an easy “Where do you come from?”

“Not your concern.  It’s not important.  I don’t ask you personal questions, you don’t ask me.”  Insert Colonel Clink voice and you’ve got a good impression of our man. (although through our sleuthing abilities we learned where he was from and what he did for a living — ha! we won the tour bet that he was a history teacher)

On the two-hour train ride to the castle, we (along with the other passengers who were not part of the tour) learn that we will be eating at an “Ala Fast” place not “Ala Carte,” which he explained rather harshly is a restaurant and it would take too long, so wurst only for the poor souls who paid the price of this tour (although it was very good wurst).  After getting verbally abused (use your brain, so you think Ludwig had a wife? I’m not going to do all the telling for you) we learn that crazy King Ludwig had 18 “men lovers,” that he was not truly a king because his alleged father had syphillis and an Italian had to step in to impregnate the queen (while I shit you not Sheffano thrust his fist into the air for emphasis) “twice!”

“You vill not hear ding, dong fairly tale stories from me.  I vill tell you the truth and you vill not like it!”

Best of all is he really didn’t tell us much — other than exactly how many minutes we had to walk each section, or else!  My favorite is when we came upon a musician, and our guide asked him to sing a folk song about Ludwig’s death.  “I will translate for you.”  Song over, and our guide gets up, after enjoying the serenade, and says okay, we go to entrance now, never telling us the story.  Priceless.

 so you see the sun hat with the sun visor on top of it, below our bard, that’s the head of our guide…

Luckily, the castle and its town were beautiful, as was everything else in Munich.  I absolutely loved the park where you can sit at a small canal and dip your toes into frigid water, walk a bit more and you can jump into the water and float rapidly to your next spot, or bring your surfboard and ride the wake under a bridge.  OR, you can just watch it all and be entertained by others fighting the current.

There’s also plenty of beer and carbs to put some more poundage on my ever-sagging frame, but my tastebuds are loving every bit of it.

Today, we spent most of the day hopping trains to get to our adorable lil place in an old, walled town called Rothenburg ob der Tauber.  We just got here, and I’m antsy to get out there and walk its cobblestones, so time for me to sign off, but I’ll try to post this and pics before going to bed tonight.  Auf Wiedersehen!