Friday: I visited Füssen, which is just on the border of Austria, and also home to two famous (one more than the other) castles. Schloß Hohenschwangau (High place of swans) was built by Maximillian II of Bavaria and his wife Princess Maria of Prussia (same Maria as Marienplatz in Munich). It was built as a summer residence for private suppers and hunting on the remains of a 12th century castle that had been destroyed. Their sons Otto and Ludwig II spent most of their time there as children and when their father died, Ludwig became king of Bavaria (technically Crown-prince, as his brother Otto was eldest but was considered unfit to reign for mental reasons). Within months of his father's death, Ludwig had work on Schloß Neuschwanstein (New swan stone) start. He had installed himself in his father's residence and had a telescope pointed farther up the mountain to watch the progress on the construction of his own castle. After 17 years, he himself died and any further construction was halted.
Today, that leaves us with an impressive castle, the inspiration behind Disney's own castle, albeit with an incomplete interior. The guided tour takes you through the 17 rooms that were completed (sorry there are no pictures of the inside, they are forbidden due to copyright reasons) out of a total of some 50 that were originally planned.
Saturday: I decided to leave Munich. I went to the central station to reserve a bed on the night train from Munich to Berlin. Afterwards, I went back to the camp to pack and wish farewell to the people I met there.
Sunday: My first experience on a night train went pretty well. I only woke up a couple of times, and one of them was because I noticed we weren't moving anymore. As soon as the train got going agaim, I fell right back asleep. My one problem is that as with normal trains, they only pass by after you have boarded to check your ticket. That meant that I was half sleeping (I was excepting it after all) when the controller passed by. That means that dozy me met generally grumpy German ticket controller and didn't really understand exactly what he wanted. After that I was set for the night.
And so I woke up nine and a half hours later to get ready for a day in Berlin. After leaving the train, I went straight to the youth hostel to drop off my big pack (it was obviously too early for check-in) and asked the receptionist what there was to see in Berlin on a Sunday (as everywhere else in Germany, everything but restaurants/bars and museums are closed). She told me that the typical thing to do was to go to flea markets, and she recommended a few that were quite nice. The bigger of the two is located in a huge park right where the Berlin wall passed, and there is still a piece of it left, with a huge amount of wall paintings on it. I relaxed in the park for a while and listened to the live bands that just pop on to the stage in front of a crowd sitting on a hill. I had heard that Berlin was much more artsy than Munich, and my impression at the flea market was that the city youth was filled with Xavier Dolans and hipsters. I then came back to check in and headed back out to a sports bar to see Bayern Munich lose to Borussia Dortmund (2-0). The better of the two teams won, as Bayern have still not shaken off their terrible beginning of season form.
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