Stephen and Elaine Biddulph

20-26 Juli 2015 - Fussen-Garmisch

Neuschwanstein Schloss (Schwangau)

We tried to jam most missionary calls into three days (Mon-Wed) of this week so that we could leave early Thursday morning for a 3-day trip to Bavaria with Gordon and June Smith. The weather turned out very nice, but both Gordon and I were still busy with phone calls with mission presidents and me also with missionaries. I drove our car. We drove from Frankfurt to Wurtzberg and then down the Romantic Highway all the way to Fussen-Schwangau in the Bavarian Alps. We spent the day in Fussen and slept there that night. Friday early we went up to Marianbrucke where we could get a good look at King Ludwig 11 castles (Hohenschwangau was his parents

Hohenschwangau Schloss and Alpensee (Fussen)

castle and his boyhood home) and (Neuschwangau which he had built but was not finished until after his untimely death when he was 40). Neuschwangau was the inspiration for Walt Disney's Magic Kingdom castle. Fussen and Schwangau are nestled up against the Bavarian Alps and surrounded by spectacular lakes.Friday afternoon we drove 30 minutes through beautiful lush countryside to the tiny village of Steingad and visited the Wies Kirche which became a pilgrimage church after a miracle of the tears in a sculpture of Christ was believed to occurred. The church is large and the interior is beyond description with ornamental carvings, ceiling and wall motifs, and other adornments.

Leaving Steingad, we drove toward the little village of Ettal where we spent the night. The road from Steingad to Ettal goes south through the Bavarian Alps to Oberammergau. We stopped at Oberammergau and had lunch and walked around the town. The town is famous for the Passion Play that is put on every 5-10 years. It is also in the heart of woodcarving country, and we visited

Wies Kirche (Steingad)

several shops with wonderful woodcarvings of all types and descriptions. The countryside is filled with steep, rugged mountains, pine and deciduous forests and granite peaks thrusting high above timber line. Farms and fields of grass, wheat, and corn are everywhere. Ettal was a mere speck of a town, but had a wonderful large monestary with great domed church and abby.

Friday afternoon we drove about 10 km over to King Ludwig 11's beloved Linderhof Palace. It sits up a wide valley surrounded by forests and spectacular hills and mountains. This was the only palace that he began and actually finished before his death. It was his favorite palace and he spent 2 weeks out of

Linderhof Palace (Ettal)

each month her. By comparison to his Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau palaces, Linderhof is quite small, but absolutely decadent in interior design. The upper rooms which were the royal rooms are so simply filled with gold ornamentation, carvings, and such that it puts the most lavish Catholic cathedral to shame. It just blows the mind. Unfortunately, they wouldn't let us take pictures of the interior. On the hill above the palace is a grotto, a man-made cave that is designed to look just like a cave with stalactites and stalagmites, an inner lake, and waterfall. The lake has a gold, Egyptian-style boat and King Ludwig liked to have his servants pull him around the lake and make artificial waves. It was his indoor pool in the 1960s. It was also the first place in Bavaria where electricity was used for lighting. We walked to his hunting lodge and to his golden, ornamented house where he liked to go and smoke with his Chinese friends. On Saturday, we drove 30 minutes further south to Garmisch where we saw the Olympic ski and ice stadiums where the 1936 Winter Olympics were hosted by Germany.

Bavarian Alps at Garmisch

The summer Olympics that year were also held in Berlin. We also found the US military recreation facility in Garmisch called Edelweis where we want to go and spend some time. After seeing Garmisch, we made the long drive home through Munchen (Munich), past Stuttgart and back to Wurtzberg and arrived in Frankfurt by 3 p.m. Nice to be home but it was an enjoyable trip to Bavaria.