Fairy Tales

Did you know I'm a sucker for murder mysteries? They're usually too scary for me, but I can't help it, I listen and follow along, and get caught up in the scandal anyway.

Murder has actually nothing to do with our weekend, but an unexplained death that happened over a century ago has got the wheels in my brain churning with suspicion.

Yesterday we joined an organized USO tour to the "Fairy Tale Castles" in Bavaria. The two castles: Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein were both homes of Bavaria's King Ludwig II. Hohenschwangau was his family's summer getaway from Munich, but Neuschwanstein was his own crazy, indulged project. Ludwig II took the throne at age 18 after his father (Maximillian II) died. His reign was fairly uneventful, and was mainly comprised of intense taxation of his people to fund his wildly eccentric, fairy tale inspired castles, of which, Neuschwanstein is the most recognized.

In fact, you would recognize Neuschwanstein even if you'd never been there before. How? Walt Disney used Castle Neuschwanstein as his inspiration when designing Cinderella's Castle in Disneyland. Neuschwanstein was also shown as Baron von Bomburst's castle in Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. 

Ludwig II is often referred to as "Mad King Ludwig" due to his very eccentric personality, ideas and habits. His younger brother, Otto, was actually declared mentally ill, so when King Ludwig's reign really started to get out of hand, it was almost too easy for doctors to extend the mental illness diagnosis to the King and depose him.

This is where it gets good. The day after King Ludwig was deposed, he was forcefully taken to Munich. The next day, his body and the body of the doctor who initiated his deposition, were found in a nearby lake. To this day no one has any idea whether this was a suicide, a murder, a drunken brawl...?

Dun, dun, duuuuuuunnnn!!!

Oo, that was a good one. I spent the entire bus ride home coming up with my own theories on King Ludwing's death. I can't help myself! 

Anyway, that's quite enough reading, yes? The trip was wonderful. Cold, but absolutely beautiful. The castles lived up to their fairy tale reputation, and the stories of Ludwig's life entertained us all day. 

Hohenschwangau, which translates to: Highlands above the Swans. The swan was the symbol of the knights who built the castle that's ruins Hohenschanwgau was built upon. Consequently, both castles carry a swan motif.

This is the lake where the royal Bavarian family spent their summers. Though not the one where King Ludwig II was found, it was eery walking the edge and thinking of the Mad King's fate.

Beautiful forestry through the whole area. The castles are settled right at the base of the Alps.

We walked around the lake and stopped for this picture of Hohenschwangau on the left, and Neuschwanstein on the right. Hotels, restaurants, and souvenir shops now line the middle ground.

Neuschwanstein. This view is available from a bridge built in 1866. Needless to say- Ray took this picture. You couldn't pay me to walk across that bridge.

Neuschwanstein's inner courtyard. Pictures inside aren't allowed, but it was ornately decorated at every turn.

Walking up to Neuschwanstein!

I wish we could have taken pictures inside each castle. Ray and I both actually liked the interior of Hohenschwangau better, but the exterior of Neuschwanstein is just breath taking. In his attempt to be classical, neo-gothic, and romantic, all with a fantasy flourish, Ludwig made Neuschwanstein heavy and dark. Walking through the ornate hallways it's easy to believe he probably was disturbed in some way. It's absolutely amazing, but lacks a "lived in" feel we thought Hohenschwangau did hold. Which makes sense: Ludwig only spent 174 days living in Neuschwanstein before was deposed, taken to Munich, and died (killed?)

Six weeks after King Ludwig's death in 1886, Bavaria opened his castles to the public as tourist attractions. He may have been mad, but he knew how to attract a crowd!

It's Starting!

After nearly 3 months here, we can finally say that real life is going to start!

It's just midnight here, and I am exhausted and about to crash. But let it be known in the world:

Ray and I are finally in-processing for our jobs next Monday and I will begin teaching Level 3 swim lessons  next Tuesday! We should have ID cards by Thursday or Friday of next week; and really, I couldn't ask for a better birthday present than that.

We can finally start planning more trips with the comfort of an income and we can finally start looking at cars seriously since an ID card will allow us registration privileges.

Plus, I finished filing our taxes today.

Life is Good

**UPDATE** This morning at 10:30 we got a call from HR for Ray telling us that Ray was missing a paper and without it he couldn't in-process on Monday. After learning which paper it was, we reminded them we turned that paper in over a month ago... :|

Also, about 2 weeks ago on one of our visits they said another agency had missed a signature. So we took that paper back to the agency, got the signature, and returned it to HR within an hour. And this was the so called "missing" paper. Each time we asserted we had turned it in and tried to coax that from their memory, they simply stated "Well we don't have it. You have to do it again." 

I made a mad dash to try and figure out how to get on base again today. When we received another call from HR:

HR: "Yeah, hi, Kaitlin?" (You obviously work hard enough at your job to know the names of the people you're assigned to help, thanks for that). 

Me: "Yes, this is Kailin..."

HR: "Oh hey, we found that paper of Ray's. It was in the shredder box."

Me: "Well is it shredded, then?!"

HR: "Oh no, just the 'to-be shredded" box. The pregnant lady apologizes. Hahaha...ha...hmm..."

Me: "... Okay, well thanks then. So we're still on Monday?"

HR: "Yup, see you then!"

Good grief. Slight panic moment, but life is still good.  

The Only Thing Worse Than Not Having a GPS...

... is having a GPS. As we so aptly discovered in this weeks diversions.

On Thursday we were able to take to a car; my mom suggested a castle only about 15 minutes away. For this trip, we had the GPS AND the address via GoogleMaps.

I think everyone knows that sinking feeling when your GPS doesn't recognize or accept the address you are telling it to find. You insist your destination exists; pictures and testimonials support you! And yet your GPS mocks you with all its technology-ness- blaring in your face that "No matches were found." Oh how I hate that.

We decided to try and find the castle anyway. We knew the general area and we did have an address after all. Down the autobahn we went, searching for an exit that supposedly didn't exist. Part of the address included "Burg Lichtenberg" and soon we found a large brown sign announcing we were in the Burg Lichtenberg area- which was kind of a help but still no castle. After driving far past where we even thought we should be, we turned around and just took an exit and began driving again.

Finally, exasperated, we pulled into a small town and just stopped the car. Lo and Behold! They provided a map. We located the castle and learned our GPS didn't accept the address because the town 'Thallichtenberg" had only one 'l' on Google. A quick adjustment, and we were soon at the 13th century castle high up on the hill enjoying the brief break in the cloudy sky.

This section of the castle has been converted into a restaurant which we plan to visit on a sunnier day.

Gorgeous view!

Our next GPS adventure happened yesterday when we left to go to the Frankfurt LDS Temple for our ward temple day. The session started at 0900, and even though we're only about an hour and a half away, we were meeting for carpool at 0615- blech! It ended up just being us and one other ward member who agreed to drive. He asked us if we had a GPS, which we didn't, but we told him we were close to home and could go get it.

"Nah, I've got my phone GPS, we should be good. Let's go."

Famous last words...

The phone GPS did indeed get us to the temple, nearly two hours later. We missed multiple exits and worried we may miss everything. Fortunately, we were able to do some maneuvering and get there in time. Phew!

Fast forward, we left the temple around 1145 (after we paid for clothing rental, 12 Euro, ouch!). The phone only had 10% battery left and we needed gas. We managed to get directions to the gas station, and even write the basics down to get home from there before it died. And then, we were on our own.

Getting to the main freeway wasn't too bad, it was the four after that that eluded us. When Matt, our driver, expressed concern that we hadn't seen our exit yet, we flipped to a small map he luckily had in the car. We found a city we'd just seen a sign for and realized we were about an hour north of where we should have been. Oops.

Ray did some master navigating and suggested we take a diagonal route that would potentially save us some time. It probably did, but we'll never know because we still managed to miss exits and end up on wrong freeways. Finally we got to Frankfurt-am-Mainz and saw signs for cities remotely close to home. I was so happy to recognize a city! Until I converted the kilometers to miles and realized we were still about an hour from that city... which was still about half an hour from home. Ouch.

Needless to say, there was much rejoicing in our small party when we finally were on a road we all recognized, and the signs indicated we were indeed going the correct direction. Nearly three and a half hours later, we arrived back at home.

 Next time, no matter what, we'll just go back for the GPS.

We made it. Frankfurt Temple.

Frankfurt LDS Temple

Happy Birthday to Ray!

Quick story- I just went to Google Translate to try and find out what 'happy birthday' is in German. As it turns out, Google says Germans say "Happy Birthday" when they wish someone a felicitous day of entry into this world. That's one phrase less I have to learn in German.

Anyway, it was Ray's birthday! The old man is now closer to 30 than he is 20. I like the few weeks between our birthdays because he always seems so old to me and it makes me laugh. For some reason, the difference between 22 and 26 is phenomenally larger than 23 and 26. Wouldn't you agree?

We celebrated with Ray's favorite (as I suspect we will for years to come): spaghetti with meat sauce, and banana cream pie. I used the same pie recipe as I did last year which worked well... last time. For some reason this year it turned out more a banana cream soup than pudding. We're gonna blame Germany for that one. It tasted good all the same though.

If you didn't already know, Ray is rather difficult to buy gifts for. But I feel I can proudly say that it only took me three birthdays and two Christmases to get him a gift he was really, truly happy to receive. This year we took the board game approach. He got: SET, Power Grid, First Sparks (from his padre), and Puerto Rico (from my parentals). We've had lots of fun challenging each other and my mom and stepdad at SET, and we're looking forward to sitting down to an intense Power Grid session.

Here are the best pictures of the evening. Don't mind how haggard I look. I spent last week in a WSI (Water Safety Instructor) course where I had to 'relearn' how to swim in order to prove I could actually teach kids how to swim. It was hard not to feel like it was wasting my time, but I did it, and I am now Red Cross certified. Woot.

Banana Soup- woops!

I think Ray was about to sneeze when I snapped this. Priceless. The birthday boy at his finest.

Look how happy (and adorable) he is. He's holding a paper of Puerto Rico since shipping takes a while to get here, so we're actually still waiting on that one.

Everybody partied. Even Sheba.

Happy birthday to my husband. I love that old fart ; )