Traversing Bavaria

After my esteemed cohorts left for their various destinations, I boarded a train for the south of Germany. In all, I spent three days wandering Bavaria solo. That’s an impressive feat for a gal who’s nervous about going to movies by herself, let alone wandering through a country that doesn’t primarily speak English!

This was a short but fulfilling trip for me. I’d never travelled by myself before, but it’s something I’d always wanted to do. The practical, no-nonsense, paranoid/safety-conscious side of my brain always made me avoid striking out on my own, but I’m glad I ignored that side for a few days.

My first stop was Fussen, Germany, near the Austrian border. Fussen is very close to the fairy tale castle known as Neuschwanstein (pronounced noy-shvan-shtine). It’s the castle that Walt Disney modelled Cinderella’s Castle after when he made Disney World. I’ve seen pictures of this place before, and I knew I REALLY wanted to see it! It’s fairly “new” as far as castles go, built in the 1800s, and the king who built it simply wanted to build his dream palace. If I were royalty, I’d probably do the same thing! Neuschwantstein definitely tops my castle list as my favourite, although I love the Scottish castles we explored back in May. It just had the total package – a beautiful mountainous setting (it was quite a hike to get there), an interesting history, gorgeous furnishings. The only thing lacking – it had never completely been lived in. The king was either murdered or committed less than a year after living there – they still don’t really know what happened to him. Weird!



















The day after Fussen, I boarded a bus and travelled up the Romantic Road – a medieval trade route that takes you through tons of cool little historic German towns. The bus driver was not the friendliest, but I got to know a very nice girl from Japan who was also travelling by herself! We spent the day hopping between these little towns and marvelling at the scenery. I loved the architecture in Bavaria – lots of half-timbered houses, and churches with onion-domes. And the cows in the south were adorable – they had little bells tied around their necks, which made them look like pets to me. The bells would jingle as the cows grazed, so a meadow full of cows made for a lot of clinging and clanging. I tried to get the cow below to look up at me, but my efforts were fruitless.














In the evening, our bus stopped in Rothenburg, Germany where I had 24 hours to explore. Rothenburg is a picturesque medieval walled town. It was a trading hub back in medieval days, but fell into hard times during the Thirty Years’ War. Then it was almost destroyed during WWII, but was fortunately saved by an American general. Now it mostly draws tourist crowds, but it’s uber-cute, and has a lot of interesting history. I particularly liked the Nightwatchman’s walking tour, but didn’t bring my camera for it because I thought it would be too dark. Here’s a panorama of the town though, taken from the top of the wall.














In addition to its history, Rothenburg has a lot of great shopping – its Christmas Market in particular is pretty famous. So, without a husband to get bored, I had lots of time to ooh and aah at all the ornaments and Christmas decorations. The pic below is the inside of the Christmas shop - it looks like a little winter wonderland village!














On my final evening, I boarded my bus again and headed to Frankfurt. This was the least exciting part of my journey, as it was dark for most of the ride. Frankfurt is a big city, so I didn’t do much solo exploring there – it was mostly just a resting spot before I caught my plane the next morning. But it gave me plenty of time to reminisce over what I had seen and done. I hope to do another trip on my own before we leave, but at the very least, I know I won’t be as intimidated to do this again some day if the opportunity ever avails itself.