The Romantic Road VI - Fussen, Germany Oct 28, 2007
We were reaching the pinnacle of our journey as we drove through the placid emerald lakes and those great wooded pyramids piercing the low clouds that were the Bavarian Alps. The air was drier and cooler, and it smelled of wet pine cones and smoky wood, and if you stopped breathing for a second you could hear your heart pulsating. This was the fairytale domain the Romantic Road was all about.
Fussen is an alpine town resting on the banks of the River Lech just 5 km’s from the Austrian border. Surrounded by immaculate mountains, forests and lakes, F?ssen becomes a hot-spot for hikers, trailers, mountaineers and outdoor enthusiasts of all sorts all year round. For the rest there’re the incomparable views of the Schloss Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau, probably the most famous castles on earth.
 We arrived in this enthusiastic little town while the sun was going down, so we found our hotel, an old country-manor-turned-inn with views of the verdant hills, and settled for the night. For dinner we found a warm restaurant in the centre of the town serving a fusion of romantic German and Mediterranean dishes amid candlelight, red flowers and low music.
The next day, a foggy one, we drove down to the Köningstrasse which led to the site of the King’s Castles. We were the first ones there, so we paid our 17 euro tickets for both castles and waited for our Hohenschwangau Castle tour guide to begin. It wasn’t until about 30 minutes later and a protest on my part that we realized that Daylight Savings time had become effective since that morning, and our weary watches had not been synched. So when we thought we had awoken at 8am we had actually done so at 7am. No wonder.
With another 30 minutes to wait for the guides to begin, we sat on the castle courtyard whose smoothened cobbles almost seemed to have the imprint of hooves and chariot wheels from centuries before. The fountain of an imaginatively contorted goose to the east looked on to Neuschwanstein Castle just on a mountain opposite. It was surrounded by silver haze but a curious sun was trying to peak out from behind it, covering the castle in a magical white glow. I prayed for that sun to make a proper appearance later on the day. continue...
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