The Romantic Road V - Linderhof, Germany Oct 27, 2007
 After a cup of hot chocolate and a slice of cheesecake in a cozy café with sun-yellow mantles and vases of dried flowers, we continued to head south towards the Bavarian Alps. The scenery had started to change drastically, going form busy motorways to quiet alpine roads traversing the oceans of swelling hills and meadows. Houses with heavy timber beams were decorated with germanium-frilled windows and fresh piles of logs were stacked in the front yards. Grey smoke rose from the chimneys and I half-expected Heidi and Peter to come running down a hill hand in hand. They were Swiss, I know, but the image fit.
Before we knew it we were surrounded by the white snowy peaks of the Alps, clouded by fog and haze. We had not expected to see snow at ground level but we were pleasantly surprised to find small white fields of melting snow here and there. Pine trees became taller and crystal blue lakes became more frequent as we neared Linderhof. There was a palace there rumored to be a ‘mini-Versailles’ belonging to the polemic and misunderstood King Ludwig II of Bavaria.
If there was one Romantic in history, it was to be Ludwig II. He was better known ‘the fairytale king’ for his impassioned vision of epic stories and musings of fantasy castles. His love of art, music and architecture saw the construction of many extravagant castles and the patronage of none other than German composer Richard Wagner, plunging him into debt and as some claim, insanity. Linderhof Palace was the last of his creations, and was the only castle he saw completed.
We found the palace without much difficulty, hidden away among groves and low hills which had served as hunting grounds for King Ludwig’s father, Maximilian II. When one expects to see a grand palace emerging from the snow-sprinkled pines, but instead finds a small building, albeit lavishly decorated but tiny nonetheless, one thinks ‘surely this must be the chariot garage or something’ and ‘we took a wrong turn’. It was not the case, because the small building, closer in size to my parent’s suburban house, was Linderhof Palace.
The building resembled more a Parisian petit hotel or a Roman villa than a king’s palace, but after all it was built in the 19th century, when the taste for housing was reduced to familiar private homes rather than large opulent estates and manors. That was precisely what Ludwig had wanted: an intimate retreat where he could hide away from a world that no longer cared to understand him. continue...
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