Europe Trip - day 4 - Fussen and Munich, Germany

Today was going to be a very jam packed day as we were planning to spend first half of the day visiting the famous Neuschwanstein Castle and then rest of the day exploring Munich.

We reached the Neuschwanstein castle early in the morning. This castle is a 19th century palace build on a rugged hill close to the Fussen city in Germany. It was build by King Ludwig II. This castle was opened to public visit after the death of the king in 1896. There are more than a million visitors per year visiting this beautiful castle.

Some beautiful views of the castle as we were hiking up to the castle:

The castle location was very romantic and it really felt like a "Once upon a time, in a land far far away" type of castle. The location of this castle is a fairy tale one. It is located in the Alps in Bavaria overlooking a beautiful valley. We were amazed by the extremely beautiful landscape surrounding the castle. This castle was build by the king for his personal use so there was a lot of romantic and theatrical influence on the architecture of the castle. However the tragedy is that the king lived in the castle only for 172 days as he died young. The king had moved in the castle before it was completed. So after the king died the castle wasn't fully constructed. So even today there are lot of unfinished floors in the castle.

The fairytale look of the castle inspired Walt Disney to create the Magic Kingdom. We were mesmerized looking at the charming castle.

Bridge near the castle

Model of the castle

After enjoying our time here we headed back to spend the rest of the day in Munich.

Munich is the 3rd largest city in Germany and is a financial hub. Munich was much more cosmopolitan than Berlin. We headed to the down town. At the center of the city is a very large open square called Marienplatz. There were beautiful clock towers, a huge church and other beautiful historic buildings near the square. We just wandered around here for a bit.

 

Next up was the famous Hofbrau house which a huge beer house. It was a huge building with multiple floors and buzzing with people enjoying their beer and food. The quantity of beer served here was huge and we saw that majority of the people were easily gulping a tall mug of a litre of beer. The place was very lively. People were singing, celebrating and there was live German music being played by a band which made our experience here really fun and unique. Well we could not drink a litre of beer so we shared some and enjoyed mingling with the local Germans. If you go to Munich this place is worth visiting. We then headed out to our hotel, packed ours bags to catch our overnight train to Venice, Italy.

Hofbrau Beer house in the background

Live music inside the beer house

We bid good bye to Germany and Austria and first leg of our journey was over. It was a fantastic one and we were now looking forward to our next destination Italy.

On the train to Venice

More pics here.