mad kings and uncles.

Once upon a time there was a mad king. He wasn’t mad, American mad, he was mad, crazy, and he spent all of his poor people’s money on building himself four huge and magnificent castles high in the mountains.

The king loved music, and he became more and more obsessed with one composer from his country. He made the composer stay with him all the time, and one of the king’s castles was made completely for the composer, and every room in the castle was dedicated to a different one of his operas.

One day, doctors from the capital city of the country the king was neglecting for his castles and composer came to the not-yet-finished castle with a diagnosis: he was clinically insane, and no longer fit to rule. Two days later, the king was found drowned in shallow water in a lake near one of his other castles, and nobody knows for sure what happened to this day.

Guess what? True. Story.

King Ludwig II of Bavaria was a weird dude. The composer was Richard Wagner, of late-nineteenth century fame, and the fairytale-est of his castles was the one in the story, Schloss Neuschwanstein (Castle New-Swan-Stone), and I walked up the side of a mountain to visit it today.

It was soooo pretty. As I alluded to yesterday, the princess castle (now I’m not sure if it’s Snow White’s or Cinderella’s) at Disneyland is modeled after it. It had just snowed around Füssen, the medieval village closest to Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau, the 12th century castle down the mountain from Ludwig’s, and it was literally a winter wonderland.

Even more enjoyable, though, might have been what I did when we got back to Munich—my Uncle Tom (husband of my mom’s sister, not my dad’s brother…) is here this week to work with some of his German engineering colleagues, and we went out for dinner and coffee!

We met up at the train station that’s across the street from my hostel, and then wandered down Marienplatz, the center of Munich’s historic district, until we found a restaurant that looked appetizing.

We stopped at a restaurant whose name is currently escaping me and ordered some spätzle, a special type of German noodles, and some beef and potatoes that were definitely the most delicious thing that I have eaten thus far (except perhaps the ball of dough and chocolate and cappuccino cream that I had earlier today, whose name can be translated to dream-snowball). We then wandered back to Starbucks at the train station, Uncle Tom determined to drink whatever I order every time I go to Starbucks (which is every time I get the chance) and enjoy it. We sat down with our matching decaf lattes with one raw sugar (it was almost ten, and that’s my caffeine cutoff… especially with jetlag) and talked about shoes and ships and sealing wax, and cabbages and kings until about 11, because both of us have pretty early mornings tomorrow.

Speaking of which, this is getting long and I need to go to bed—I’m meeting my Austrian family tomorrow, and lack of sleep certainly isn’t going to help my nerves!

(Thanks again, Uncle Tom!)