Tag Archives: Neuschwanstein

Friedrichshafen

Friedrichshafen is a city on the Bodensee, which English speakers call Lake Constance. Bodensee forms part of the border between Germany and Switzerland. I’ve always found it interesting how place names can change so much from one language to another. Paris is always Paris, but in France, London is Londrés.

Anyway, Bodensee sounds cooler to me so that’s what I’ll use.

Our original plans for sightseeing in the Munich (München) neighborhood included going to see Mad Ludwig’s castle at Neuschwanstein. At Marlies’ house, Mary Sullivan told us the story of her and Tom’s visit there the week before. It was a nightmare of trains, buses & walking that took up more than 12 hours. The tour of the interior of the castle was an hour. She didn’t think it was really worth it with so many other things to see.

While we were mulling that information, Marlies told us of a flight she took over the Bodensee in a Zeppelin and how awesome that was. It was expensive but seemed much more interesting to me. I had been harboring hopes of going back to Bodensee anyway. Mary Beth said she’s seen the world from 1000 feet but I said not Bodensee and the Alps.

So she signed on. We made the reservation for Thursday afternoon.

Wednesday afternoon as we were walking to the hotel in Muncih, Mary’s phone rang. It was the Zeppelin people. Thursday’s flight was cancelled due to bad weather. Would we like to reschedule for Friday morning? Yes!

OK, that’s fine. We can go to the Zeppelin Museum in the afternoon, take the flight in the morning, and get the train to Baden Baden in the afternoon. We’ll be at Wilfried’s before dinner time.

When we arrived in Friedrichshafen at about noon on Thursday, we could see why the flight had been cancelled. There was a heavy drizzle and the clouds were so low we could barely see the water of the lake from a block away. The Alps on the other side? Forget it! And the Zeppelin people called again. The Friday morning flight was cancelled. We were sad but not surprised. You wouldn’t have been able to see anything.

At the hotel, we got a map of the town and I noticed another air-related museum. Claude Dornier was a German aircraft designer of the middle 20th Century based near Friedrichshafen. His museum was near the airport, a short train ride away. We decided to go there first and go to the Zeppelin Museum the next morning. Actually, we looked in on the Zeppelin Museum after lunch. It’s right on the water in the Old Town area of Friedrichshafen. It was mobbed. It made sense. The weather was bad and everyone wanted to be inside. We took the train to the other museum.

For dinner, we went back to the promenade along the lake and found a restaurant with 2nd floor tables overlooking the lake. The clouds had lifted somewhat and we could see the setting sun shining through the gaps lighting up the Alps. Sehr schön, as they say in Germany.

Sadly, I had left my camera in the hotel room. Mary got some pictures but I don’t have copies yet. Stay tuned!

In the morning we went to the much-less-crowded Zeppelin Museum. Zeppelin, of course, was the airship builder of the early 20th Century. We call them blimps but the craft Zeppelin built were much more than that. Zeppelins had regularly scheduled routes from Germany to the US, to South America and all over Europe in the 1920’s.

The best known example of a Zeppelin is the Hindenburg. The largest such craft ever built, it caught fire and burned in 1937 as it was docking in New Jersey. At the museum, they have a full sized replica of part of the Hindenburg. They also had a smaller display of the Hindenburg in comparison to other famous large aircraft. The Hindenburg dwarfed them all.

Sorry no photo of the smaller scale models. Maybe Mary has one . . .

When we got out of the museum about 11:30, practically the first thing we saw was the new, tourist, Zeppelin flying over Friedrichshafen. I guess the clouds lifted enough. Here’s Mary watching it fly away.

Oh well, maybe next time!

Perhaps I should have known. My other visit to Bodensee was in January 1982. We stayed in Lindau, just a little east of Friedrichshafen, which has a famously beautiful harbor. Visibility was poor that time too.

the plan

When Mary and I started getting serious this spring about our trip to Germany, we naturally tried to think about what to do and see there. Attending Leni’s party was our principle reason, of course, and we knew we had to visit our ancestral home of Bernkastel. Mary had, with the help of Wilfried, gotten tickets to see the saxophone group Sistergold so we were doing that.

Beyond that it was open. She had heard of Neuschwantein so she wanted to see that. Cologne was close to where the party was so a trip to the cathedral was pretty easy. While we were there I wanted to see the German-Roman Museum which is right next to the Dom.

Munich is where our cousin Andreas lives so we definitely wanted to visit there. I had fond memories of my honeymoon trip up the Rhine through Freiburg and along the Bodensee.

In the end we sort of punted. We knew we would be in Odendorf the first couple of days for the party and we thought we could see how things were and talk to our German relatives about what was practical and interesting in the time we had. Our cousin Mary Sullivan had been to Neuschwanstein the week before we arrived and told us it was expensive and very crowded. She didn’t say don’t go but it certainly put a crimp in the idea.

By Sunday, (the party had been Friday night) everyone was heading to their separate homes. Mary and Tom had been in Germany and France already three weeks and were ready to go home. Wilfried packed Mary Beth and I into his car and we headed for Bernkastel. Along the way we discussed plans.

As we neared the Mosel River Valley, he stopped in the village of Klausen hoping for an open restaurant so we could eat lunch. We were either too late or too early for a Sunday, but he had a story about the church there so we stayed and looked around. Then we were off again and soon got our first sight of the Mosel.

By the time we got to Kues, we were pretty hungry but it was 5 pm and he had already reserved a spot for dinner at 7. We settled for a snack and a beer before getting settled in Leni’s house. A quick walk around town and a drive up to the Panorama Restaurant in the neighboring village of Graach.

After we finished, we tarried to watch the sun go down over the river.

The next day in the morning, we walked around Kues and Wilfried showed us the houses our ancestors had lived in at various times in Kues going back over 300 years. Quite amazing for these Californians!

This is a view of the church cemetery where many Hangauers are buried. The hills in the background are actually on the other side of the river. If you look carefully, you can see Burg Landshut, also across the river.

After our walk, we piled into the car and headed out for the only undamaged castle in the valley at Burg Eltz. It survived the French occupation of Napoleon’s time by being hidden in a valley rather than on a hilltop. Despite Wilfried’s GPS, we had a hard time locating it and it was almost 5 pm when we finally got there. It all worked out fine: we still got a tour and a look around before it closed and we had more stories to tell.

Rather than driving straight to Burg Eltz, which is not in the Mosel valley, we had asked Wilfried to go on the river road. This took longer, especially as we were inspired to stop a couple of times to admire the view. As the day went on and getting to Burg Eltz before closing became a possibility, we took to articulating our philosophy: ‘The plan is . . . there is no plan!’

We stopped to walk up to the Youth Hostel on Marienburg to look over the village of Punderlich:

We stopped at Beilstein to take the ferry across the river for lunch under the shadow of Metternich’s birth place.

Finally, Burg Eltz (photo by Wilfried).

So, the plan that wasn’t a plan worked out great. Speaking for myself, I couldn’t have asked for better traveling companions. Although Wilfried had seen it all before, he had an easy going approach that allowed us to follow our curiosity perfectly.