Curry and Castles

One of the main goals of the visit to Munich was to find some spicy food.  Bulgarian cuisine can be quite good, but it is not particularly spicy - unless you count garlic as "spicy."  But Germany has pretty much everything, so Anne and Mark (particularly Anne) were excited to sample the foods there.  In particular, Anne wanted to track down some Currywurst.  Currywurst is a street food that is what it sounds like - bratwurst and curry. 

Feeling rather adventurous, Anne and Mark wandered the Christmas market until they found a currywurst stand.  But they did not stop at the first stand they saw.  Instead, they sought out a big, bad currywurst stand.  One that was so tough, it had to have a warning label.  Eventually, they found one that had the sign pictured above.  Although neither Anne nor Mark Deutsch Sprechen, they took a stab at translating this anyway.  The first word, "Achtung," is taken from a famous U2 album called "Achtung Baby" and is probably there to attract music lovers to the stand.  The second line says "extrem scharf."  We were hoping for extreme, but certainly did not want to end up scharfing on ourselves.

Anne winces her approval of the spicy currywurst.

As it turns out, this was an extremely spicy currywurst (they should have given us a warning about that!)

After snacking on the sharf currywurst, Anne and Mark ventured to the town of Fussen, which is home to two large castles.  The smaller of the two is called Hohenschwangau and the larger and more famous is called Neuschwanstein.  Anne and Mark tried to get an explanation of these names, but the best they could surmise is that in the German language, you buy two syllables and get three more free.



Hohenschwangau

Both castles are tied to King Ludwig II of Bavaria.  He grew up in Hohenschwangau and built Neuschwanstein.  He is sometimes referred to as "Mad King Ludwig," although whether he was actually insane has never been determined.  Regardless, the guy liked castles.

You know who else likes castles?  Anne. (In contrast to Ludwig, however, Anne's sanity is quite well established)  Anne is picured above on our approach to Neuschwanstein.  If this looks somewhat familiar to you, maybe it is because several other castles have been patterned after this one, including the castle in Disney's Sleeping Beauty.

Saint George is on Anne's right, slaying that dragon.

After wandering around the castle grounds for a bit, Anne and Mark wanted to get a look at the castle from a different angle.  They decided to take the walk over to Mary's Bridge.  Mary's Bridge is pictured below.  It was placed a good distance away from the castle, but provides a fantastic vantage point from which to see Neuschwanstein..... usually. 

Mary's Bridge - no fog problems yet.

Unfortunately for Anne and Mark, by the time they had made the trek from the castle to the bridge, it had begun to rain and the fog had rolled in.  So, its value as a vantage point was.... somewhat diminished.

Mark poses on Mary's Bridge with Neuschwanstein in the background (take our word for it)

The fog was actually a bit of an issue on the way back to Fussen.  Anne sets much more of a quick pace than Mark does (no big surprise there).  Usually, this is no big deal, but when the fog started getting thick she nearly disappeared from view all together.