The Last Days in Europe

Tuesday 6 December 2016

An assortment of German towns


Starting from where we left off;

Herrenchiemsee is the largest of many palaces built by the over ambitious, and probably insane King Ludwig II of Bavaria. Ever heard of the magical fairy-tale castle Neuschwanstein with its interior paintings dedicated to Wagner? This is the same bloke.

Construction started in 1878 on an island of Herreninsel, located in the middle of Bavaria's largest lake, Chiemsee. With designs for 70 elaborate rooms, this impressive new palace was to be built across the island from the much older monastery, and included mythical statues and fountains in its vast gardens. 

Ludwig was obsessed with France and in particular Louis XIV. This is highly apparent in the design, as he built Herrenchiemsee in the style of the Palace of Versailles, even going as far as to make his bedroom a replica of Louis' (the 'Sun King' i.e. all gold everything) own private chamber. This huge building has largely remained out of the international spotlight, primarily because 50 of the rooms remained unfinished after work stopped in 1886 after Ludwig's death

However it is unlikely he would have had enough funds to complete the Palace, with so much expensive detail going into aspects of Herrenchiemsee, that if completely would actually exceeded Versailles. The advantage of new technologies at the time of construction; a mechanical dining table, a bath as big as a swimming pool, and an extra few feet in the hall of mirrors, all pointed to this German version of French luxury actually being the better than the real thing.

I found the whole place very interesting, and would tell you more, but that is enough because I wasn't actually aloud to take photographs inside, and therefore I don't have any photographs to show you... Sorry to get your hopes up.


Instead I have these from the boat journey there, and some more photos from other parts of Germany which I thought I would include in this post, as they aren't substantial enough on their own. 







^ Here's me looking very strange outside the palace. Below is an image of the hall (not my photograph), which runs the length of the building, the middle set of windows you can see behind me. There are an outrageous amount of chandlers and even more candlesticks in the Palace, and apparently for the week that Ludwig was actually in residence he demanded that ever candle be lit, although there were no guests, so he could wonder the rooms and hallways alone at night.


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Then I visited Andrea, a friend based in Krefeld, in the west of Germany. She showed me around Wuppertal where she took me on the train with the tracks on the top called the Schwebebahn, the only urban train system like it in the world... Very alarming when you step on an you can feel it swinging more like a gondola than a train. I felt a bit like I was in Bladerunner.


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 We also briefly dropped by Cologne and saw the Cathedral with its incredible floors. The entire building was like something from a beautiful dream. 




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After a few lovely days with Andrea I was back a little more south to see Iris, a family friend. They took me to the cute village of Heidelberg, popular with tourists for its beauty, and with students for its university, one of Germany's finest. 

Und wir besuchten das schloss natürlich.












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And finally here's a bit of Frankfurt too, on top of the 'Main Tower' 





Thank you all so much for reading my posts and being part of my European adventures. The future of this blog is uncertain, but I plan to show you some London life. 

I hope you stick around to read the new content!

All my love, G xx

Bavaria Bound | Aschau Im Chiemgau

Monday 28 November 2016

Aschau Im Chiemgau

A sleepy little village in the hills beside Bavaria's larges lake, Aschau is a town where horses eat grass and humans eat cake.
  
Coming in hot from romantic Verona, I was ready to fall in love with Aschau. The scenery is stunning, my friend Verena was such a lovely host, and to be honest I was ready for a small town again to remind me of home!


^ The mountains, chickens and totem pole in Verena's garden



The view from my room overlooked the rocky crag in the middle of the valley which was home to the Schloss Hohenaschau (Hohenaschau Castle). Because it was off season for tourism, the castle was closed when I was there, but I wanted a closer look, so I climbed the 50 or so meters and looked around...


^ Looking back towards the house, it is out of frame to the right 

v Looking North West towards the lakes of the Chiemsee




The family graveyard was also beautifully creepy... 





 Like most German castles, Hohenaschau has a long and winding history, inevitably ending as a tourist destination and civic ownership (the Federal Republic of Germany to be exact). An important nobel seat for about 7 centuries, the castle started to lose importance by the 19th Century when the last ruling family died. After that a rich Industrial Baron bought the castle for his family to live in. The collective memory of the townsfolk remembers this family as the most recent and interesting resident, as the son of Baron von Cramer-Klett Theodor was apparently rather foolish, and lost the castle on a drunken game of cards. Not something you would want to explain to your wife the next morning. The information boards outside boasted an impressive corridor of heraldic statues, gothic interiors and a torture chamber complete with shackles. 


^ Verena's house is in the little green valley to the left, the castle is on the right, and the town in the foreground
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Bavarian's are an interesting mix of traditional and modern. Perhaps conservative and festive are better adjectives. For example, they love hiking and getting out into 'ze nature', but at the same time love eating cake. The cable car and mountain-top restaurant combo illustrates this rather well. I didn't photograph the huge alpine lodge restaurant, but it felt like a rendezvous point in a James Bond movie. Not a whole lot of hiking going on today!










next: Schloss Herrenchiemsee | The German Versailles 

When I Saw You In Verona

Saturday 19 November 2016


In fair Verona, where we set our scene...


Eventually I had to leave Nervi and my new Italian Family. Stefano gave me a ride to the station in Genova, where I jumped on a train to Milan, and then I was Germany-bound! In the spirit of spontaneity I found a train I liked the look of (Italian trains never run on time so it didn't really make a difference which one I got). I chose one going to Verona, where the connecting (German) train would take me through Austria to Bavaria. Of Course, my Italian train was late arriving in fair Verona, and ze precise and efficient service that is BAHN, had left already, leaving me stranded in Verona, already well into the evening. Luckily the station had wifi, so I booked a hostel and, for the first time while travelling, caught a taxi. I can't remember the name of the hostel, not a big tragedy as it wasn't fantastic, but it was fine for a last minute booking. My bed was in a female dorm with about five other beds and a small bathroom. Most of the beds were empty, but two across from me were taken, one with a girl from Croatia, and another with Emily, a Londoner travelling solo. The three of us went out in search of dinner and found a really nice place - which was also cheap, a miracle of a restaurant, truly - and a friendship was born. We still keep in touch today!


The next morning I went out exploring and in search of the house of the famous Juliet Capulet



My hostel was on the other side of the river from Casa di Giulietta. I walked down the riverbank in the early morning sunshine and found the house a few streets back from the bridge in the background.







^ The balcony where the two star-crossed lovers met. 


These are some of the costumes used in the 1968 Romeo and Juliet, directed by Franco Zeffirelli. The bed was also used in the film.


Apart from standing on the balcony and touching the bronze breasts of a 14 year old fictitious character, traditions include sticking your gum to the walls in the courtyard (ew, why?), padlocking, i.e. writing your names on a lock and then locking it to a civic object (seems to be a popular thing in Europe, see my Paris posts), writing your name in sharpie on the walls, and - made popular by the very bland Letters to Juliet (2010) - writing letters to Juliet about your relationship troubles. I decided touching the boobies would be my thing. 


... and standing on the previously mentioned balcony


After satisfying my romantic side and agreeing to keep in contact with Em, I was off again towards Germany!


next: Aschau Im Chiemgau 

Walking the Cinque Terra | Corniglia to Monterosso via a Mountain

Wednesday 16 November 2016

Corniglia to Monterosso 

Some people might feel too embarrassed to tell this story. Some might try to forget about it and pretend it didn't happen. I mean, it was pretty stupid. I however, have decided to share it with you both for entertainment value, and for the small possibility that someone might read this before they do the same walk. I hope my mother doesn't get too worried about me after reading this.

Basically, I got lost walking the Cinque Terra.

For those of you who don't know what the Cinque Terra is, it is a beautiful piece of coastline containing five small historic villages in the Liguria Region of Italy. From North to South they are: Monterosso al MareVernazza, CornigliaManarola, and Riomaggiore. The area is famous for the bright colours of the houses and the picturesque harbours each village has grown around. The walk from village to village is just that, a path for tourists to walk along the coastline between the towns. 
It sounds simple, because it is.

I never got to see these beautiful villages or their little pebbly beaches, because I went the wrong way...


^ I arrived by train in Corniglia on a hot sunny morning with a pack full of snacks and wearing those Nike shoes that look like they would be great for running, but are actually made of elastic and foam, and which are incredibly slippery on uneven terrain (can you guess where this is going...)


I decided that because of time restrains I wasn't able to see all five villages, and because home was to the North, I would start at the Southern end. The train station was just before Corniglia. You can see the village of Manarola in the distance. 

Turning my back on that pretty sight, I climbed the steps from the station to the town. I believe this was the only part of the trail that I actually walked.


^ Manarola


^ Some back gardens, cars and less exciting houses in Corniglia with Manarola in the distance. 


It is at this point, about 20 minutes in, that I went wrong.

I was, understandably, very excited to be here, by myself, adulting and all that. I was excited to stretch my legs too, craving some exercise after so much delicious Italian food. The path from the station came up behind the village and then looped around at a small intersection on a dusty road. There were no signs (in hindsight the right path was obviously the one that went into the village) but my instinct told me to stay on the path I was already on and walk straight instead of turning off. To solidify this in my brain, two American tourists happened to be wondering up the path from the village at this opportune moment, eating ice creams and looking very relaxed. 

"Is this the path for the Cinque Terra?" I asked them. "Oh, yes it is, we just came from the town and it's this way" they replied. 

Great! continuing along this path, and with a handful of other tourists walking behind solo little me, I found a small wooden sign written in Italian, naturally, which said something about a Church and the Cinque Terra. The arrows pointed towards the hill at the back of the village. As you can probably guess, this was enough for me to assume that the path must divert to the village, and then come back again behind the town and curve back down to the coast again towards Vernazza once past the town.


^ That's Corniglia. A little way away, but the sign said church, and I knew Italian churches were usually built fairly high up hillsides.  


But no churches came into sight, there was no longer any sign of ice-cream-wielding tourists on my tail (hooray! I thought) and the trees were thinning out...


The atmosphere was actually really nice, and the trail was beautiful. It was very quiet and I had fun pretending to be Katniss Everdeen from the Hunger Games, which I was reading at the time. In the back of my mind I knew this surely wasn't the way, but I supposed the path would come out at another one which would take me in the right direction. Turning around and retracing my steps didn't seem very appealing either, as that would be admitting defeat, and after all my time was limited to just one day. I didn't want to see the same scenery twice! 


...The path came out at the top of the mountain, where it met with a alpine highway and logging road. After deciding I didn't want to get run over by a logging truck, I decided to continue on the foot track which I spotted on the other side of the road. Here, my logic was telling me that if I took my chances on the highway I could be walking for a long time and end up further out of my way because the road was designed for cars, but staying on the walking track meant a route designed for walkers, so it couldn't go on for too much longer or for too far without reaching an ending point. It had taken me a few hours to hike to this point already. Perhaps this logic made sense? I should have swallowed my pride and headed back to Corniglia to harass those Americans. The only map I had on me was a computer print-out Silvia and I had made which had a basic layout of the order of the towns along the coast, and a couple of walking tracks marked along the top of the mountain.


As you may have noticed, I had stopped taking photos at this point, because I was too busy telling myself to stay calm. I took this photo as a reference - the trail numbers didn't match the ones on my map! I knew I was going towards Vernazza but I was unnerved that there was no mention of Corniglia, where I had come from.  1, 7 and AV5T also all pointed to the same direction, so that was it.

There are no photos from the little village on the top of the mountain which I arrived at some time later. Hey, at least I'd found the Church! I found a local and tried to explain in sign language that I was lost. The trail with the corresponding number was closed due to land slides (that sign at least I remember being in English) and there didn't seem to be an alternative walking route. No one understood my sign language for 'I've been walking all day but the path is closed up ahead and I need to get to the train station'. Finally I decided the best thing to do was to use the road which I could see weaving down the mountain ahead of me. This would take up all the rest of my time, and I would probably miss my train, but at least I was on my way towards the coast again, and I could use a phone and ask Silvia to come and pick me up.

...and then luck struck! Hallelujah! At an intersection up ahead two lorry drivers were talking via their drivers side windows. One of them didn't look too scary, and they were laughing in a good hearted way. I approached the truck and tried my sign language again. Not a single word of Italian entered my head, and only a few words of English pre-existed in his. But I knew I was getting the train from Monterosso, and he understood that, laughing again because 'that is a long way away, you can not walk that far'. Bless the man, he offered to drive me to the where the trail connected with Vernazza. I wish I had asked him if I could have photographed him. Lovely saviour man.


He dropped me off on a small dusty path at the top of the hill overlooking Vernazza. I'm fairly sure it was someones back yard. From there I was able to walk down to the village. Monterosso is the beach town in the background, with Vernazza in the foreground. 



Relieved to be back on track, so to speak, I arrived in Vernazza! I was so tired that, again, I didn't go down to the harbour and get the best view of the town, but instead ran for the train which I could see on the platform, and made it to Monterosso via rail, in time to relax for about an hour on Monterosso beach before getting my train home again. 


^ Monterosso and the hills I was wondering around all day


Sitting on the train on that return journey watching the sun set over the ocean, I was very very grateful to my truck driver man, and proud of myself for not panicing. I didn't get to see the Cinque Terra, but I got to test myself, meet the locals, the exercise I wanted, and I was home in time for dinner. 

[copyright Google images]

^ This was the track in its entirety from Manarola to Monterosso. 

Maybe next time I can take the coastal route... 

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next: Verona