Andrew and I made a day trip to Neuschwanstein Castle and Salzburg. It snowed heavily during our trip to Neuschwanstein castle, yes the lovely castle that inspired the Disney one. Because of heavy snow, we couldn’t get the view of the castle from the Marienbruecke, the view you’ll see on posters and jigsaw puzzles. Nontheless, the trip was great.
The castle is truly beautiful and magnificient. The Bavarian Alps in the backdrop makes really picturesque. The heavy snow gave a different perspective of the castle. The alps were white like icing on a cake and one of the best sceneries I’ve seen in my life.
Although travelling to the castle is quite difficult, it is well worth it and the train ride there itself is really nice as well getting some really awesome views of natural Germany.
We spent the evening in Salzburg, where the compact and beautiful city had 3 Christmas markets. It is a really nice Christmas market. Extremely traditional and Christmassy. Much better than the ones in Stuttgart and Esslingen I thought. In fact the things sold at the market were more reasonably priced as well. I thought they really put in a lot of effort to decorate and do up the city for this season of celebration. Salzburg has nice sceneries as well with a fortress just next to the heart of the city centre and mountainous views admist the bustling crowds in the city centre. The hills are truly alive.
We walked past Mozart‘s birth house without noticing it. And along the main streets witnessing ensembles performing and people enjoying the music with gluehwine in their hand. Austria has strong sense of culture and tradition Mozart will be very proud of.
It was a lovely day trip and definately worth while even though we had to spend much of our time riding the train. I finally had the chance to see some the Alps and enjoy the natural beauty of Europe. After many months of touring and seeing many man-made attractions around Europe, enjoying the amazing natural sceneries of Bavaria and Salzburg was truly refreshing.
How can you not enjoy travelling in Europe? Austria was one of my favorite places (I guess becuase Mozart is one of my favorite composers). When I returned home, I was determined to learn German so that next time I would be able to speak with the locals and expand my horizons. I found a surprisingly good German language course via http://www.learngermaneasily.blogspot.com and I hope to return to Austria speaking fluent German.