Monday morning started with a terrible rain. We were hoping that our drive from Munich would be memorable and it was, just not in any way that we had imagined.
We checked out from our hotel near Munich Hauptbahnhof, and due to the rain, took a taxi to the Enterprise car rental agency. We were hoping that we could leave by about 10.30 from Munich giving us ample time to complete my planned tour before reaching Black Forest. Unfortunately by the time the agency guy arrived who could take us to the car, it was already 11 am.
Either way we started out, and it seemed like the rain was slowing down a bit. I was quite happy since I wanted to go to Schloss Neuschwanstein.
As soon as we came out of the garage, I realised that this was going to be a stressful drive for me. I am backseat driver and imagine what will happen to me when I realise I can't give instructions as we are driving on the opposite of the road and everything that I might instinctively say would be wrong.
The roads were amazing, and we were quickly able to reach the autobahn.
This has been Supratim's dream for so long, and he finally got the enjoy the freedom of driving without speed limit in Germany. I was very scared at a lot of places though especially since quite a few places had construction going on and they still announced 100 km limit. There are places where it says do not overtake, and people still do. The roads which do have a limit of them including 100 or 120 is still not followed by most. On average the speed of each car is 140km/hr. This was too much for me, though after some time when I settled down, I became relaxed with Supratim's driving (still not the speed though, especially when for the initial 100 or so kms, every time he had to change a gear, he forgot which side the gear was located. He did not think I noticed for the first few times.)
There was some traffic and some really bad rain, but we reached Fussen at about 2 pm. This town is at one end of the Romantic road drive and has two castles - Schloss Hohenschwangau and Scholss Neuschwanstein.
Ludwig spent his former years at the Scholss Hohenschwangau.
Scholss Neuschwanstein seems like a Disney fairy tale castle. While driving down the road from Fussen, the castle that you see having a yellow facade is the Hohenschwangau and these markers are all in the road. The Neuschwanstein however is the one that is seen amidst the dense trees, atop a hill and sometimes nestled in the clouds.
King Ludwig II built this castle using a stage decorator, as he wanted to bring a romantic medieval feel to his creation. He spent a lot of money in building this castle, but could spend only 170 days in its residence. The castle was never completed.
There is a nice walk up from the foot that people can try or shuttles and horse drawn carriages that can be used, with fare prices.
Unfortunately for me, because it was quite late and with so much rain, all I could do was enjoy the view of the castle from the foothills.
We started from the Fussen hoping to reach Gengenbach, our Black Forest hotel by 8 pm or so. And instead of taking the same road back, we thought of taking a detour via Lake Constance.
If road to Fussen was the romantic road, then road from Fussen to Lake Constance was definitely a wine road. Rows and rows of vineyards scattered as far as you can see. We also passed many apple orchards and cherry orchards. Every time I saw those red cherries from the trees, I wanted to get out of the car and get some of those. Even with the pitter patter of the rain, the scenery was still worth the drive.
Luck was not on my side though, with just an hour on the road we came to a major standstill. There had been an accident on the road and we were stuck here for 1.5 hours. Even after this our onwards road was not much easier with multiple diversions on the road.
However we finally made it to our hotel at 10 pm, almost 2 hrs later than what we had hoped for.
Thankfully a MacDonalds on the highway saved us from hunger, and by the time we checked in, we were very tired.
Plan for Black Forest drive would need to be made next day itself.
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