Switzerland

I'm sorry that this has been taking a while, but I was away this weekend.  Anyway, here's part 3 of my vacation.

On Tuesday, I took the train to Schaffhausen, in the northern part of Switzerland.  I wanted to visit partly because my great-grandfather came from there.  After I arrived, checked into the hostel, and got some Swiss francs, I wandered around the city.  It is an old city, with many Renaissance-era houses.  Many of these buildings are very richly decorated.

There are also a lot of bay windows.

There are a bunch of fountains with attached statues throughout the city, including this one of a particularly important Swiss:

(For anyone who does not know, that is William Tell.  He is a Swiss hero who, according to legend, was forced to shoot an apple off the head of his son by the cruel Austrian who was in charge of his part of Switzerland, then later assassinated the Austrian ruler, sparking a rebellion that led to the foundation of Switzerland.)

I also found a little walkway with an interesting name:

Note: That is not the side of the family that has connections to Schaffhausen (that I know of)

The next morning, I went to the Rhine Falls, the largest waterfall in Europe (although it doesn't have much on Niagara Falls).

I was able to take a boat to the rocks in the middle, where I was able to get a very up-close view of the falls.

On a second trip that went around the area below the falls, I saw a platform coming from the other side of the river.  Unfortunately, you had to pay for it, and I felt like I had already spent enough on the boat tickets, so I didn't go to the platform.

After visiting the other side of the river briefly, and questioning my judgement abilities when looking at the upstream part of the river and thinking, "I could probably canoe through that" (because, you know, it's totally safe to canoe down waterfalls), I took the bus back to Schaffhausen.

Definitely easier than Chase Rapids?

When I went back, I went through a self-guided tour of the city.  Part of this included going on the Munot, an old fortress overlooking the city.

There was a pretty good view from there.

Unfortunately, I couldn't get though everything, and had to frantically run back to the hostel, grab my stuff, and catch my train.

More mountains!

Eventually, I met with some relatives who live in northern Switzerland, Urs and Anita.  It was Urs's birthday, so a group of his family members came over for dinner.  I felt mildly guilty for not recognizing all of them from when I visited Switzerland 10 years ago.

The next day, I went on a bike ride with Urs.  We visited the physics research center where my cousin had worked, went along the Aare river, visited a town that had existed since the middle ages, and stopped by a lake with a lot of birds.

That night, I joined Urs at his yodeling choir rehearsal.  It was fun, although it was a struggle to sight sing and read lyrics in Swiss German at the same time.

The next day, we went to Aarau, the capital of the canton of Aargau.  We had lunch on an island, wandered around and looked at some buildings with well-decorated undersides of their roofs, and visited their nature museum.

A few things I noticed about Switzerland:

• I have absolutely no ability to understand Swiss German.  As in, Urs frequently had to translate what someone said into standard German.
• Switzerland is really expensive.  As an example, I saw a sign saying you could get a double cheeseburger from McDonalds for CHF 4.50 ($4.70).  I feel like most food was at least twice the price I would expect to pay in Germany.

All in all, I had a wonderful trip.

Neuschwanstein

Well, now that I am done with my essay (yay procrastination) and have some level of time to kill, I will try to write about the rest of my vacation.

Neuschwanstein

Neuschwanstein is a famous castle built by the Bavarian King Ludwig II.  He was a somewhat crazy king who is notable for spending a lot of money on building 3 major castles before his mysterious death.  Neuschwanstein is probably the most famous of them, and is often referred to as a "fairy tale castle."  Part of this is because it was built in a medieval style despite it being the later part of the 19th century, and part of it is because it was dedicated to Richard Wagner and his operas.  There are a lot of decorations that show scenes from the operas, and there is even an artificial cave taken from a scene in Tannhäuser.

That day started with a 5-hour train ride, a decent amount of it near the Alps.  I discovered that Easter Monday is definitely a thing in Austria and Germany (as in, a lot of places were closed or had reduced hours).

As an aside, there's a fairly standard procedure I found when taking pictures from the train:

1. See interesting subject
2. Get camera out
3. Train starts going past trees, a wall, buildings, or some other obstacle
4. Camera finishes turning on

In related news, I have a decent number of somewhat bad pictures, and a strong dislike towards whoever came up with the idea of having a row of trees right next to the track.

After 3 separate trains and a bus, I arrived in Hohenschwangau, the village Neuschwanstein is above.  It's basically a collection of souvenir shops, hotels, restaurants, and the places necessary for running tourist stuff tucked in the Alps a few miles from the Austrian border.  I was really glad that I reserved tickets in advance, because the line was really long.  In addition to Neuschwanstein, I had arranged to tour Hohenschwangau Castle, which was also right above the town.

Hohenschwangau had been built by Ludwig II's father, Maximillian II.  Unfortunately, I was not allowed to take pictures inside.  One of the best ways I can summarize it is this: The Bavarian royal family was very rich.  It was very well-decorated and full of items like a present for Ludwig that had been made with materials like gold and ivory, included enamel coats of arms for a range of cities in Bavaria, and took 3000 hours to make.

After that tour, I walked over to Neuschwanstein.  The weather was kind of bad, and it snowed at multiple times, but I managed.

Again, the interior of the castle was amazing.  There were a lot of frescoes of medieval stories.  Interestingly, there was only one place that had decorations linking the castle to Ludwig or the royal family.  One of the most impressive items in the castle was the king's bed, which had a top carved in the shape of a gothic church.  I can only imagine how hard it must be to clean.  Unfortunately, Ludwig died while the castle was being constructed and his successor stopped the construction to save money, so the castle is unfinished and missing objects like the throne.

The weather had gotten slightly better by the time I was done, so I went to look at the Alpsee, a lake next to Hohenschwangau.

Finally, I went back to Füssen, the town that the train stopped at, and where I spent the night.  I think the majority of the buildings there were hotels.

The next morning, I went on a brief walk to look at the Lechfalls, a nearby waterfall.

On the way, I discovered yet another castle.  I guess people really liked castles back then?

Salzburg

I spent the last week on the first of my two breaks.  Over the course of slightly more than a week, I visited Salzburg (Austria), the area around Neuschwanstein Castle (Germany), Schaffhausen (Switzerland), and some relatives in Switzerland.  It was a busy week in which I saw a lot of things, took 2363 pictures (although a lot of them were multiple attempts at the same thing with different settings), and spent approximately 32 hours in trains (there wasn't really a direct route between many of the locations, meaning I had to go through Munich 3 times and I spent more time going north and south than going west).

Salzburg

I spent 3 nights and 2 days in Salzburg.  There are 2 key things for music-lovers to know about Salzburg: It is where Mozart was born and grew up, and it is where The Sound of Music is set.  While I was there, I visited the house Mozart was born in and the house he grew up in, and saw his statue in Mozartplatz.

I also saw many of the places in The Sound of Music:

• The gazebo ("Sixteen Going On Seventeen")
  
• Nonnberg Priory (Maria's convent)
  
• Mirabellgarten (part of "Do Re Mi")
  
• The Residenz Fountain (appears in "I Have Confidence in Me")
  
• Various other locations that appear briefly in the movie

Some of the other places I visited:

• The cathedral (It was very richly-decorated, but for a long time Salzburg was ruled by its Archbishop)
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• The Untersberg (a mountain near the city).  It was snowy and cloudy when I was up there, but I still got some decent pictures.
  
  
  
  
  
  
  
• Schloss Hellbrunn (a pleasure palace built by one of the archbishops).  It is known for its trick fountains (basically, a way for the archbishop to make his guests wet after they are drunk at parties).
  
  
  
• Hohensalzburg Fortress
  
  
  
  

Well, I guess the other parts of my trip are going to have to wait, because I have things I need to do.  It probably did not help that I took 1131 pictures on Sunday alone.