Castles and the Hazards of Traveling with Running Buddies

Neuschwanstein castle is a fairy tale castle (in fact the one upon which Disney bases its logo) near Füssen, Germany. It's a relatively short train ride outside of Munich, so Kira and I stopped there on our way to Munich yesterday. We'd had an early start and a bit of a ride to get there on a regional train (fewer bathrooms and more people) so we were really excited that the station had free bathrooms when we arrived in Füssen. Unfortunately in our excitement, we didn't realize that the bus came only once an hour and missed it.

 

Castle!

 

No problem! We wandered the streets of Füssen, took in the narrow cobbled streets and tiny shops, and even found the town castle! We liked the castle with its painted walls, so we explored and took pictures. We found an open door that led to a spiral staircase and climbed it to find ourselves at the top of the keep, so we took in the gorgeous view and got lots of pictures. Then we heard church bells. The bus was coming in 5 minutes! We moved fast but got lost, and missed it again.

Since we were meeting Martin in Munich, we couldn't wait for the next bus, but we really wanted to see the castle! We'd read that there was a long hike even from the bus stop to the castle, but the station's bike rental signs claimed it was only 5k away. That's not so bad! Only problem was it had started to rain and at 3.1 miles each way it would take too long to walk there. But the train station had lockers, and 5k isn't far...

I was wearing a skirt, camisole, cardigan and toms shoes. But I had shorts under the skirt for easier train sleeping. Kira had running shoes on, and north face pants that looked promising. But her button-down shirt wasn't ideal. Even still, we stripped down to our closest approximation of running clothes--me in my tank, shorts and toms, Kira in running shoes, semi-athletic pants, and a linen button-down--and stuffed our skirt, scarves, layers and purses into a train station locker. As ready as we could be, we took off into the rain.

We had a lovely, if wet, run. We only took one real wrong turn and it cost us only a mile (or two). We made it to the bus stop in about five miles and looked expectantly for any sign of the castle, or even of the valley in which it supposedly sat. Nothing! It looked as though the bike rental shop had lied and we were really still an hour's hike from the castle. With our train time getting closer (especially with the additional mileage) we were worried about even making it to the station on time. Also it was still raining.

When things weren't looking so good for either the castle or our trip to Munich, a bus pulled up! It wasn't going to magically take us to the castle, but it was headed to the station and our train ticked got us on. We climbed aboard (soaking and dressed like a very conservative religious runner and her hippie toms-wearing friend who underdresses for the weather) and headed to the station.

On the bus, Kira checked the picture she had taken of the train schedule and we saw it was going to be really tight with the traffic we were in. We divided up tasks on the bus and hit the station one minute before the train. We unlocked our locker, grabbed everything, and ran for the train.

We made the train, but we were still soaking and dressed like weirdos. I traded out my shorts and tank for my skirt and very buttoned-up cardigan, and Kira changed out her soaked shirt for her cardigan while we waited for her quick-dry pants to work their magic (which they did, way to go north face!). Thankfully, we had scarves with us so deck changing was more of a towels-at-the-beach experience than anything else. And if anybody asked, we'd claim californians do it all the time! Don't you know that?

In the end we did make it to Munich on time and get in a lovely run, but we still haven't seen the castle. It works for me, though, since now I have bait to get Kira back in Europe sometime!