Munich Day 4 - Herrenchiemsee

10/26/2012

So Dad found out when he was going over yesterday’s pictures that half of them are missing. I erased everything after I uploaded, so I guess the pictures are now forever lost ;( That’s the first time it has happened… I’m not sure why, as it completed uploading and I made sure to correspond the numbers before I erased them. Boo. All the treasures from the Treasury are gone, as well as the pictures of the church statuettes dancing around and Mom’s pork knuckle dinner at Tengelmann for 5.71 euro. It was a huge pork knuckle! But we concluded that German pork knuckle is vastly different… it’s salty without flavor, more like boiled pork instead of the renowned German dish we all know from Taiwan. Vienna’s was really good and Salzburg’s Billa did it the best.

The Treasury housed glorious rubies and diamond crowns. They had medieval crowns from the 1000s, like Queen Kunikunde’s crown and the kings from back then. You can totally tell that they are from the medieval ages, by the design and cut of the precious stones. Ugh I wish I had checked before I deleted everything! ;(

After a delicious breakfast buffet at the hotel lobby, we went the Hauptbahnhof to catch the 9:42am train to Prien am Chiemsee. The end station was Salzburg so the train was pretty crowded with the German crowds going for a weekend vacation (today’s Friday). More and more people got on the train at every stop, so almost every seat was full. Our stop was only an hour away from Munich so we got there at 10:49am. There is a bus that takes you to the boat pier, where you need to catch the ferry to Herrensiel island. However, the bus does not correspond at all with the train schedule; you’d have to wait 45 minutes to catch the next bus. And it’s winter, which means the boat only comes once per hour, on the hour. But the train lady told me that the next boat would come at the half hour, so we practically ran the normally 30 minute walk in 20 minutes, panting and heaving by the time we got to the pier.

And that’s when we learned that we were 40 minutes early for the next boat >.< There is a tram that only runs during the summer months, so we pretty much missed all the convenient stuff. But at least we missed the tourist crowds as well. You buy the ticket on the boat (again, since it’s winter, the ticket booths are closed on the pier). If you hold a Bayern ticket, you get a discount of 0.50 euro per ticket (although they don’t advertise this discount!). So normally, the roundtrip is 7.10, but we paid 6.60 each. The boat ride takes 15 minutes and the free bathroom is really clean and nice. Soooo unlike the train… stinky and hasn’t been cleaned in a very long time.

When we got off, the ticket booth for the castle was straight in the front, where we presented our Bavaria pass for the official Herrenchiemsee tickets. And then you pretty much just follow the crowd on a 20 minute walk of the island, until you reach the castle. It’s a beautiful rendition of Versailles, which was exactly what King Ludwig II was going for. The palace is situated far inland, and up a slight hill. 

The fountains and long water park are copies of Versailles and originally, the building was supposed to span as long as Versailles. Unfortunately, Ludwig died and so construction stopped. Only the main hall was completed, and only 20 rooms are completed out of the 50 in the hall.

There are two of these magnificent fountains directly across from each other , but they tell different tales

Perhaps it is YOU who are the toad...!

We took the 1:15pm tour in English. There were a lot of people in the German tour but when it came time for our tour, it was only us and one German family! I think it was because they had a baby with them that they wanted a less crowded tour… or maybe they just missed their tour altogether. At first we thought it would be awkward, but then we could ask as many questions as we want (can you tell we are pretty fascinated by Ludwig?). Unfortunately, interior pictures aren't allowed here either, so I can't show you the splendor of Herrenchiemsee ;(

The tour started in the main hall, which had marbled floors and fake marble walls. The fake marble is actually a more expensive material, but Ludwig wanted it because you can get many more colors that don’t come naturally and he had an exact design of how he wanted the hall to look. We toured through his apartment (which he never used), as well as a private dining room only for him, a study with a very expensive French desk. Everything was French; he deliberately did not want any reference to Bavaria in his ode to Louis XIV. 

He deliberately did not build a queen’s apartment because he was 35 at the time. People usually married around 18-20, so he was considered too old to marry. There was a dining table for one (when most royal dining tables were long and meant to seat over 50). The table could be raised or lowered from one floor to another so that servants could place his meals on it and have it raised to his room. He wanted to eat by himself and did not want to see the servants. 

There is a central heating system as well (he was really into technology and equipped his palaces with the latest) where servants would start the heat downstairs and it would go through various pipes and fan into various rooms. There were little circle fans that open and close to allow—or disallow—heat in. His bathtub took 8 hours to fill, and it’s like the collective size of 3 jacuzzi tubs. All for himself. There was a boiler room to get hot water into the tub and the central heating system went here as well. The rooms are gorgeous, all gilded in real gold (around 5 kg of real gold was used to paint the entire castle, and 9 million individual bricks were handmade to build the foundation and walls of the palace) and elaborately carved.

Our tour guide was very nice and generous with her knowledge. Herrenchiemsee is now state-owned, so only state employees can live on the island. There are about 30 residents but she is not one of them, as the last boat in winter is at 6:15pm. Nightlife would be extremely dull here. But not for Ludwig, who was happiest when he was by himself and was a nightowl.

After the tour, we went across the hall to the King Ludwig II museum. There were pictures and artifacts, leftover remnants of some of his projects and plans/designs. He wrote in his diary, “Got rid of Sophie,” which Angel thought was hilarious. 

Duchess Sophie, Sisi’s sister, was pretty close to him in a brotherly/sisterly way. They both shared a passion for Wagner. In fact, the first time Ludwig heard Wagner was at the musical Sisi’s father put on. He visited Sophie a lot, but then her mother said it was damaging her reputation for him to visit so often… even though they are cousins. Her mother told him to either stop visiting or to marry her. He decided to marry her and many medallions and ceremonial souvenirs were on display of their engagement. His ministers were all vastly relieved; at long last, he was doing his duty and would soon—hopefully—provide Bavaria with an heir. But their engagement was long… too long. It finally caused her father to issue an ultimatum: set a date for the wedding or break off with her. He broke off and wrote how thankful he was for his freedom again. He promptly went back to his palace-building again.

When he first became king at 18, he had the power to dismiss his ministers without cause. But the older he grew, the more he withdrew from politics and gradually lost more and more of his power, to the point where his minister became more powerful than him. He lost his sovereign right to rule and dreamt of absolute monarchy, which is why he built this tribute to Louis XIV. When the Prussians were victorious, they had a meeting with most of European’s rulers to redraw the map. Ludwig was dissatisfied with the results and sort of said, “You do what you want to do. I’m going to retreat to my own world and don’t bother me.” He was a romanticist, dreaming of his own world where everything went his way. When his ministers threatened to cut off funding for his castles, he countered them by threatening suicide. Nobody could tell him "no."

We went to the Augustinian monastery afterwards, which was built in the 1300s. It changed hands multiple times and finally a company bought it to cut down the trees surrounding it to sell. Ludwig opposed the idea and bought the island to save the trees. He stayed in this monastery while watching his castle being built.

Caught the 4:15pm boat back to Prien and walked to the train station for the 5:08pm train. While waiting for the boat to arrive, we saw two guys sailing. Their boat capsized and they were trying to right the boat back up. Crazy, sailing in this weather! You might not be able to tell by the picture, but it's windy as all hell and FREEZING!

Since Prien is a stop in the middle of the Salzburg and Munich, there were already a lot of people on the train. We were lucky to find four seats together. 

Her head weighs 30 pounds... seriously!

Dad went back to the hotel while we took advantage of the Bayern pass to ride the subway to Karlsplatz (only one station, I know, I know). There is an underground mall here and mom wanted to see what other deli stuff she could buy for dinner at the Galeria Kaufhof. Last night we bought the large schweinshaxe for 5.71 euros. Today, she tried the small pork knuckle for 2.99, which tasted a lot like rotisserie chicken breast to me. We bought doner durum (wrap) and doner kebab (sandwich) again… last time L Won’t be able to eat something this good for another two years at least, as London and Paris don’t have these kinds of street foods. Auf Wiedersehen, Munich! It was a dream!

The hotel’s breakfast buffet had a really tasty chocolate-coconut coffee cake, which tasted like a moist chocolate cake with coconut macaroons strewn about. Jen’s promised to make it when we go home. That’s final. Done. ßWhen did Angel write this?!