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Things to be Thankful For

One of Jenna's friends from home lives in Stuttgart, Germany on a US military base. Stuttgart is known for having a big Christmas market. We would be free on Thanksgiving weekend, and it seemed like a US military base would be a good place to spend some time around Thanksgiving. Just a few hours away is the famously beautiful Neuschwanstein Castle, where we could day trip. Also nearby, Ritter Sport chocolate factory, also known as one of the greatest places in the entire world.

This, it seemed, would be a wonderful weekend.

On Thursday (Thanksgiving in the States) I had to cancel my lessons due to some violent illness that left me nearly unconscoius on a train. It didn't get much better. I toughed it out on Saturday morning to get on the flight and spent the majority of the weekend occupying a (rather pleasant) bathroom in our caring host's home.

I made a hell of a first impression.

It wasn't all disaster from me though. We did go to the chocolate factory and purchased two kilos (!!!) of various chocolates for about 12 euros. It lasted...less long than we'd like to admit, especially considering I couldn't really even touch it til about a week later. I got to even eat a little bit of leftover Thanksgiving food on Saturday night, too.

Sunday we got up and I felt pretty OK, so off we went to Neuschwanstein Castle. First thing of note, it's pronounced "noy" instead of "new" at the start. Never would've guessed that. Second thing of note, the drive there is very pretty from Stuttgart. It's southern Germany, which is very open and very beautiful, even though that's not really what you might think of when you think of Germany. In any case, you arrive at the parking lot to go up to the castle and realize that there's a small village of tourism at the bottom and the castle sits up the hill from an earlier castle, which overlooks a beautiful lake. Don't believe me that the lake is beautiful? Here's the most beautiful photo I've ever taken.


This was actually taken after we strolled around the lower castle, called Hohenschwangau. It was also nice and looked over the enormous valley we were seeing the edge of.


But then it was time to go up and see the main attraction, so to speak, the fairy-tale castle of Mad King Ludwig. The trek uphill was probably only about 10-20 minutes and the there was a fog rolling in, but it wouldn't be enough to disturb our first clear view of the castle, which was, you know, awesome, but the sun washed out the photos. Instead of taking more, we ran past the castle and followed signs to a little walking bridge that looks back at the castle from a more magical point of view. Especially on a foggy day.


Yep. As an added bonus, the bridge where this photo was taken was about 100 feet above a waterfalling, picture-perfect stream. The only downside was that the distance down wouldn't really show up well in a photo. Oh, and the bridge was notably shaky, especially with dozens and dozens of people on it, including one from Chicago who commented on my Cleveland Indians winter hat.

We took a tour of the inside, but unfortunately no photos are allowed once you're inside the actual building. Needless to say, it was extravagant on the inside. The King died before it was completed, sadly, under very suspicious circumstances (he as a pretty interesting wiki page if you have a few minutes), so the finished portions are incredible but there are a lot of off-limits/unfinished/never-to-be-finished areas.

The courtyard once inside the castle wall

We had a day of it, returning back into the fog you can see below, before driving back to Stuttgart to eat a few more Thanksgiving leftovers (we're pretty easy house-guests, sometimes).


It was cold, and on the drive back you could occasionally see some trees weighed down by fog that had frozen, providing an incredibly cool visual. 

The downside of all of this was that, despite feeling fine on Sunday and eating mostly human food throughout the day, the ol' midsection changed its mind overnight Sunday and I spent the entire day (I'm not exaggerating) shuffling between the bed and the toilet on Monday. Bonus points because we had a flight back to Milan at about 7:00 that night. Jenna and her friend (Brittany, for the record - and Brittany's 3 year old son) went to the famed Stuttgart Christmas market and had a lovely time. I saw photos. And a tile floor.

I perked up just enough to fly home that night without any horrifying consequences and that was our trip to Stuttgart. It was actually a really nice trip, I just feel quite badly about having felt so badly the whole time. 

Up next: A tricky topic, because we day-tripped to a place called Piacenza before world-renowned heroine Carly Konieczny arrived in Milan and we didn't really do anything until Christmas in Vienna. So...maybe a quick Piacenza thing and then we skip to Christmas? Whatever, you don't care.

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