Fussen...

Fussen was our last big city (well, it's not a big city but...) on our trip. From here it was back to Munich to head home. However, we had quite a trip ahead of us before that happened!

Getting to Fussen was an interesting experience. Since we'd spent so much extra time in the Lauterbrunnen Valley, we got a late start to Fussen which was an 8 hr train trip - with 4 changes! First few legs were fine - Interlaken to Bern, Bern to Zurich, Zurch to Buchloe but once we got to Buchloe things got interesting. It was very late at night and in this area they're not as used to tourist so German is pretty much all you hear. Buchloe is a little run down train station that really only services local trains, we were all eyes and ears and just hoped we grabbed the right train when it got there. From Buchloe we were to take a train to Kaufbeuren and then from Kaufbeuren to Fussen. We finally arrived in Fussen at 12:30am and realized that it was teeny tiny little station with 1 track. We also realize that once we were there, we had no map and no clue where our hotel was! All we had was an address. Fortunatley there was a map at the station and we took a pic of it with our camera. Unfortunatley, it was of little help!

We started off in the direction we thought was the right one and walked for about an hour and realized that we couldn't have been in the right spot. So, at 1:30 or so in the morning we walked back to the last McDonalds we saw and asked two young ladies standing out front if they spoke english. One did a little bit so we asked her to point us in the direction of the hotel. Thankfully she knew and was able to give us directions - however, they didn't make total sense, so we went inside and asked for a map. No one inside spoke english so we were using hand signals and my very very limited German:).

Finally we had our directions and started off. We had to walk thru a very dark street so I pulled out my head lamp and walking stick. Not that I think Fussen is a bad area, we just didn't know. We finally found our hotel and were hoping and praying that they had someone on staff to help us check in. They did, but he spoke NO english - again, we were down to hand signals:) Finally in the hotel room we crashed!

The next days plans were to walk to Neuschwanstein castle and take lots of pictures. What we didn't realize was that it was a 5 mile walk from where we were to the castle. Regardless, it was a nice walk and we had some nice views as we approached the castle. We'd not intended to take a tour but figured that once we were there we figured we should do it - how many times do we expect to be at Neuschwanstein?

After touring the castle and the surrounding area, we caught the bus back to Fussen and went searching thru town for dinner. We managed to stumble on a great little Italian place that had reasonable prices and big portions. After that we made our way back to the hotel room and crashed. We still had half a day or so tomorrow to hang out and sight see before we had to catch the train back to Munich.

The next morning we did some sight seeing and then made our way back to Munich - amidst a monsoon. The last day in Munich was uneventful. We visited the Hofbrauhaus one last time and then headed back early get some sleep - our train to the airport left very very early.

Lessons learned:
1. The S-bahn doesnt run from 3am - 4am for some reason. The U-bahn however, does. It starts running at 3:00am - perfect for catching the S-28 to the airport for our 7AM flight.
2. Print out maps and directions to hotels from the train before going to the city - or arrive in the city earlier than 1:30am:)