Switzerland and Germany Day 8

• Start of day: Appenzell, Switzerland
• End of day: Füssen, Germany

Today was probably the most complicated travel logistics day of the trip. We needed to rely on the transportation networks of SBB, DeutscheBahn, and whatever Füssen has going on.

Appenzell to Füssen

We had two major milestones: we had to be at St. Margrethen SG station by 12:25pm in order to take the train I’d booked weeks before, and we had to be up to Neuschwanstein Castle by 5:50pm in order to use the tickets I’d purchased months before. Funny enough, out of a 160 mile trip with multiple connections, the final 3 miles from Füssen to Neuschwanstein would be the most challenging. More on that below.

I could bore you with a lot of train stuff but the summary is that the tickets I bought meant we were free to take whatever train times we wanted as long as they were along the ticketed path. Meaning, I didn’t have to take the 12:25pm train, I could’ve taken the 1:25pm or 2:25pm, etc. Taking advantage of that, I created space in the schedule by taking an earlier Swiss train to give us a comfortable buffer in Bregenz, Austria, where we’d pick up our only leg of the day on a specific train and with seat reservations.

We made it to Bregenz without problem. The Bregenz train station is a short walk from Lake Constance. We had more than an hour to kill before our next train so we walked through a nice park and over to the lake to hang out for a bit. Oh, and this was my first time in Austria! 🇦🇹

At Bregenz Festspielhaus:

Next to Lake Constance in Bregenz:

Along the way, we found vending machine risotto in St. Gallen:

And this was a nice empty bike train at St. Margrethen. I’ve forgotten now but I think this the train that took us from St. Margrethen to Buchloe:

The last leg of the day, from Buchloe to Füssen, was weird. It was a bus-train kind of configuration: gas-powered like a bus but running on train tracks. It was fine, though there wasn’t a lot of space for luggage.

We made it to Füssen intact and made our walk down to the Best Western Plus Füssen, a 15 minute walk¹. We did a quick drop of our bags, then set back out to figure out how to get to the castles.

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The castles

Here’s where we started to hit some obstacles. Despite the Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau royal castles being the main draw for the area, the transportation system doesn’t seem oriented towards getting people to and from those castles efficiently. I’m deleting a few paragraphs about this that nobody wants to read, so I’ll summarize by saying that signage and bus schedules could be improved, both in town and over at the castles.

We managed to find a bus and make our way over to Schwangau and the castles. For future travelers making the trip to Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau: you arrive via bus in the parking area. From there, to get to your castle up a hill, you need to either 1) walk up, 2) arrange to ride the shuttle, or 3) arrange for the fancy horse-drawn buggy. Signs on how to do any of those three things, if they exist, were not evident. We started walking on the road that seemed to lead toward Neuschwanstein and ran into a mother and daughter (German, mind you) who seemed equally perplexed. The mother asked a shopkeeper which way it was, shared that info with us, and we were on a quick hoof up the hill to the castle for our appointed time. (It’s around 1 mile and 500 feet up). Note that the never did see a shuttle pass us on the road up to the castle, so perhaps the shuttles stop earlier than the tour groups do? There were a lot of people doing the same walk up as us.

We made it, a little winded but no worse for wear! And still with about 20 minutes to spare before our tour.

We waited in this courtyard area for our appointed time of 5:50pm to show on the screen:

Once our time arrived, we made our way through the turnstiles and into the castle for our guided tour. They hand out stick devices that amplify the tour guide’s spiel, but I found it better just to stand near them while they were speaking. There’s no photography allowed inside², so I don’t have anything visual to share. Our tour guide was excellent and the tour was well-paced, spending just enough time in each spot to appreciate the space while not making the tour drag on. Oh, and prepare yourself for a lot of stairs right at the beginning of the tour!

Here’s a video I made with the various views:

The buses back to town ran every half hour or so. There was a light drizzle while waiting for the bus. I can’t complain about the view from the bus stop, though:

Back in town we wandered up and down the main strip looking at the menu boards for dinner, only to end up at the restaurant at the Best Western instead, which was fine. After dinner we settled into our now-usual routine where I’d head downstairs to the lobby with laptop and work on this journal and son would game/Discord with friends.

Tomorrow: more trains and buses, with another brief visit to Austria.

Footnotes:

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