Schloss Linderhof

The weekend that I went to the U.S.-Germany hockey game, I was also going to go on a trip to Linderhof Castle, but I didn't pay early enough to reserve a spot and it sold out. My New York friend who went to the game with us was luckier, and he said it was a good trip (and that there was a monastery on the way, monastery=beer) so Hannah and I decided to make our own little trip there. The train ride was a pleasant one, with the Alps in view. However, our itinerary gave us only three minutes to get from the train to the bus that left from the stop outside the train station. Being a small town that was a very small distance, but our train was late and, also because it was a small town, we had an hour to kill before the next bus came. Hooray!

We meandered around the tiny town, then walked up a snowy set of stairs on a hill to an equally tiny church. It was still sunny at this point, so very pretty :) but still very cold, as it had just snowed.

Look I'm in a picture! Happy days.

We caught our bus up to the next town where the Monastery was, on which there was a very friendly little boy who kept walking up and back between us and the bus driver chatting away. Luckily Hannah could understand him enough to ask him questions; I understood enough to know when he asked what my name was, but he looked very confused at what kind of name "Ashley" was (a VERY American one, that's what kind). We then had to wait for another bus to Linderhof. We were waiting on the correct side of the street (my directional skills are FAIRLY decent) when a bus pulled up on the other side of the street with "Linderhof" on the reader board, so we (read by motherly and aunt-types: very safely) ran across the highway to get on the bus. The bus then went up the street to its next stop, TURNED AROUND, and went back the way we had come to the stop we were waiting at originally, bahaha.

Since it had just snowed, the grounds to the castle were closed and the castle itself was pretty small (by castle standards) so it ended up being more of a nice stroll throw a snowy meadow. Here's Linderhof:

and supposedly a fountain:

my favorite view from the whole trip:

After traipsing around in the snow for a bit we went back down to the town to visit the Monastery, also covered in snow:

Another picture of me!

The inside. There was singing coming from under that archway, possible from angles.

And the beer! This is a Dunkel, or "dark beer." I've decided I like them better than the Helles, "light beer." We also had lunch here, and no blog post would be complete with me telling you about it :) SOMEHOW, I did not take a picture of it. Maybe because I ordered the dish I like the most, and I'm sure there's a picture of it in here already, I think when we went to the Alps. Anywhooo, this one came with blaukraut, which is made of red cabbage and it not sour but instead suuuper sweet and delicious, like candy. That is all. 

On the way home, our seriously transportation challenged minds continued to fail us. The train station in that tiny town had only TWO platforms and somehow we picked the wrong one to wait on. You think it would be logical that if the train goes on one track there it would return on the opposite track but nooo, it came back on the same one. No one waiting on the other platform bothered to tell us this, even though they were close enough that two 10-year-old boys thought it was a good idea to use us as snow ball target practice. Their aim was not very good. We saw the train approaching on the other track and took off running like total noobs, but since there was only one set of tracks there was no nice stairwell/underground tunnel to get to the opposite platform; we had to go running down the street half in the snow to the railroad crossing and were almost to the back of the train when it left. We celebrated our misfortune by walking back into "town" and sitting down to enjoy a nice hot chocolate...for another hour :)