Simonswald, Germany to Schwangau, Germany – September 26, 2012

When we woke up from a peaceful sleep in Simonswald, we found that the skies had cleared, and the sun was starting to peak over the mountains.  We got to sleep in a little bit today, the breakfast served by the hotel did not start until 8:00 AM, so we got up in time to go down to breakfast promptly at 8:00. The breakfast was very good, a typical German menu of sliced meats and cheeses, bread, soft boiled eggs, and some cereals.  An older couple served us, who are probably the owners.  Their English was about as good as our German, but we seemed to be able to communicate well after we got past ordering some tap water, which was a little challenging to get across.

After breakfast, we got on the road since we had a long drive to Schwangau, about 380 km.  The distance was not that bad, but we had selected a route through specific small towns so we could stay on the smaller secondary roads and see more of the German countryside.

We had mapped the city to city travel on Google Maps, but those directions were not always in compliance with the route the GPS chose.  The GPS is set up to go on the “fastest route”, which seemed to put us on a lot of narrow back road “shortcuts”, only to then put us back on the same larger road we were already on before we took the shortcut.  The small roads that were supposedly the shorter route were quite narrow in spots, sometimes you had to pull off of the road slightly to have enough space for two cars to pass.

Luckily, there was not too much traffic on these narrow roads, and we did not have to pass cars coming the other way very often.  We did see a lot of countryside, but the driving was a little tedious, and at times a little nerve racking.  Between the narrow roads, different road signs, having to watch the speed through small towns, pedestrian crossings, etc, the attention level required was pretty intense.

We stopped outside of Simonswald to take some pictures of the mountains and farmland, there were even some strange long haired cows along the road there that we had not seen anywhere else.

Another stop was in a town called Beuron, Germany.  The actual town was small, but the area surrounding the town was very scenic.  There was one area to stop that was hiking trails, or possibly biking trails heading off into the countryside.

It was interesting that along the trail were large monuments designating the Stations of the Cross. We also saw some small fir trees that would have made perfect Christmas Trees, so we decided we would adopt one of them to be our remote German Christmas Tree.

There was also a park area where the trees were starting to turn a very intense shades of yellow and orange for the Fall.

The last thing there was an old wooden bridge that was no longer in use for cars, only foot traffic.

After taking some pictures, we were once again on the road to a town called Sigmaringen.

This entire area had more sheer rock cliffs and fewre of the gentle rolling hills that we had encountered beforehand.  There were several small tunnels, many of them very short, perhaps 70-100 feet long, and narrow, only wide enough for a single lane of traffic.  The longer tunnels, with limited visibility to the other end had a stop light at either end so that the traffic was controlled by the light to safely allow only one direction of travel at a time.

Also along the way we could see what appeared to be either a small castle, or very large house perched up on the mountaintop.  We pulled over into a grass field so we could take some photos before continuing onward.

We stopped in a couple of other towns along the way in order to take some “rest stop” breaks, usually finding a large grocery store with the proper facilities, most times right on our route passing through the larger towns.

As we proceeded along, we passed through the Lake Konstanz area (Lake Constance as the English Version).  This is a long narrow lake, and looked like it would have been nice to spend some time exploring the shoreline area.  We did see some of the large ferry boats that transport cars across the lake as part of the roadway travel system.  This area was very crowded, we assume mostly with tourists.  The traffic was very heavy, and travel through here was slow.

We had decided that the entire trip was already taking us a little longer than planned due to some of the previous stops, the traffic in some areas, and all of the “short cuts”, so we did not feel we had time to explore the lake area, or any of the surrounding lake towns.  We did see that this area of Germany has a LOT of apple trees.  There were apple orchards everywhere, and the trees were full of ripe apples.  Many of the apples appeared to already be falling to the ground.    It was also amazing to see what appeared to be smaller, younger apple trees, with an unbelievable number of apples growing on them.  It seemed to be more than a tree that size should be able to grow.   We saw mostly red apple orchards, but there were several orchards of green apples, and some pear orchards thrown in for good measure.

There were also a lot of  vineyards along the roadway, and the grape vines were full of ripe grapes.  We did see many vineyards where workers were out in the vineyard harvesting the grapes, placing them in large plastic bins.  We tried to take some pictures from the car since there were not any good areas to pull over.  We only got a couple of shots when the traffic was crawling along, and the motion of the car was slow enough so that the pictures were not blurry from the movement.

By this time, we were only about two thirds of the way to our destination of Schwangau, and it was already almost 3:00 PM.  Luckily, once past this area, we started to travel more on larger, faster roads, including the Autobahn.  After the winding roads and constant vigilance they required, it was a nice break to get on the faster roads and make better time.  No more getting stuck behind slow moving trucks on the small winding roads.

We finally made it to Fussen, which is the more famous (and more crowded) town in the area of the Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau castles.  We passed through there, seeing all of the crowds, and were glad to be staying in the less touristy town of Schwangau, just a couple of miles away.

We made it to our accommodations in Schwangau, which is a small apartment with kitchenette called Casa Patrizia.  The landlady, Patrizia, was there to greet us and provide us with the key.  It is a nice place, and roomy, the only issue being that the apartment we have is on the third floor, and with the sloped roof line, there are some low hanging interior beams.  It takes at least a couple of head knocks for training to remember when and where to duck.

Our next chore was to  visit the grocery store to get a few items for snacks ,and for our breakfast for the next couple of days since this is an apartment, and there is no “hotel” breakfast.  We then drove over to Fussen to look around, and get a bite to eat.  By that time, a lot of the crowds had dispersed, mainly because most of the shops had closed, or were closing.  We found a nice outdoor cafe, featuring Stephanie’s other favorite, Italian food.  We split a fresh pizza, and a really good bowl of Tortellini, and had a couple of German beers.  With the car rental, and driving, beer drinking was limited to one.

Since it was now dark, and we were tired, we drove back to the apartment.  The forecast for tonight is rain, with some clearing sometime tomorrow.  This will give us a chance to sleep in if the weather is bad, and catch up on our rest after getting up early for several days in a row.