the world has turned and left me here

neuschwanstein

Silly me: I stayed up all night Saturday night and then went to Neuschwanstein the next day. (Don't nod your head, just shake it in silent disapproval.) Was practically falling asleep standing up. I was drunk off sleep deprivation, and the world was like a movie playing on the back of my eyeballs that I wasn't really paying attention to. But I did get some cool pictures and will be able to speak proudly of my typical touristic (terroristic, as my friend and coworker Michael likes to say) activities.

After some hiking we made it up to Neueschwanstein itself. There we took a guided tour. I was probably at my lowest point of the day, leaning against doorways at the back of the group, nodding off periodically, but I still managed to form some vague impression of the weird interior. In one room there stood a bed and a chair with a desk. Below about eyelevel they seemed normal enough, but at the top they dissolved into this fantastic skyline of carved wood. Maybe at one time it there had been some unifying forms behind it, but if so then they had been completely worked out, like that sequence of paintings of a cat that's in all the psych books, the one that gets progressively more obscured by ornateness until there's nothing but stained glass arabesques left of the poor kitty by the end. The carving was a similar deal. It radiated madness. Supposedly it took 4 people 14 years (or was it 14 people for 4 years?) just to carve these two things.

Everywhere were signs of Wagner's influence. There was even a cave recreating some famous scene in a Wagner opera, and mural paintings from Parsifal throughout one hall. We saw probably 1/100th of the whole castle I'd say. What stands there is only a third of what Ludwig planned to build, so I guess I saw about only 1/300th of the original fantasy.

Then, after 38 long hours in which more happened than has ever really happened before in one period of wakefulness, I slept like a log for a solid 11. Have you ever woke up with a suddenly sore neck from the head-banging that you did two days ago?