Germany

	Posing before the luge starts. It's a long ride to the beginning.		Varooooom!!!		Ok, this was fun, can we go faster?
	Jeff managed to get some serious speed going.		And came half way out of his luge on one corner.		The complete luge course (from an overhead cable car)

Fuessen was a welcome change from being so long in cities. It's a small town in the Bavarian Alps with beautiful scenery and woodsy smells. (If only we had scratch-and-sniff capability!) Fuessen is most famous for its nearby castles. King Ludwig II was brought up in Hohenschwangau castle, which like most castles, started life as a military fortress. He decided to create a series of castles purpose-built for luxurious living rather than protection. Neuschwanstein castle was his masterpiece. (Actually, he had others on the drawing board that were even better, but he was in substantial debt, and died under "mysterious" circumstances before construction began.) Neuschwanstein is the exemplary fairy-tale castle, and Disney based his design for Sleeping Beauty's Castle on it. We had to admit, it was the coolest one we'd seen, and the one I'd be most likely to buy if I were a billionaire. :-)

	Bavarian King Ludwig II's Neuschwanstein castle.		The first picture was taken from nearby Marion Bridge.		A close up of one of the entrances.
	And the artwork surrounding it		A view from another angle		And another. Since it's not symmetrical, every angle looks different.
	Hohenschwangau Castle was Ludwig's boyhood home.		No wonder he built a new castle, who could live like this?? ;-)		A distant view of both castles, they are very near each other.

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Oktoberfest in Munich

We went to Munich for two reasons, to (finally) pick up our new laptop, which in the end had to be FedEx'd to us, and to see Oktoberfest. The cool thing is that we managed to stumble into Munich during Oktoberfest without really planning it more than a week in advance. The unfortunate thing is that Munich's hotels are booked solid that week, and you get what you can find if you haven't planned months in advance. Our hotel wasn't bad, but it was grossly overpriced for what we got. So between that and the fact that we're not really drinkers anyway, we only stayed in Munich for 2 nights.

	Oktoberfest consists of a bunch of tents		where a lot of people gather		to drink beer
	and eat pretzels		while listening to music.		Oh, and there's a big carnival going on for us non-drinkers, too!

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Rothenberg

Rothenberg may be my favorite city. It's a lovely, quaint little place to just lie around and enjoy. It's famous for its Christmas Village, which made for some excellent shopping! Though since we're on a budget, it was more like excellent browsing. We met a very nice witch named Rothie (rhythms with Rosie), who decided to join us on our travels to Halloween in Transylvania.

We had a great hotel right on the town square, and since there was some event every day (concerts, reenactments, etc.) in the town square, we had excellent views of all of them. The night watchman tour may have been the highlight of our time there. He was very funny and the tour was quite memorable.

	A view of the town square from our hotel window. There is a band playing in this one.		Our hotel on the market square.		Jeff and Rothie pose for the camera.
	A close-up of Rothie, our new traveling companion.		The night watchman		The town square at dusk
	A display from the christmas museum		Santa through the ages		I loved these candle-powered pyramids.

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