Fit For a (Fairy Tale) King

I was sorry to see the Germans bow out of the World Cup early, because I’ve had Deutschland on the brain lately. This month (seven years ago) my wife and I cruised down the Rhine River from the Netherlands to Switzerland, but it was pretty much all Germany in between. This month also signals full-on summer and more time in front of the barbeque.  On our grill you’ll find German bratwurst as often as American burgers. But more than river cruises and brats, I’m thinking about castles.  Not the kind made of sand on beaches, but the real ones made of bricks and stone on mountaintops. Like Germany’s Neuschwanstein Castle.

Neuschwanstein Castle

You’re already familiar with Neuschwanstein; I’m sure you are.  When 1.5 million people tour the castle every year – one of the most popular attractions in Europe – it translates to a lot of photos on Facebook.  Also, Neuschwanstein includes all of the castle elements you remember from childhood fairy tales: towers, turrets, balconies, gatehouses, courtyards, dungeons, and (the intention of) more than 200 lavishly decorated rooms, built up to the highest of heights.  There’s no surrounding moat, but Neuschwanstein gets along fine without one, perched on a hilltop in the middle of the Bavarian Alps.

Painting by Hubert Sattler (1904)

Frankly, all this castle needs to complete its picture is a king and his court.  Alas, Neuschwanstein never had a king – never – not even after its completion in 1892.  Yes, the castle was designed by King Ludwig II of Bavaria, but here’s where the fairy tale falls to pieces.  To begin with, Ludwig built the castle to escape the stresses of his primary palace life in Munich, so more than anything else it was meant to be a vacation home.  Then, Ludwig copied most of Neuschwanstein’s architectural elements from nearby castles, so the design is pretty much a mashup of structures that came beforehand.  Finally, and perhaps the saddest statement of all, Neuschwanstein was never completed – not even close.  With only a throne room, a “Minstrels’ Hall” (a sort of tribute to the entertainment of the time), a drawing room, and a dozen other spaces, Neuschwanstein’s construction fell well short of its intended 200+ rooms.

Neuschwanstein’s “Minstrels’ Hall”

The whole idea of Neuschwanstein feels like a bit of a charade.  Did Ludwig really intend to decorate and staff hundreds of rooms in a castle from which he didn’t care to lord over the surrounding land?  Was he really just frittering away Mom and Dad’s money because he was bored in Munich and had nothing better to spend it on?  And shouldn’t he have been focusing his time and energy on his royal responsibilities instead?  No wonder he was often referred to as “The Mad King”.

Let’s forget about Ludwig.  After all, this post is about a castle, not the king who never occupied it.  For all of its lack of completion, originality, and use, Neuschwanstein is still a model castle.  Most of you should recognize it from the castle designs it inspired: Disneyland’s Sleeping Beauty Castle and Walt Disney World’s Cinderella Castle.  But I prefer another one of its inspirations.

If Neuschwanstein is the ultimate castle, then Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (which I wrote about five years ago in Delicious Clicks) is the ultimate fairy tale.  The story of the magical flying car, its inventor Caractacus Potts, the evil Baron Bomburst, the lovely Truly Scrumptious, and on and on, comes back to me like it was yesterday.  Chitty Chitty Bang Bang was the first Ian Fleming book I ever read, well before anything James Bond.  Yet it never occurred to me until this post that Neuschwanstein served as the story’s castle.  The movie version includes several aerial shots (from the driver’s seat of a flying car, of course), and sweeping views of the surrounding countryside.  Neuschwanstein has always had a familiarity about it.  Now I know why.

Someday I’ll make the journey to see King Ludwig II’s creation in person… but not before I build it myself here at home.  Just when I thought I’d tackled my last LEGO project, along comes another one I simply can’t pass up.  The LEGO Neuschwanstein Castle is 3,455 bricks of towers, turrets, and Bavarian Alps, boxed and bagged along with the usual paperweight instruction manual.  I’m ready to don my crown and get started and as usual I’ll include small updates alongside my usual posts.  When all’s said and built maybe I’ll even suspend a flying car overhead, so the castle looks more like a fairy tale than a mere vacation home for a mad king.

Some content sourced from Wikipedia, “the free encyclopedia”.

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Author: Dave

Five hundred posts would suggest I have something to say… This blog was born from a desire to elevate the English language, highlighting eloquent words from days gone by. The stories I share are snippets of life itself, and each comes with a bonus: a dusted-off word I hope you’ll go on to use more often. Read “Deutschland-ish Improvements” to learn about my backyard European wish list. Try “Slush Fun” for the throwback years of the 7-Eleven convenience store. Or drink in "Iced Coffee" to discover the plight of the rural French cafe. On the lighter side, read "Late Night Racquet Sports" for my adventures with our latest moth invasion. As Walt Whitman said, “That the powerful play goes on, and you may contribute a verse.” Here then, my verse. Welcome to Life In A Word.

15 thoughts on “Fit For a (Fairy Tale) King”

  1. i’m so glad you’re going to build another model, Dave,, it’s been a fun addition to your posts

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  2. Great post! I have never been to Neuschwanstein Castle either, but would love to see it in person. Like La Sagrada Família in Barcelona, I’m sure photos of this castle don’t do it justice. I can’t wait to see your completed LEGO castle… you are going to be very busy!

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    1. I think we’ll get there someday. We loved Munich and will probably go back, so I’d make sure a visit to Neuschwanstein would be on the itinerary!

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  4. Dave, I think people refer to this real-life castle more as King Ludwig’s Castle simply because it is easier to spell than Neuschwanstein Castle. 🙂 I did not know the history behind it and, if you look in jigsaw puzzle books, you will always find a jigsaw puzzle of this castle, many taken at different angles. My mom had such a jigsaw puzzle once and she labored over it a long time pronouncing it very difficult. You’ve found a great way to pass the hot and steamy Summer, working on a 3,455-piece LEGO castle. Good luck!

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    1. I suppose this version of Neuschwanstein could be considered a puzzle – in three dimensions. I’ll be curious to see to what extent LEGO finishes the interior rooms. Notre Dame de Paris was complete inside and out, so I almost regretting closing in the walls. Still need to add the lighting to that one.

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      1. Yes, it could be considered a puzzle. It likely will be difficult going by the picture of the castle which I pretty much memorized forever. I saw it for a long time as my mom struggled to finish it. She always liked the difficult puzzles best. It was not one of the puzzles I have kept in a Rubbermaid tote for my “golden years”. 🙂

        P.S. – I hope you post a picture of the lit-up Notre Dame de Paris when done when it’s set up.

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  5. I must confess I’ve never heard of it, but then I haven’t been to Europe. I did not know that James Bond wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang either, but upon reading his background I see it was based on a story he used to tell his son. The things I learn in your blog Dave! Good luck with the Lego – it looks like a massive undertaking.

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    1. There’s enough adventure in the James Bond stories to believe the author also wrote Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. When I saw the first of the Harry Potter movies (never read the books) I thought, “Okay, now here’s an author’s imagination that would rival Ian Fleming’s!”

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  6. For some reason, I have never been able to get through the Chitty Chitty Bang Bang movie, so maybe I need to try the book.

    I look forward to your new Lego project. Will the coronation of King Dave take place at the outset or after you have finished? 😛

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    1. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang is an almost 2.5-hr movie. Would’ve guessed even longer, maybe because the initial credits (which start to tell the story) are ten or fifteen minutes long and the movie was shown in an era where theaters had intermissions. “King Dave” sounds like an appropriate ruler for a charade of a castle. Glad you didn’t suggest “King David”, because IMHO there’s only one of those 🙂

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  7. Soon your home office is going to look like mine: festooned with completed Lego sets. I love it! I don’t have room for the Neuschwanstein castle, but then again I already have Lego’s Cinderella Castle from Walt Disney World (and I have the Eiffel Tower, the Statue of Liberty, numerous planes and space ships…). As soon as my wife finishes up her Lego “Red London Phone Box,” I’ll reclaim the small table I built specifically to build models like these and get started on my 3600-piece USS Enterprise Lego set. And then I’ll try to figure out where to put it…

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    1. It’s interesting to hear about a LEGO set I didn’t even know existed (Cinderella Castle). 5,000 pieces – wow! The ad says it will be retired soon (which seems to be the case with a lot of LEGO sets). Your upcoming USS Enterprise beats my Neuschwanstein Castle piece count by just a couple of dozen but not quite as many as my Grand Piano (3,662). As for my modest model collection, adding the Castle will bring the total to six (as you’ll read about in my next post). That’s where my count will stand… at least until, inevitably, LEGO comes out with a new one in the Architectures series I simply can’t resist!

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