A Very German Weekend, I

Ask anyone, or look in Lonely Planet. The two most characteristic things to do in Germany are
(1) Go to Neuschwanstein, a castle a few hours from Munich
(2) Experience socialized medicine in an authentic German emergency room

This weekend, I did both of these things. I'll only describe the first, as the second is not fully over (i.e. I have to go today to get my bill, about which I am very curious). Neuschwanstein looks like this:
Even though this is the most tourist-y thing in the whole country, I had a strong desire to go for some reason. I can't think of what the equivalent would be in America: probably colonial Williamsburg. The real Germans that I know in Munich, even those that are from here, have never even been. The Germans that go are, I think, Bavarian patriots. I was talking in the train, in English, about my dissertation topic, and expounding on how closely the early Nazi party was linked to Bavarian Catholicism. This is true, by the way, which I've only recently learned about: Hitler portrayed himself as a practicing Catholic until at least 1923, and found lots of his early allies and funds from Munich Catholics. Anyway, this stern German man next to me, who I later noticed was wearing a button depicting King Ludwig II (of Bavaria), very ostentatiously got up in a huff and moved to a different row.

The weird, and kind of amazing, thing about Neuschwanstein is that it's not (like Versailles, or the Tower of London, or the Forbidden City, or whatever) a tourist-y veneer over what was once a functioning set of buildings. This castle was ALWAYS a tourist attraction, and never really a castle at all. The reason it looks more like a stereotypical castle than any castle you've ever seen is that it was designed with that stereotype in mind. The castle is very new: it was completed in 1886, which is the year that Coca-Cola was invented, and obviously never had any military significance or anything. The gift shop, founded in 1926, is nearly as old as the castle itself. Also: Ludwig II died in 1886, under mysterious circumstances (many Bavarians obsess about this), before the castle could be actually completed. It was turned immediately into a museum, and he only lived there for a few months. So it's not the case that Disney copied Cinderella's castle from a real life European castle. It was always already Cinderella's castle.

The coolest part is this room in the middle that is designed to look like a cave, which looks just like something you'd find in Disney world. When asked the very reasonable question, "Why is there a fake cave in the castle, right next to the bedroom?", the tour-guide explained, "It's a scene from Wagner's Tannhäuser." This is not an explanation at all, and only makes things more mysterious. In general, the tour guides were the most uncharismatic lot I've ever seen (you have no choice but to take a tour; it's the only way inside). This is probably because they have to give the exact same tour about 20 times every day. This had the biggest impact on their humor. Tour guides are generally not funny. But when you add the fact that they were speaking in English, not their native language, and that they delivered the same jokes 20x/day, the jokes just came across as very sad. One of them involved the phrase "hanky panky."

One more remarkable thing. The two images below represent both sides of the same sign.
The sign on the left says, "Souvenirs for sale. Everything for 1/3 price." So Germans were getting a better deal, by 1/6! The pain this caused was somewhat assuaged by the fact that the only souvenirs remaining were Neuschwanstein vanity plates for people with extremely uncommon names like "Adelheid."