Fernweh, or the longing for the far-off.

A year ago today I was here:

Some say this is crown jewel of Bavaria, but I was far more in love with the rolling, rolling meadows, the brightest shade of green ever to see sunlight. You haven't really seen meadows until Bavaria. Or grazing cows. Or little mountain villages. Because I couldn't actually jump out the train window, in the evening I went walking in search of some cows and villages.


I think dinner that day was a few bread rolls from the supermarket. I was trying to make up for the fact that I had to spend 50 euros on train tickets that day—I first bought 1 ticket, then I had to buy another after losing it somewhere.

Next day I hit the castle, possibly the only castle anyone ever really needs to visit. Resplendent, glittering, bejeweled, but also unfinished. In the whole of that fairytale splendor, only 3 floors were completed when Ludwig II lost his throne and his life. From across the valley, day after day he watched them building his castle, and he died without ever spending a single day there.

I was here with a Cantonese guy I met in my hostel. Asian tourists love this place, but generally they travel in packs. It was pleasantly awkward in the we-just-met kind of way, though by then I had been traveling alone for so long that I would have found anyone to be interesting. He mumbled and had an amazing camera, and I got to speak some Chinese. Afterwards we climbed up the mountain behind the castle for an aerial view. Me being me, I also insisted on the "short-cut" trail, which turned out to be nearly vertical and filled with big roots and big rocks. Fun! I said, more obstacles and opportunities to scramble!


Below me is a steep drop. I like to live dangerously. I wanted to keep going up, but I had a bus to catch, to Garmisch-Partenkirchen (yes, that's all one name!), home to the Zugspitze, the tallest mountain in Germany and home to awesome hiking and skiing. But I was pressed for time and did not see the Zugspitze at all.

That's the sad thing about Let's Go, there are so many places I would go back to on my route, so many mountains I would climb, and lakes I would linger by, and villages and cities I would wander endlessly in. I would go back to the Austrian Alps - one of the most majestic, most awe-inspiring sights ever. Seeing it makes you wonder, how could there be more to life than this? Ah wait, there could be more to life if I, oh, could spend more than 3 hours here. And there's Berchtesgaden (..more Alps, but Bavarian this time), Zell am See, Hallstatt, Passau...the list goes on....and I would love to see München when the winds come, and the sky is clear enough to see the alps on the horizon. And I would drink more beer, and laugh, and tackle more mountains.