Leaving Room for the Unexpected.
When we were planning our trip through Germany, Neuschwanstein Castle was absolutely on the list. You know the one. The massive white castle sitting high in the Bavarian Alps that looks like something straight out of a fairy tale and is often connected to the inspiration for Disney's castles. It was one of those places we had seen in pictures a million times and knew we wanted to experience for ourselves.
Our original plan was pretty simple. Find one of the big group tours going to Neuschwanstein, buy our tickets and go. But because we had our own little group traveling together, I wanted to see what else was out there before we committed. I spent a ridiculous amount of time reading reviews, looking at different companies and reaching out to see what they could do for us. That's when I found out that for about the same price we would have paid to put everyone on a large group tour, we could have our own minibus, our own guide and a day built around our group. There wasn't much of a decision left to make after that.
Now, our guide Mike was a character. He was an American who had moved to Germany, very particular, slightly grumpy, more than a little arrogant and had strong opinions about what we needed to see. We may have hired him to take us to Neuschwanstein Castle, but it became clear pretty quickly that he had his own ideas about what we should experience along the way.
One of our first stops was near Garmisch, close to the border between Germany and Austria. He told us he was taking us to his favorite place in the entire world to take a photograph, which is a pretty bold claim. He also told us there was a place across the street that had some of the best bacon we would ever eat. At this point we were still getting to know him, so the combination of favorite photograph in the world and incredible bacon had us chuckling a little bit about our guide and wondering where exactly he was taking us.
Then we walked around the corner.
We all just stopped.
In front of us was this crystal clear lake surrounded by fall trees with the snow capped Alps rising behind it. The water was so still that the mountains and trees reflected right back at us. You could see the whole scene once with your eyes and then again in the water below it. It was freaking gorgeous.
Our quick stop turned into twenty plus minutes of all of us living our best modeling lives. There were places to take pictures everywhere, and every time somebody found another angle, the rest of us wanted that picture too. We took group pictures, individual pictures and probably far too many versions of essentially the same picture because every single one felt like THE picture.
And obviously, we couldn't leave without trying the bacon. Mike was 100 percent correct. The bacon was delicious.
That became the rhythm of the day. We still had places we planned to visit, including Ettal Abbey and Linderhof Palace, but mixed in were these smaller stops that we hadn't been thinking about when we booked the tour. We were getting to see the places we came for, but we were also being taken to places we never would have known to add to the itinerary ourselves.
Before heading to the castle, he took us to this quaint resort, restaurant and hotel in Breitenwang, Austria, where we stopped for lunch overlooking the lake. We sat together, ate a wonderful lunch, tried this delicious cherry drink and had some time to just enjoy where we were. It wasn't some famous attraction I had researched before the trip. It wasn't a place I had saved on a must-do list. It was lunch. But sitting there together looking out over that lake is still part of what I remember about that day.
Eventually, it was time for the place we had planned the entire tour around......Neuschwanstein Castle.
Neuschwanstein is beautiful. Seeing that castle sitting up on the hill with the mountains surrounding it is one of those views you immediately recognize, even if you've never been to Germany. There really isn't another castle like it, and when you see it for yourself, you understand why so many people make the trip. Was it a once-in-a-lifetime experience? Absolutely. Am I incredibly glad we did it? 100 percent. But was it my favorite part of the day? Nope.
Getting up to the castle was a serious hike uphill, and once we got there, there were stairs after stairs after stairs as we made our way through it. By the time we were finished, we were exhausted, and then came what I still remember as one of the most horrific walks downhill I have ever done. I have done plenty of hiking in my life, but that hill and I are not friends.
None of that means I wish we had skipped it. I'm glad we climbed that hill. I'm glad we walked through the castle. I'm glad I got to stand there and see something I had looked at in photographs for years. But the castle was supposed to be "the thing." It was the reason we booked the tour in the first place, and by the end of the day, it had become one part of a much bigger story.
My favorite moment came after all of it. We were back on the minibus headed home, and everybody was wiped out. We had spent the day exploring, eating, taking ridiculous numbers of pictures, climbing hills and walking more stairs than any of us wanted to see again. We had been playing music throughout the day, and at some point Fleetwood Mac's "Landslide" came on. I don't even remember who started singing first, but one person quietly started singing along and then somebody else joined in. Then another person did. Before long, our entire minibus was singing together.
Nobody planned it. Nobody announced that it was time for a group singalong. We were just a bunch of exhausted people riding back after a really long day, singing "Landslide" together, and the whole energy on that bus changed. Everybody woke back up a little bit. We laughed. We sang. And for those few minutes, it felt like all of us were taking in what a cool freaking day we had just had together.
That's the moment I remember.
Of course I remember Neuschwanstein. But I also remember the lake we weren't expecting. I remember laughing about the bacon and then discovering that the man was completely right about it. I remember sitting together over lunch with that cherry drink, looking out over the water. I remember our twenty-minute Bavarian Alps photo shoot that was never supposed to be part of the day. And I remember sitting on that minibus with everyone singing together after the attraction we had spent all that time planning was already behind us.
I believe in planning the things that matter. I'm going to research the tours, read the reviews, compare the options, and figure out how to make the trip work for the people I'm traveling with. That's part of the fun for me. If there is something halfway across the world that I have dreamed about seeing, I'm going to figure out how to see it. But I don't want to plan a trip so tightly that there isn't any room left for the things I couldn't have planned.
Because sometimes you travel all the way to Germany for the castle, and what you come home talking about is a lake you didn't know existed, some really good bacon, a cherry drink and an entire minibus singing Fleetwood Mac together.
Plan the things that are important to your trip, but leave room for the things that make it.
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