Archive for the ‘Baby Boomers’ Category

Neuschwanstein Castle, Linderhof Palace, and Fairy Tale King Ludwig II of Bavaria

October 28, 2023

This story begins with the wooden puzzle above that arrived at our house from Liberty Puzzles a few weeks back. I discovered Liberty Puzzles during COVID and over the past two years have amassed a broad collection of these intricate, wildly creative wooden puzzles. When I spotted Castle Neuschwanstein on the website recently I just had to have it. We have visited Neuschwanstein, the castle that inspired Walt Disney’s fantasy castle.

Granted, we visited Neuschwanstein Castle in Germany during the spring of 1987, more than half my lifetime ago. I was 33. Dang, that was a long time ago. David and I and our two young sons, Aaron and Ben, traveled to Bavaria in Germany. I captured a few photos of the trip with my trusty point-and-shoot camera. You know, you buy the 110 film with 24 exposures, load it in the camera, shoot, wind, repeat to the end of the roll, with no clue as to what you have until you get the film developed. (If you understand this or have ever even seen a roll of film, it belies your age.)

I put the photos in an album that has been sitting on a shelf for 36 years. And we know where they’ll likely end up (dumpster). In the meantime, they just seemed destined for my blog. So I pulled them out and took photos of them with my i-Phone. Are you ready for the trip to Bavaria, Germany to visit two of the Fairy Tale King Ludwig II Castles? Here we go. (How could you be so lucky?)

We’re at the train station now. The Hauptbahnhof. (I promise this is the worst photo – I just wanted to make sure I knew how to spell Hauptbahnhof).

Hauptbahnhof means “Central Station.” Like in Berlin, or Hamburg, or in this case, maybe Munich? Not sure which central station it is. Or why we were even at the train station. We were living in Sweden at the time of this trip and I assume we drove to Germany. Those blurry figures on the left are David with Ben (almost 3) and Aaron (almost 5). Are we having fun yet?

Descending the escalator! (??)

If we were taking photos with a smart phone it would tell us exactly where we are. But with these photos I have to guess the exact locations. We are definitely in Bavaria in the south of Germany, just one or two kilometers from Austria. The foothills of the Alps!

Our destination today is to visit Neuschwanstein, King Ludwig II’s 19th Century fantasy castle, which sits in the hills above the incorporated village of Hohenschwangau near Füssen. Check out this link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Neuschwanstein_Castle King Ludwig II commissioned Neuschwanstein Castle as his own personal retreat but also in honor of composer Richard Wagner whom he greatly admired.

There it is! (With Aaron and Ben in the foreground)

How do we get to it? From the small village of Hohenschwangau just below the castle? Here we are, I believe, in the nearby town of Füssen. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Füssen David, take a picture of us with that castle in the background! (Okay not too thrilled with my hair, which I had to cut off due to it being completely fried by a recent perm. Remember those 80’s perms? Disco on, baby!) Anyway,

That castle behind us must be the Hohenschwangau Castle, the childhood residence of King Ludvig II? Maybe, or it could just be one of Germany’s 20,000-plus castles https://germanyinusa.com/2019/05/02/germany-home-to-more-than-20000-castles/

Here is a screenshot of the Hohenschwangau castle from this Wiki link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hohenschwangau_Castle

Which does look remarkably similar to the castle behind us in the photo. So, maybe?

In any case, King Ludwig II, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ludwig_II_of_Bavaria was born in 1845 and spent much of his childhood in the Hohenschwangau fantasy castle (above) built by his father Maximilian II near Füssen in Bavaria (where we are now). Ludwig was continually reminded as a child that he would ascend to the throne one day. From an early age he was both extremely indulged and severely controlled by his tutors and subjected to a strict regimen of study and exercise. According to his mother, he was an extremely introverted and creative child who spent much time day-dreaming. You can imagine him as a child peering out the windows of the Hohenschwangau Castle to the foothills of the Alps, imagining the huge fairy tale castle he would build for himself one day. Which is exactly what he did.

Crown Prince Ludwig was 18 years old in 1863 when his father died after a 3-day illness, and he ascended to the throne. Although ill-prepared for office, his youth and good looks made him popular in Bavaria and elsewhere. Except his real interests lay in art, music and architecture. His extreme shyness caused him to avoid large public functions and social events whenever possible. He increasingly withdrew from day-to-day affairs of state and spent much of his time absorbed in his own fantasy world. He commissioned the construction of three fantasy palaces/castles: Neuschwanstein Castle, Linderhof Palace, and Herrenchiemsee. The construction of Neuschwanstein began in 1869. https://www.neuschwansteincastle-tours.com/neuschwanstein-castle-history/ The castle’s construction was King Ludwig’s passion project, and he was involved in every aspect of the planning and design. Christian Jank made the castle’s overall design, and King Ludwig hired theater artists to design the castle’s interiors. Intricate murals and decorations cover almost every surface of the palace. King Ludwig spent his own private money from the royal family and borrowed extensively to build his castles, defying all attempts by his ministers to reign in his spending. When his castle building threatened to bankrupt the Bavarian state, his ministers accused him of insanity. In 1886, they deposed him on the grounds of mental illness and had him committed to the custody of Lake Starnberg castle. This accusation has since come under scrutiny.

The day after his imprisonment, Ludwig II was found dead in Lake Starnberg. He had gone out for a walk after dinner with his physician Dr. Gudden and they were both found dead, head and shoulders above the shallow water near the shore. Gudden’s body showed signs of strangulation and blows to the head and neck. Ludwig’s death was ruled a drowning but the official autopsy report indicated that no water was found in his lungs. Ludwig was a very strong swimmer in his youth and the water was about waist deep where he was found. Speculation exists that Ludwig was murdered by his enemies while attempting to escape from his imprisonment. A Memorial Cross has been placed at the site where the body of Ludwig II was found in Lake Starnberg. https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Ludwig_II_Memorial_Cross_Lake_Starnberg.jpg He was forty years old at the time of his death.

Neuschwanstein Castle was intended to serve as King Ludwig II’s private residence but it was never completed before his death. It had been under construction for 17 years. Seven weeks after his death, in 1886, Neuschwanstein was opened to the public and since then, more than 61 million people have visited the castle. More than 1.3 million people visit annually, with as many as 6,000 per day in the summer.

Back to our visit to Neuschwanstein in the spring of 1987, 36 years ago, 101 years after it opened.

This might be a view of Neuschwanstein from Füssen?

We have made it up to the castle!

There I am holding Ben. Aaron might be totally out of sorts, being too small to see over the stair rail.

This link on Neuschwanstein is fabulous – all you need to know of the history and King Ludwig II, plus a complete tour of every room of the interior: https://www.neuschwanstein.de/englisch/ludwig/biography.htm

Great views of Füssen from the Castle

This experience might have been a bit lost on the kids.

Oh, but wait, there’s more. Next we will visit Linderhof Palace, the smallest of the three palaces built by King Ludwig II and the only large palace he lived to see completed. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Linderhof_Palace

King Ludwig actually lived here. Linderhof, in comparison to other palaces, has a rather private atmosphere with only four rooms that have a real function. The Hall of Mirrors was used by the king as a drawing room. Because Ludwig II used to sleep in the daytime and stay awake through the night, “the mirrors created an unimaginable effect for him when they reflected the light of the candles a thousand times. The parallel placement of some mirrors evoke the illusion of a never ending avenue.” Huh. Somehow that all-night activity doesn’t sound like it would mesh well with his assigned administrative duties.

What I remember most from Linderhof is the magnificent terraced gardens surrounding the Palace. Apparently among them was a 300-yr-old Linden tree with a seat in it where Ludwig would take his ‘breakfast’ at sunset hidden from view (of his adult supervision?) amongst the branches. Here are the photos we took of our visit 36 years ago:

A few more photos from our trip to Bavaria…

Here I am with Aaron and Ben – love the murals on the buildings!

And the gardens. I can’t believe we did all that walking with two small children and one little ‘ol banana stroller. You see here that Ben has relenquished the stroller to Aaron. I wonder if they’ve been keeping score this whole trip on who’s turn it is to ride.

David with the kiddos:

Take a play break at the fountain!

It was great to sit outside by a Jagerhaus (hunting lodge?) and enjoy the Bavarian spring weather.

Oh no! Who could have predicted that a bee would land on the rim of Aaron’s coke and sting him right on the lip as he lifted his can to take that oh-so-innocent sip? When you ask Aaron about this trip he will say that he does remember that cruel bee sting to his lip! We all do.

Yeah, well, the kiddos are 40 now. Dang. What does that make us? David and I. How did we find ourselves at this (ahem) stage of our lives so quickly?

That about wraps up our trip to Bavaria, Germany, 36 years ago where we visited two of King Ludwig’s fantasy castles. I dunno, I may have to lock myself overnight in a hall of mirrors reflecting the light of the candles a thousand times, creating an unimaginable effect on my brain to tackle that intricate wooden 641-piece Liberty puzzle of Castle Neuschwanstein.

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The Mother’s Day Gift that Keeps on Giving Through Father’s Day

June 21, 2020

Our son, Aaron, flew out to Idaho with his two kids on April 15, 2020 after their daycare in Alpharetta, Georgia, shut down because of Covid-19. How could he and his wife, Wei, both work full time jobs from home and take care of four-year old Franklin and 14-month old Bailey running wild at home? The Georgia Covid numbers were much higher than here in southeast Idaho. We wanted to help them. So we developed a plan – he’d fly out here with them, grandma and grandpa (David and I) and aunty Megan would babysit the grandkids, while Aaron worked remotely from our home office. Wei stayed back in Georgia working from home, we’d figure it all out as time went on.

Fast forward to mid-June. All told, Aaron, Franklin and Bailey stayed with us two months. Georgia opened up again, and Aaron and the kids flew back to Atlanta on June 11.

We enjoyed lots of adventures sheltering in place at our house in Idaho over that eight-week period with Aaron and our two grandkids. We took family walks around the neighborhood on some fine spring evenings (maintaining social distancing of course):

April 26, 2020

In retrospect, it’s a wonder to me how David and I raised three kids. How could I have been a stay-at home mom?  While the grandkids are precious, filling our lives with constant delights and surprises, it is honestly quite exhausting to entertain a 4-yr-old and 14-month old at home throughout the day, every day. From the moment they wake up (with the birds it seemed) each wanting different breakfasts, to the moment you finally get them both tucked into bed at night, you run around like a staff of five, with the feeding, diaper changing, cleaning up spills, pulling toys and games out of your butt to entertain them, in this case, separately, because Bailey is too young for legos, and loves to step in and destroy whatever Franklin has built with one stroke.  Thus, our dining room table, and kitchen counters were quickly relegated to Franklin’s legos, and airplanes, and … whatever else got tossed on on them out of Bailey’s reach.

‘Situation normal’

Although, Franklin was a big help to David when mowing the lawn.

Megan and Bailey were best buddies at the get-go. Girl Power!! At age 4, Franklin is absolutely certain that he’s too old for naps.  I would beg to differ on most days as he would fall into a perpetual whine by 4 pm, lying underfoot as you attempt to make dinner, dragging his ‘pillow’ around. Bailey is down to one nap a day, our strategy was to keep her active and busy till 1 pm, give her a bottle, then nestle her in the pack’n play for hopefully a two-hour blissful reprieve.  

Imagine the ecstasy I felt on Mother’s Day, May 10, when, miraculously, both Franklin and Bailey went down for naps at 1 pm. Megan retired to the basement to watch Netflix, David sat at the computer to do crosswords, wow, perfect time for me just to crash on the living room couch, grab a power nap, bask in the quiet, reflect on the legacy of my motherhood …. lying there on the couch looking up at the ceiling, hey, what’s that? I hadn’t even fully positioned my body into comfort mode when I noticed a wet spot on the ceiling above me.  What?  How can that not be a water leak?

I called to David to come down and look at the ceiling in the den.  Well, what do you know?  A Happy Mother’s Day gift from the upstairs toilet. What the hell? We should deal with this right now, while the kids are sleeping. David cuts the wet chunk out of the ceiling. Chunks of plaster come raining down, he pulls out the saturated insulation. “Go flush the toilet and see what happens.”  Sure enough water hits him in the face from the hole in the ceiling, dang we weren’t quite prepared for this.  We spend the rest of nap-time getting the plaster mess splayed over the carpet and couch out of there before the kids are into it.

What’s wrong with this picture?

So, yeah.  I guess when we replaced the tile in the upstairs bathroom, like, five years ago, the toilet hadn’t been reset properly and had been slowly leaking all this time.  Except we didn’t flush it that much, so the spills didn’t penetrate the ceiling till Aaron and the grandkids were using it.  

For God’s sake! Don’t flush the upstairs toilet! Not pretty.

David just set the wet chunk of cut-out ceiling on top of our heating/air conditioning unit outside to dry out.  

Which it has.  Like, weeks ago.  Sitting atop that unit suits that piece of ceiling just fine.  

Meanwhile, we’ve been carrying on as if nothing is awry in our den.  

Except one morning we looked up, there was Tigger. He had apparently bounced so hard he crashed into the ceiling.

What mischief had he and all the other stuffed animals been into during the night?

 

Frankly, over the past 8 weeks, Tigger has been bouncing all over the house. Meanwhile, I’ve taken several still-life photos of the ceiling situation, and honestly, could that hole in the ceiling somehow, if you will, look like it was carved out purposely to complete, say, a three-dimensional wall/ceiling abstract grouping?

Good feng shui? Nice balance with the new ceiling treatment

I had about convinced myself that I could actually just live with it. What the hell. The hole in our ceiling is not hurting anything. No one ever sees it now except us, with this Covid-19.  Besides, it would serve as an interesting conversation starter if or when we entertain guests in our home again.

Alas, Aaron and the kids are gone now, been gone for … 10 days. We’ve cleaned the house, spic and span, restored the dining room to its old self. (How do you spell peace and quiet?)

Wow! We no longer have to eat standing up!

All the kids’ toys are put away, down to the last lego we discovered yesterday under the dishwasher.

“Hello!”

Boy does the house look spiffy! Uh, except for the gaping hole in our den ceiling.  It has to go. 

David is on it.  I say that because, well, I’m not. Can’t even cope with the thought of hiring someone.

Happy Father’s Day, honey. Kinda funny how this ended up ultimately being your gift on your special day. Something about … uh … balance? I dunno. One of life’s unsolved mysteries?

Meanwhile, we’ve got the memories. And about 1000 photos and videos of the grandkids. This is one of my favorites, appropriately shared on Father’s Day – Franklin and Bailey with grandpa:

 

Yes, we’ll miss them. But I think we’ll manage. We have accumulated a sizable to-do list here. 

 

 

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Our Piano

July 13, 2010

We recently sold our Yamaha C-7, 7’4″ concert grand piano. It had been in our family for over 17 years, giving us countless hours of enjoyment, filling the house with its beautiful sound.

When we first purchased the piano in 1993, we lived in a good-sized house in Augusta, Georgia. We had a room just for our piano. Our two sons, Aaron and Ben, and I were taking lessons from a retired Julliard-grad concert pianist who had hand-picked this piano for us to practice on and to hopefully blossom into accomplished pianists.

We learned sonatas, etudes, waltzes, sonatinas, and many other pieces on that piano. We all performed at Music Teachers National Association auditions and the boys advanced to competitions at the Georgia State level. I loved listening to Ben’s Chopin Etude in F Major filling the house, and Aaron’s Sonata by Soler.

David had taken years of lessons growing up and would sit at the piano and play, too. Sometimes we’d gather around the piano and sing while he played.

I’ve had a piano in my life as far back as I can remember. Growing up, my family owned an old 6 1/2-foot black baby grand that stood all polished and regal in one corner of our formal living room. Except it had a broken sound board – we must have inherited it with the big old house my parents bought to accomodate all eight kids? I don’t know. But we would bang on that piano, and it must have sounded bad, because my mother would invariably yell from wherever she was in the house, “Get off the piano!”

So I had played a little growing up – I could bang out ‘chopsticks’ and a few simple tunes by ear.

I decided to enroll in lessons with our sons when I hit forty. Of course, I soon learned that (like just about everything else) playing piano well requires consistent practice, dedication, and discipline. I got several pieces under my fingers – Beethoven’s Moonlight Sonata, the Bach Prelude that accompanies Ave Maria, a Chopin Waltz in A Minor (well, sort of – could never play it up to tempo or get contol of one section of it, no matter how much I practiced).

The boys got some fine pieces under their fingers, which won them awards at the state level.

That was then, in Augusta. The boys grew up, of course. Aaron left for college, and Ben abandoned piano for guitar. I stopped taking lessons. As a 40-ish beginner my fingers lacked facility. (That was my main excuse for quitting, I suppose, other than it proved harder work and less fun to learn to play piano than I had bargained for.)

In 2000 we bought a house in Idaho – 2200 miles from Augusta – and had to manage the move ourselves. I flew to Idaho from Augusta with Ben and Megan while David loaded a 28-foot U-Haul truck and drove it across country – twice! Of course, I just couldn’t bear the thought of leaving the piano behind. On his second trip David had to hire piano movers to load the 800+ -lb piano onto the truck in Georgia, then drive it across, and hire another crew to get the piano off the truck in Idaho.

We decorated our formal living room in Idaho around the grand piano. And the piano looked magnificent and regal in our formal living room. Its rich sound filled the house. Except, none of us, uh, played much. When I did play, it could sound pretty bad, because I was so out of practice, and thoughts filled my head of others in the house wanting to yell at me, “Get off the piano!” – because it was so loud. Maybe that’s an excuse. I found lots of excuses not to play that magnificent piano that had been such an integral part of our family for so long.

The piano is gone now and I’m missing it. We sold it to a professional jazz pianist in Provo, Utah, who is ecstatic to have it and plays the piano as it was meant to be played – probably five hours a day. It’s a long story about how we happened to sell it. I know it was the right thing to do. Except for right now. I’m missing it and all the beautiful piano pieces that filled our house over the years, pieces that flowed out of that piano from underneath my sons’, my husband’s, and even my fingers.

I played the piano for over an hour on the day it was leaving us. And I photographed it from across the room:

It’s pretty hard to capture the whole piano in a close-up:

I took some photos after the movers arrived, as it is quite an ordeal to move a 7′ 4″ grand piano.

Here you see Greg, one of the movers, playing it in our house for the last time,

while his partner examines how the legs are tethered.

They’ve got it wrapped now, have dismembered one leg, and are taking it down.

They strap it to the dolly,

and maneuver it into our front entry

where it nearly gets stuck.

Ten minutes later they’ve gotten it through our front door

and out onto the sidewalk, where they have to turn it around.

There it goes onto the truck.

Farewell O’ Fairest Grand Piano!

You didn’t think I could really just sell that piano and live without one now, did you? (which are the exact words I said to David when we sold it.) For nearly two weeks we had two pianos. You see, after we sold the grand piano, but well before the movers came to get it, I found a slightly used upright studio piano for sale on Craig’s list.

Albeit, it doesn’t even begin to compare in sound to the 7 ‘ 4″ grand. But we have downsized the piano. You know, in case we decide to retire and move into a condo.

Yeah, like I’m going to give up this house.

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Yesterday Was A Day

March 4, 2009

I had a day yesterday. Of course I had a day yesterday since, obviously because I’m making a blog entry today, I was still alive yesterday, but what I mean is, it really was a day.

I haven’t gotten to the subject of my health issues on my blog yet. (What self-preserving reader wants to hear it, anyway?) But to sum it up, I have back pain (lower back and neck) with corresponding sciatica (which is a real pain in the butt, my right buttock to be precise), tendonitis in my left elbow, slight tingling in both legs, and joint pain (knees and hips mainly). I am currently getting physical therapy for my back. I wake up most every day with all these symptoms at various levels of severity, none of them severe, but all of them together rather … eh … tiresome, distracting, annoying, and at times, unnerving.

But not yesterday. Yesterday I awoke with no pain whatsoever in my back, buttocks, joints, no tingling in my legs. I remained free from the usual symptoms (which I’ve had about a year and a half) as the day progressed. It would have been fabulous and marvelously encouraging except for the resounding MIGRANE in my head, accompanied by its annoying little sidekick, nausea. Both ailments stubbornly persisted all day in spite of my ingesting huge amounts of ibuprofen. What the heck? I guess all my body pain was now in my head?

Which begs the question, “Are my symptoms psychosomatic?” Do I, on some unconscious level, dig pain and illness because of all the attention I garner in my passionate malingering to friends and loved ones and my earnest efforts to heal?

My symptoms draw my focus like a pestiferous ant draws sunbeams through a hand-held magnifying glass. Which, one could argue, that kind of focus is a vast improvement over, say, a scatterbrained and ditsy focus.

Directing my mind and efforts on assuaging my symptoms might be a good thing. It keeps me more alert and in the present, as in, “Shit, that knife stab in my right buttock hurts like holy hell right now!”… (Rub, rub). My butt aside, all of this direct focusing over time might make my brain more Alzheimer’s resistant.

Okay, so this is a crock and it doesn’t matter anyway because today I’m back to my old symptom-fruitful self. Yep, my body must have sucked the pain back out of my head ’cause there it is yelling out of my lower back and butt again. And the leg-tinglies are baaack too (“Hello!”). Oh joy.

However, not to worry! I’m focused on it. Later today I’ll be off to my 1-1/2 hour – session of physical therapy to strengthen my back. Yeah! I’ll just try not to let my head know what I’m doing, in case all my frenetic exercising and individualized hands-on conditioning from the therapists raises the hair on those ravenous attention-craving crevasses of my mind.

And, Oh! My stomach is growling now … poor, neglected, hungry stomach!

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