Christmas is many things to many people.

For some, it’s parties and drinks and buying and giving presents, and time off work, and time at the beach or watching cricket or the Sydney to Hobart (if you’re in Australia!) or revelling in the snow and hot wines and hot dinners if you’re in the northern hemisphere.

It’s Christmas carols, and Christmas trees, and tinsel and turkey, and family.

For others, it’s a deeply religious and spiritual time – a celebration of the birth of an Ascended Master, of a Christ, of someone who showed us just what was possible.

For me, it’s all of the above.

I wouldn’t call myself a Christian, and yet I celebrate the arbitrary date of a very special birth – a hallowed birth. And I understand the need for myth and ritual. It’s crucial to our understanding of who we are…

I don’t ascribe to the current fashion of taking the Christ out of Christmas by saying “Happy Holidays.”  This diminishes and trivialises the sacred nature of the occasion.

I respect the HIndu holy time of Diwali, and Islam’s Ramadan – and other religious celebrations.

Through this blog I have made many friends all over the world. I feel very fortunate to know you all – and to call you a friend. Each one of you has enriched my life, and will continue to do so.

I wish you all the very best for this Christmas time – and look forward to sharing stories and feelings and provocative opinions (!) with you this coming year.

And I hope 2017 brings all you wish for…

Bill

It was the last day of our tour today.

It seems to have just whizzed by.

We spent the day casually roaming around the old part of Munich – through the Viktualienmarkt to look at the Christmas goodies on sale…

Then through some department stores to see their Christmas sections, then out into Marienplatz at 11am to look up at the Glockenspiel clock and show of moving figures that lasts more than ten minutes and captivates all the spectators way below –

Then we went our separate ways – Sue and Bruce to climb tall towers, Jen and Angie to go to the magnificent Saint Michael’s church –

It was a relaxing day once again full of wonderment and delight. It’s constantly fascinating to see how the German’s celebrate Christmas.

In the evening we went to a nearby restaurant that specialises in pork knuckle. We had a massive plate – along with dumplings, fried potatoes (in case we didn’t have enough carbs from the dumplings), sauerkraut and two token bowls of salad.

The meal was a feast.

After dinner we wandered back to the luxurious Platzl Hotel, had some coffees, Ken and Bruce and Angie and Sue sang a version of the “Twelve Days to Christmas” song that included references to all the funny things that happened on the tour.

We videotaped it and will put it up on Vimeo later.

We said our goodbyes, sadly, because during this relatively short period we’ve had some truly wonderful and memorable experiences that will stay with us all for the rest of our lives.

Today was all about castles.

In particular, the fabled Neuschwanstein Castle, in the southern reaches of Bavaria, just near the Austrian alps.

We left our hotel early, with frost covering the windscreen again, and drove 5kms to the small village where you can park your car and walk up to the castle.

We did the walk in minus 3-4C, so it was chilly, and the light was blue. As we climbed the winding road leading up to the castle, we caught glimpses of it through the trees.

A backroad leading to a bridge overlooking the castle was closed, so we jumped a fence and tried to make our way down the road, but it was blocked by some tree fellers. Or tree fellas. Whichever way you want to look at it.

Bruce and Sue posed for an incriminatory shot behind the Do_Not_Cross_This_Barrier sign…

Unfortunately you’re not allowed to take photos inside the castle, so to see and experience the full spectacle you have to hoof it to Germany and see it yourself – or do our Romantic Road tour next year. Yes, we are thinking of doing it again…

While waiting for the gates to open for our English speaking guided tour, Angie and Jennifer decided to do some yoga poses. This one was the Lion…

After taking these photos I required first aid…

No pictures can describe the elegance or majesty or sheer grandeur of this castle. And the story of its construction, and the King who built it, would make a movie.

Speaking of movies, driving away from the castle after our visit, we passed a white church that was in the Steve McQueen movie, The Great Escape…

how cool is that?

We’re now in Munich. We have just returned from dinner at the Hofbrauhaus – Munich’s most famous beer hall – and tomorrow is our last day of the tour.

It’s gone so damn fast, and we’ve had so many truly wonderful experiences which will turn into so many wonderful memories…

Today we arrived at the designated end of the Romantic Road, even though it’s not the end of the tour. We still have three more days.

The end of the Romantic Road is a small town in the foothills of the Alps, called Fussen. Fussen is only a short distance to the borders of Austria, Lichtenstein, and Switzerland.

It’s only a 100km drive south from Augsburg, but it’s as though we’ve driven into another country.

We stopped about 40kms out of Fussen for a coffee, and Angela rugged up. Here is a sequence of pics of Angela zipping up her jacket –

Note Angie’s eyes in this last image,

In fairness to her, this is before she had coffee….

Fussen is famous for being the stepping off point for the majestic Neuschwanstein Castle – the fairytale castle that Walt Disney fashioned his Fantasyland castle on…

It’s 6kms to the castle, and so we walked, being walkers as we are… It was overcast, but very beautiful.

We caught our first glimpse of the castle through the trees… (that out of focus smudge on the mountain side in the distance is in fact one of Europe’s most beautiful castles…)

And an adjacent castle, Hohenschwangau… (taken later, when the sun was out, on the walk back.)

We have tickets to visit the castle tomorrow, so today we visited the magnificent Museum of the Bavarian Kings to bone up on our history before we hit Neuschwanstein tomorrow.

As mentioned, the sun broke through on the walk back…

A couple of swans were fossicking for food by a river bank.

Tonight we eat at a gorgeous local restaurant called Madam Plusch. I worry about the name. And that we might get extras with the meal…

Seeing we’re in castle land, another castle shot to finish the post!

Yesterday and today are combined because the internet where we stayed last night was sketchy –

Yesterday was another magnificent walk day; different from the other day when it was all frosty and white. This was through dark and moss covered woods, interspersed with frozen ponds and small lakes, and overseen at times by gigantic metallic wind-turbines.

Jennifer and Angie, before the walk, had stopped in at a local store and brought some Christmas accoutrements…

Bruce and his wife Sue are experienced walkers, and they fairly flew along the track. Bruce stopped for this portrait…

On this section of the walk the Romantic Road followed the Jakobsweg – the German Camino – so we had signs for the Romantiche Strasse alongside the familiar blue and yellow Camino scallop shell way markers.

I have been trying for some time to walk on water, and yesterday I finally did it… I was so happy I did a little jig.

Our Fitbits told us we walked about 20kms all up yesterday.

This is how big the tower is…

Certainly we were tired by the time we walked into Dinkelsbuhl, our home for the night, and another story-book town on the Bavarian Romantic Road.

We overnighted in a gorgeous hotel –

Angie got a nice room, for which she was appreciative…

We spent this morning wandering around Dinkelsbuhl and visiting the huge church – then we drove about 35kms along the Romantic Road to Craigligen – a small town which had its Saturday morning market in full swing when we arrived.

The tomatoes actually looked real…

And the pears had their nipples painted red…

Nordlingen is another town on the Romantic Road – this one famous because it sits smack bang in the middle of a massive crater made by a meteorite that hit the earth some 15 million years ago. The church, which is the centrepiece of the walled town, is constructed from rock compressed by the blast of the meteorite so many eons ago.

We climbed 70.5m to the top of the church so that we could view the crater rim. 70.5m doesn’t seem very high when I write it, or perhaps when you read it, but man o man, it was a hefty climb up. But worth it for the view once at the top.

We then walked a half circumference of the town along the ramparts…

Then from Craigligen we drove to Donauworth, another Romantic Road town, where I’d reserved a table at the town’s local tavern. We noshed up on such local delicacies as roasted deer with Bavarian noodles and cranberries, (yes I know, how can we roast and eat Bambi…) and the yummiest Wiener Schnitzel with mushroom sauce, the mushrooms from the surrounding woods…

Drinks were Weissbier – sublime – and local Schwabian white and red wines, which were very drinkable.

After a long-ish lunch, we hopped in the Mercedes van again and drove to Augsburg, a large-ish city on the Romantic Road. We checked into a beautiful-ish hotel right around the corner from the Christmas Markets and the old town centre.

We spent he evening wandering through the markets, drinking variants of Gluwein.

The last two days have been quite different – yesterday a long walk that took us through pristine Bavarian woods, dotted now and again with tiny villages – and today was experiencing a Saturday in Bavaria, with a produce market and a Christmas market full of revellers.

Tomorrow we have lunch in one of the world’s oldest breweries. That lunch no doubt will be long-ish too, I’m sure!