633 - Neuschwanstein Castle
Today we imagined what Harry Potter would be like if it were in Germany.
Namely because we went to visit Neuschwanstein Castle (good luck pronouncing that,) which is easily confused for Alnwick Castle in England, the primary filming location of the franchise Which Must Not Be Named.
The whole gimmick is that it’s a beautiful castle on a cliff, and you have to get up another cliff in order to see it. The catch is that they monetized an entire bus system to get you up and down the cliff, which conveniently doesn’t operate during Golden Hour.
The most beautiful places in the world don’t want you to see them at sunrise or sunset, which subtly personifies the entire European continent in one sentence. Everything here seems so well thought out compared to America, but it’s also so ridiculously inconvenient when it comes to the most trivial things.
We had the same problem at Seceda Ridgeline, where we had to pull some ninjitsu research shit in order to figure out how to make it happen outside of midday lighting, and still came up short.
Add a language barrier into the whole research process, and it’s a nightmare dealt directly out of the Chamber of Secrets.
But nevertheless, we prevailed. AllTrails found us a sketchy, half-maintained dirt trail that took us right to the top, but not without a little trial and error. I’ll spare you the details- but I will say some magic was involved.
Here’s the view once we got to the top of the cliff, moments before the sun set:
The crazy part is that this wasn’t even the best shot of the shoot, because the actual sunset was happening to the left of the castle, leaving us with this empty sky of emptiness. At least the side of the castle was a lil’ lit up.
But Harry granted us one last gift- Hohenschwangau Castle (double good luck on pronouncing that). This much lesser known castle was positioned right in front of the brilliant sunset:
Mmmm, pretty colors. Two points to Gryffindor.
