Today was incredible. Basically the whole day centred around a trip to the Schloss Neuschwanstein. Mad King Ludwig II’s fantasy castle, inspired by his much-loved Wagnerian operas. The one Walt Disney used as a basis for Cinderella’s fairy tale castle. Basically, The Castle.

The weather was obscenely bad, but everyone was upbeat, so. I enjoyed the trip more for the conversations than anything else anyway.

Early in the morning, when we stopped at Füssen, I decided to skip another dodgy old village church (seen one, seen ‘em all). Instead, I joined Blue Mike for a cuppa in a local café (a tourist trap, to be sure, but what the hell).

Was good to just get out of the cold. We talked about our mutual dislike for guided tours and a preference for self-driven exploration. Dunno. He seems okay. Not what I expected from my initial impression of him.

Maybe we’ll go travelling somewhere someday, but don’t count on it.

Back on the bus, talked a bit with Cedric, the guy who’s organising this and did the Buchheim trip too. A tad idealistic perhaps, but it was good to have passion in a conversation these dry, empty days. Which is not really true, given 9/11; suddenly everyone’s got an opinion.

While waiting for the walking tour of the castle to start, I had a conversation with Mingxia, a Chinese lady’s who married a German bloke, and learned much about the difficulty of assimilating into a foreign society.

She praised my Mandarin, which seems to be improving a lot here (of all places!), and that always makes me happy. By the way, my tour no. was 444, which is as bad as it gets, Chinese superstition-wise.

Which seemed a prelude to the tour. It was horribly dull insde, only a third completed and the tourguide was an pain in the ass. I took some illegal snapshots just to defy the dickhead. Infantile, but hey. Didin’t take us long before we clambered out.

The castle was excellent from the outside and the Marienbrücke (a bridge) overseeing the valley between the Alps was amazing. Like Fairyland.

Then we stopped by another village with painted houses. I mean, houses with huge murals painted on their walls. Mingxia needed to puke after the bus ride, so Manuel and I, being the gentlemen that we were, decided to wait while the rest went ahead.

I can’t remember what we talked about, but we must have had a good time, cos we were grinning and laughing like idiots.

And we had charades on the bus. Mostly Mike Stone, Maria and I. Unbelievable. I did “Invisible Man”, “Strangers in the Night”, “Pulp Fiction” and “Independence Day”. The last one Maria got, and she was so excited she nearly fell over. Remember, we were in a moving bus.

On the way back, Mingxia and I helped Mike Stone to write a love letter to his ABC (American Born Chinese) girlfriend, who’s in China now. Mingxia was good! I only hope my translations were half as decent. The poor kid had tears in his eyes thinking of the girl, Jenny. Awww…

Well, that does it. This was really the best day I’ve had since I came here.