The Finale

When on trip you tend to a remember a lot of things. But if it ends on a bad note it has a very bad after taste. If we think back we generally first think about that one point, irrespective of how good the rest of the trip was. But luckily for us this was not the case. In-fact, if anything it ended on a very tasty note :).

We were driving back to Leuven from Neuschwanstein Castle, we decided to stop at Stuttgart. Since Germany in general has a higher population of Sri Lankan Tamil folks than Belgium, we dropped into a restaurant of theirs. And the food was bloody hell tasty. But sadly for everyone other than me I can truly say that the food made them cry. They had something called Chilly Parotta. It was a kind of dish where you will find some parotta in-between green chillies :). But other wise the food was damn good.

To reach Stuttgart we had a brief stop at the Foggensee Lake. It was a very tranquil lake. We managed to see only one more family other than us the few minutes we spent there. But from what i saw, it looks like a very popular summer lake, where you can have a nice relaxed swim.

The drive up to the lake was relatively more relaxed/not filled with arguments. I guess all of us had a huge 'HANG OVER' of the fairy tale land called the Neuschwanstein Castle. The sight of the castle it self was breath taking (Before we left Leuven, Dr. H wanted to see a landscape where there would be layers of Green, autumn colours and snow in the horizon. I would say we got to see atleast 2/3 of that.) At some-point in our life we all would have read about this very typical European castle hanging over a cliff covered with snow. We were refueling our fuel guzzler when we saw this sight. We had left the castle come down hill and stopped to refuel. The sight of this was breathtaking. If I had even an ounce of poetic skills (which i do not) in me, it was an ideal setting to write one.If you can see the castle in the center of the picture, we had come down from that very place. It was snowing there. On some level i was keeping my fingers crossed to meet my Cinderella there. The setting was perfect for it. That was the first time that i had experienced snow fall where i could actually see the flacks properly. It did not snow in Leuven 2 years back, and last winter i was back home.

The inside of the castle some how did not impress me as much as the Mysore Palace in terms of grandeur. But what impressed my was the well known German efficiency. The Q system was beautifully divided into 3 Qs. One for the present tour group and 2 previous ones. All leading to the same place, but for different langg. I can just imagine the chaos which would have existed in India for that kind of a system.
And o yea being a foodie, i cant forget to mention one more small point. We had some amazing sweet bondas at the castle. It was so cold and the hot bondas were like a heaven sent food in this already heaven like place.

p.s. Had loads of fun in the trip, hope to repeat something like this again sometime in the future. And a million thanks to the drivers and the other guys who were part of this trip. Hope to many more like this with you guys. And yea next time is going to be the BMW 7 series or the BMW X5.

pss: The whole blog is in reverse chronological order. Just some expt I am trying.