Nothing is quite like walking into a cathedral. One immediately looks up, to the dark vaulted ceiling, then ahead, along the row of pillars that disappear into a chapel for Mary or a saint. The weight of that great open space pushes a breath from you, and maybe you forget the camera in your hand and the couple muttering in English next to you. 
The first time I walked into a cathedral I was twelve. And it taught me more about religion in a moment then I had learned in all more short life before. It made more sense.We’ve seen a lot of churches on this trip, and a few spectacular cathedrals – Notre Dame and the York Minister, San Marco and the Sagrada Familia. But in Bavaria we got to see a new kind of church.Klaus, my mother’s cousin, says that they were built as a catholic reaction to the success of the Lutherans in Germany. 
They are perhaps more spectacular because the outsides are so modest – simple pink or white stucco with a copper cap on the bell tower. You do not walk in under a scene of the last judgment, no damned souls. 
Where the cathedrals make you gulp, these churches make you want to laugh for joy. They have over-gilded altars, angels and trumpets bursting from the walls, and pink and gold filigree circling clear windows that let the sunshine in. They make you full of wonder rather than the awe of a cathedral.
When you walk in, you still look up. Instead of the imposing stone and shadowed corners are huge rainbow bright murals: more angels and Mary, the infant Christ and various miracles and saints. Even in the small ones. The ceilings are high, and there is still that sense of space, but free rather than enclosed.
On top of that we caught them at harvest time, so in front of every church is a pile of food – cabbages and rice, a round loaf of bread and squash, tomatoes, apples, and zucchini. The expression of bounty is an ancient one: look we have enough food for winter, so we can offer some to God. 
On the wall of one of these were small amateur paintings, done by supplicants in thanks to Mary for her help. Klaus deciphered a few, reading the cramped old scripts. And he found one from a family dated 400 years ago. He chuckled because he had taught students from that family.When we were planning this trip I saved Bavaria as the last place we would stay with family before going south and east to Istanbul. We're very glad we did.
Ludwig the Second of Bavaria might well be my favorite monarch. He’s certainly my favorite crazy one. Where many of the most famous nutters to sit on their thrones got the reputation by the occasional witch burning, random slaughter or horse senator, Ludwig built castles.And they weren’t just your regular, dime a dozen keeps or citadels, this man dreamed big. Epic. The most famous is unfinished Neuschwanstein, recognizable the world over as the basis for the Disney castle, but he built two others – Herrenchiemsee and Linderhof – which were completed.
Neuschwanstein was dedicated to Wagner and his operas. One room – on the third floor – is a fake cave, stalagmites and stalactites and all, from Tannhauser, and the royal bedroom is decorated with paintings from Tristan and Isolde, along with years’ worth of master carpentry. I’m sure that as a politician he was a problem. He had a habit of leaving one castle and fleeing to another whenever someone important wanted to talk to him. He did not like to see people. One of his dining rooms has a table that can be cranked down into the kitchen below so he would not have to see the servants. He drowned mysteriously, along with a psychiatrist who was supposed to testify that he was mad and unfit to rule. He was the last king of Bavaria. Six weeks after his death Neuschwanstein was opened to the public, less than half finished. The opulence and extravagance of this man, the arrogance and wealth are all apparent in his palace – in the individually painted stones, the gold sculpture of Sigfried slaying the dragon, in the beautiful little fake cave with a window and gilded reading chair looking out on the courtyard. He doesn’t seem like someone to pity. And we felt so bad for him. Because he never saw the castle finished – because no one tried to finish it for him. Because there is a painting of what would have been his fourth castle on the wall of a throne room without a throne. A tiny silhouette of his next dream.I don’t know whether he was aware that his eccentricities would make him into a modern fairytale. He certainly had the sense of drama for something like that. I doubt though, that he expected the end. The tragedy. But perhaps he did. He did love Wagner after all.
