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Destination: Germany

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Wieskirche: Bavaria’s Rococo Church

Even though we’re not visiting Europe right now, I believe a regular dose of travel dreaming can be good medicine. And for me, one of the great joys of travel is having in-person encounters with great art and architecture — which I’ve collected in a book called Europe’s Top 100 Masterpieces. Here’s one of my favorites:.  

The Wieskirche is Germany’s greatest Rococo-style church, and this “Church in the Meadow” looks as brilliant now as the day it floated down from heaven. It’s a divine droplet, a curly curlicue, as overripe with decoration as this sentence, and — bright and bursting with beauty — it’s also an exquisite example of the final flowering of the Baroque movement. 

The church was constructed around a crude wooden statue of Christ being whipped. No sooner was the statue made (1738) than it miraculously began to shed tears. Amazed pilgrims came from all around. They, too, wept and were miraculously healed. The statue became a celebrity, pilgrims donated lots of money, and two of Bavaria’s top Rococo architects (the Zimmermann brothers) were hired to give the statue a proper home. 

As the church’s name suggests, the Wieskirche stands literally in a meadow in the middle of the Bavarian countryside. You approach up a pathway, walking through fertile fields where cows graze peacefully and the scent of cut hay, fresh cow pies, and an alpine breeze saturates the air the way the Holy Spirit permeates the created world. 

Stepping inside the small church, you’re greeted with curvaceous decor that looks like it came out of a heavenly spray can. The walls are whitewashed, and clear windows flood the church with light. Surrounded by a riot of colorful columns, golden pulpits, an over-the-top altarpiece, and a frescoed ceiling that seems to open up to the sky, your eyes hardly know where to rest. 

The Wieskirche’s ornate style, called Rococo, is like Baroque that got shrunk in the wash — lighter, frillier, and more delicate, with whitewash and pastel colors. Where Baroque uses oval shapes, Rococo twists it even further into curvy cartouches. 

The altar is a theological sermon that’s all about Christ’s sacrifice. It starts with his birth, moves on to his arrest and torture, and finishes with a symbol of his gruesome death: a golden sacrificial lamb. 

But that’s not the end of the story. The visual sermon concludes with the massive ceiling painting. There, overseeing it all, is Jesus Christ — now resurrected — riding on a rainbow, with a smile on his face. It’s the most positive Last Judgment around. Jesus comes in like a friend, giving any sinner the feeling that there’s still time to repent, with plenty of mercy on hand. 

At the Wieskirche, all of the decoration — statues, paintings, columns, gold, colorful marble, light through the windows, and the dreamy pastoral setting — come together. Having entered the church through a meadow (representing the glories of creation), you stand inside a slice of artistic paradise. Above, the ceiling painting seems to blow open the roof, allowing you a glimpse of the celestial world beyond. For the pilgrim, the Wieskirche becomes a spiritual axis connecting both heaven and earth. 

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Three Castles: Eltz, Rheinfels, and Neuschwanstein

Germany can overwhelm you with too many castles in too little time. My three favorites are the remote and beautifully preserved Burg Eltz, the ruined but powerful Rheinfels, and the 19th-century fantasy of Neuschwanstein. When I can finally go back to Europe, you can bet I’ll be conquering these castles once again. 

Even though we’re not visiting Europe right now, I believe a regular dose of travel dreaming can be good medicine. I share my favorite stories from a lifetime of European travels in my book For the Love of Europe — and this is just one of its 100 travel tales. 

Burg Eltz is my favorite castle in all of Europe. Lurking in a mysterious forest above the Mosel River, it’s furnished throughout as it was 500 years ago. Thanks to smart diplomacy and clever marriages, Burg Eltz was never destroyed. It’s been in the Eltz family for 850 years. 

The first burg (castle) on the Eltz creek was built in the 12th century to protect a trade route. By about 1490, the castle looked like it does today: the homes of three big landlord families gathered around a small courtyard within one formidable fortification. Today, tours wind through two of those homes (the third is the caretaker’s residence). The elderly countess of Eltz traces her roots back 33 generations. She enjoys flowers and has had the castle’s public rooms adorned with grand floral arrangements every week for the last 40 years. 

It was a comfortable castle for its day: 80 rooms made cozy by 40 fireplaces and wall-hanging tapestries. Many of its 20 toilets were automatically flushed by a rain drain. The delightful chapel is on a lower floor. Even though “no one should live above God,” this chapel’s placement was acceptable because its altar fills a bay window, which floods the delicate Gothic space with light as it protrudes out from the floor above. The three families met in the large “conference room” to work out common problems, as if sharing a condo. Colorfully painted carvings of a jester and a rose look down on the big table, reminding those who gathered that they were free to discuss anything (“fool’s freedom” — jesters could say anything to the king), but nothing discussed could leave the room (the “rose of silence”). 

Rheinfels Castle, both much mightier and much more ruined, lords over its bend in the nearby Rhine River. It sits like a dead pit bull above the village of St. Goar. This most formidable of Rhine castles rumbles with ghosts from its hard-fought past. Burg Rheinfels was built in 1245 and withstood a siege of 28,000 French troops in 1692, the only Rhineland castle to withstand Louis XIV’s assault. But in 1797, the French Revolutionary army destroyed it. Once the biggest castle on the Rhine, it spent the 19th century as a quarry. So today, while still mighty, it’s only a small fraction of its original size, a hollow but evocative shell.  

For centuries, the massive Rheinfels was self-sufficient and ready for a siege. During the age of sieging (which lasted until the advent of modern artillery), any proper castle was prepared to survive a six-month attack. Circling the central courtyard, you’d find a bakery, pharmacy, herb garden, brewery, well, and livestock. During peacetime, about 400 people lived here. During a siege, there could be as many as 4,000. Those 4,000 people required a lot of provisions. The count owned the surrounding farmland. In return for the lord’s protection, farmers got to keep 20 percent of their production. Later, in more liberal feudal times, the nobility let them keep 40 percent. (Today, the German government leaves workers with 60 percent after taxes…and provides a few more services.) 

I hike around the castle perimeter with the mindset of an invader. Noticing the smartly placed crossbow-arrow slit, I think, “Thoop…I’m dead.” Lying there, I notice the fine stonework on the chutes high above. Uh-oh…boiling pitch…now I’m toast. 

In about 1600, to protect their castle, Rheinfels troops cleverly booby-trapped the land just outside the walls by digging tunnels topped with thin slate roofs and packed with explosives. By detonating the explosives when under attack, they could kill hundreds of approaching invaders with a single blow. In 1626, a handful of Protestant Germans blew 300 Catholic Spaniards to (they assumed) hell. 

I wander through a set of never-blown-up tunnels. It’s pitch-dark, muddy, and claustrophobic, with confusing dead-ends. It’s as much a crawl as a walk; the tunnel is never tall enough for me to stand higher than a deep crouch. Even with no wrong turns, it’s a 200-yard-long adventure, aided by the flashlight I was given at the castle entrance. 

A modern entryway blasted through the castle wall takes me to the small, barren dungeon. I walk through a door that prisoners only dreamed of 400 years ago. (They came and went through the little square hole in the ceiling.) The holes in the walls supported timbers that thoughtfully gave as many as 15 miserable residents something to sit on to keep them out of the filthy slop that gathered on the floor. Twice a day, they were given bread and water. Some prisoners actually survived for two years in this dark hole. While the town could torture and execute, the castle had permission only to imprison criminals in this dank dungeon. According to town records, the two men who spent the most time down here died within three weeks of regaining their freedom. Perhaps after a diet of bread and water, feasting on meat and wine was just too much. (Tour guides say that after months of prison darkness, the prisoners when freed were blinded instantly by the sunshine. It’s a melodramatic story, tempting to repeat.) 

Neuschwanstein is entirely different. It’s the greatest of the fairy-tale castles of King Ludwig II, whose extravagance and Romanticism earned him the title “Mad” King Ludwig…and an early death.  

While it’s only about as old as the Eiffel Tower, Neuschwanstein Castle is a textbook example of 19th-century Romanticism. After the Middle Ages ended, people disparagingly named that era “Gothic,” or barbarian (“of the Goths”). Then, all of a sudden, in the 1800s, it was hip to be square, and a new Gothic style — or “Neo-Gothic” — became the rage. Throughout Europe, old castles were restored and new ones built, wallpapered with chivalry. King Ludwig II put his medieval fantasy on the hilltop not for defensive reasons, but simply because he liked the view. 

The lavish, Wagner-inspired interior, covered with damsels in distress, dragons, and knights in gleaming armor, is enchanting. (A little knowledge of Richard Wagner’s Romantic operas goes a long way in bringing these stories to life.) Ludwig had great taste…for a mad king. He was a political misfit: a poetic hippie king in the realpolitik age of Bismarck. After Bavarians complained about the money Ludwig spent on castles, his sanity was questioned. Shortly after that, the 40-year-old king was found dead in a lake under suspicious circumstances, ending work on his medieval fantasy-come-true. Ludwig almost bankrupted Bavaria building Neuschwanstein. But in modern times, Germany is recouping its investment a hundredfold as huge crowds from all over the world pay to pack Europe’s most popular castle. 

Germany’s history is long and many-faceted. Whether noble residences with flowers, feudal fortresses with rat-filled dungeons, or Romantic palaces fit for a king, its castles have become both amusement parks and classrooms. 

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Remember the Holocaust — So it Will Never be Repeated

Today is International Holocaust Remembrance Day. As a tour guide, I have an ethic that every Rick Steves bus tour through Germany includes a pilgrimage to a concentration camp memorial. It’s our hope, as guides, that with this powerful experience, our travelers will heed the collective wish of Hitler’s victims: Forgive but Never Forget. When you travel thoughtfully — and incorporate stops at memorials to the six million Jews who were murdered by Nazi Germany — the impact changes you.

If you search for “Holocaust” in the Rick Steves Classroom Europe video library, you’ll find a dozen clips (totaling about 45 minutes) that can be shared as a teaching tool at home or in the classroom. As the last people with first-hand memories of this tragic period in history pass away, it is important to keep alive the stark lessons of what happens when a society gives power to hate and racism.

On this day, especially, history is speaking to all of us. Here’s a 90-second visit to Israel’s Holocaust Memorial, Yad Vashem. This sprawling memorial and museum chronicles the slaughter of six million Jews and celebrates the spirit of Zionism and the creation of modern Israel. (Of course, there are peace and justice issues between Israel and Palestine. But, for me, today is a day to focus — prayerfully — on the Holocaust.

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Daily Dose of Europe: Neuschwanstein

A fairy-tale castle in a stunning alpine setting, with a lush interior and all the latest conveniences…and they call the man who built it “mad”!

Even though we’re not visiting Europe right now, I believe a daily dose of travel dreaming can be good medicine.

And today, we visit a turreted fantasy castle, tucked in the hinterlands of Bavaria’s far south.

Neuschwanstein Castle looks like it dates from the Middle Ages, but it’s barely older than the Eiffel Tower. It was the dream of “Mad” King Ludwig II of Bavaria. As a boy, climbing the hills above his summer home, Ludwig fantasized about building a castle there “in the authentic style of the old German knights.” When he gained power at age 18, he began to turn his dreams into stone, creating a private getaway from the politics in Munich that Ludwig hated — a place to dream.

The location was unmatched — perched high on a rocky ledge, with a backdrop of snow-tipped mountains and glassy alpine lakes.

Ludwig’s “architect” was a theater set-designer specializing in medieval fables. The actual construction (1869–1886) was executed by high-tech engineers using the latest techniques. Hundreds of tons of stone were hefted up with Industrial Age steam power. The castle core was a skeleton of modern iron and brick faced with medieval-looking white limestone, trimmed with gray sandstone. The result was a mash-up of a thousand years of medieval architecture…neo-medieval: Romanesque arched windows, castle-like crenellations, and prickly Gothic towers. It captured the spirit of 19th-century Romantics nostalgic for a pre-Industrial past.

Inside, it was lavish. Ludwig’s extravagant throne room emphasized his royal status, with golden mosaics of the Christian kings Ludwig emulated. The floor, with its two-million-stone mosaic, features an encyclopedia of animals and plants. Overhead hangs a huge chandelier shaped like an emperor’s crown.

The king’s personal rooms, though incredibly ornate, are actually small and cozy. Ludwig’s canopied bed is elaborately carved with a forest of Gothic spires. Ludwig enjoyed his own chapel, water piped in from the Alps, and views of steep mountains and plunging waterfalls — fueling his Romantic soul with the wonders of nature. Ludwig even built an artificial grotto, dripping with stucco stalactites and a bubbling waterfall. The castle’s grand finale is the Singers’ Hall, a fancy ballroom. The entire castle came with state-of-the-art technology: electricity, running water, flush toilets, and even telephones.

Meanwhile, all of the rooms were decorated with paintings of valiant knights and lovely damsels, inspired by the Romantic operas of Ludwig’s idol, Richard Wagner. There are Wagner’s legendary lovers, troubadours, Holy Grails, and especially Ludwig’s favorite animal — swans. Ludwig’s swan-like castle came to be called neu-Schwan-Stein — “new swan stone.”

Ludwig lived in his castle for a mere 172 days before the fantasy of Neuschwanstein came to an abrupt end. Fed up with Ludwig’s expensive Romantic excesses, his political rivals burst into his bedroom and arrested him. Two days later, Ludwig — only 40 years old — drowned mysteriously in a Bavarian lake (murder? suicide?).

Within six weeks of his death, tourists were lining up to see the “mad” king’s “folly.” Today, Ludwig’s cost has been recouped a hundredfold, and huge crowds from all over flock to see Europe’s most popular castle.

This little moment from Europe — a sampling of how we share our love of art and history in our tours — is an excerpt from the full-color coffee-table book Europe’s Top 100 Masterpieces by Rick Steves and Gene Openshaw. Please support local businesses in your community by picking up a copy from your favorite bookstore, or you can find it in my online Travel Store.

P.S. Be sure to check out Rick Steves Classroom Europe — my free collection of 500+ teachable video clips. Search “Neuschwanstein” for a closer look at Mad King Ludwig’s fairytale castle.

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Daily Dose of Europe: Ghosts in Berlin

In Berlin, it’s clear that history is not contained in a book — it envelops the entire city. Today’s Berlin is vibrant with youthful energy, and it’s changing fast. But for anyone fascinated by 20th-century tumult, the city is hog heaven.

Even though we’re not visiting Europe right now, I believe a daily dose of travel dreaming can be good medicine. I recently published a collection of my favorite stories from a lifetime of European travels. My new book is called “For the Love of Europe” — and this is just one of its 100 travel tales.

I have a powerful image stuck in my mind of Hitler and his architect and right-hand man, Albert Speer, poring over plans for postwar Berlin…a metropolis super-sized in a way that makes Paris look quaint. Of course, by 1945, Berlin was in ruins, Hitler’s charred corpse could be identified only by his dental records, and Speer was in jail writing his memoirs, “Inside the Third Reich” (which provided me with my most vivid impressions of the Nazi era).

Over my last few visits to the city, I can see the irony that in some ways, Speer’s vision of a dynamic new Berlin dominating Europe could be coming true. For example, the massive Hauptbahnhof — the only train station in Europe with major lines merging at right angles — has a scale and grandeur that Hitler might have appreciated. Toss in 80 stores and local subway lines, and it’s a city in itself.

But freedom, not Hitler, won. And the other strong feeling I get in Berlin is that it’s a victory celebration for capitalism and its defeat of communism. Like ancient Romans keeping a few vanquished barbarians in cages for locals to spit at, capitalism and the West flaunt victory in Berlin. Slices of the Berlin Wall hang like scalps at the gate to the Sony Center, the audacious office park at Potsdamer Platz.

A sleek Radisson hotel now stands on the place where the old leading hotel of East Berlin once stood. I remember staying there during the Cold War, when a West German five-Mark coin changed on the black market would get me and my friends drinks all night. Now five euros barely buys me a beer, and the lobby of the Radisson hosts an exotic fish tank the size of a grain silo with an elevator right in the middle, zipping scenically up eight floors. Next door, the DDR Museum is filled mostly with East German tourists rummaging through the nostalgia on display from their parents’ dreary lives under communism.

Across the street, statues of Marx and Lenin (nicknamed “the Pensioners” by locals) look wistfully at the huge TV tower East Berlin built under communism. It had a fancy bar on top, but the best thing East Berliners could say about it back then was, “It’s so tall that if it falls, we’ll have an elevator to freedom.”

The victory party rages on at Checkpoint Charlie. With every visit, I remember my spooky first time there in 1971, when tour buses returning to the West were emptied at the border so mirrors could be rolled under the bus to see if anyone was trying to escape with us.

Now, a generation later, Checkpoint Charlie is a capitalist sideshow. Lowlife characters sell fake bits of the wall, WWII-vintage gas masks, and DDR medals. Two actors dressed as American soldiers stand between big American flags and among sandbags at the rebuilt checkpoint, making their living posing for tourists. Across the street at “Snack Point Charlie,” someone sipping a Coke says to me, “When serious becomes kitsch, you know it’s over.”

Standing at the historic Brandenburg Gate, I face Berlin’s fashionable new heart: Pariser Platz. Within about 100 yards of this square — once a vacant lot along the Berlin Wall, and now a festive gathering place that seems designed to celebrate freedom — is a poignant collection of sights.

There are many memorials, including one to the six million murdered Jews of Europe and another to the first victims of Hitler: 96 men, the German equivalent of congressmen, who spoke out in the name of democracy against his rule in the early 1930s. They were sent to concentration camps where they were eventually killed. Nearby is the American Embassy, famous for taking security concerns to new heights. Across from a very busy Starbucks is one of the “ghost” subway stations that went unused through the Cold War and now feels like a 1930s time warp. Above that is the hotel balcony where Michael Jackson famously dangled his baby (according to local guides, it’s the sight of greatest interest for most American tourists). And the glass dome capping the bombed-out Reichstag is where, on the rooftop on May Day 1945, Russian troops quelled a furious Nazi last stand. The nearby hills were created entirely with the rubble of a city bombed nearly flat about 70 years ago. Considering all this, the clash of history and today’s vibrant city is almost overwhelming.

Tucked away nearby is the Kennedys Museum, filled with JFK lore, including the handwritten note with the phonetics for his famous Berlin speech. Reading it, I can hear his voice: “eesh been ein Bear-lee-ner” (“I am a Berliner”).

The amazing story of Berlin swirls through my head: Speer’s vision, Hitler’s burning body, the last stand on the rooftop…the communists, the heroic American airlift, when the Communists attempted to starve a free Berlin into submission…Kennedy’s speech, followed 24 years later by Reagan’s demand to “tear down this wall”…the euphoria-turned-challenge of Germany’s reunification, and the gleaming city visitors marvel at today.

I wave down a cab and hop in. I use the opportunity to get a local’s perspective and ask the driver if he is a Berliner. When he turns to me, I realize he’s Turkish, which makes me feel a little foolish. Then, making me feel foolish for feeling foolish, he says, “I’ve lived here 31 years. If Kennedy, after one day, could say ‘Ich bin ein Berliner,’ then I guess I can say I am a Berliner, too.”

This story appears in my newest book, For the Love of Europe — collecting 100 of my favorite memories from a lifetime of European travel. Please support local businesses in your community by picking up a copy from your favorite bookstore, or you can purchase it at my online Travel Store. You can also find clips related to this story at Rick Steves Classroom Europe; just search for Berlin.