There is a school of thought that says you can only count a country as being visited if you have stayed there overnight. To this, I do not subscribe. A meal and a bit of sightseeing is enough for a country to consider itself ticked off my list. So welcome to the first of my Cross-Border Specials.
My parents and I visited West Germany on a day trip from Austria. I have no idea how Mum persuaded Dad over the border as his idea of a good Sunday afternoon was watching the The Dambusters again while moaning about the Nazis before watching the Big Sunday Match Live. Despite being born 5 months before the WW2 ended, he took it all very personally. Perhaps we went because everyone else in our tour group was going.
I remember very little about the morning apart from driving past lots of yellow fields. Our destination was Oberammergau. What I remember of there was lots of ornately painted houses and everyone in the tour group saying how amazing the Passion Play would be if only we weren’t there in one of the nine years out of ten when it isn’t staged.
In the afternoon we went onto Neuschwanstein Castle. Mum and Dad decided we would get a horse and trap up the hill to Mad King Ludwig’s Castle. We would then walk down. After queuing patiently like good Brits abroad, I excitedly climbed into the first Trap as it pulled up, only to be grabbed from behind by a stereotypically dressed and proportioned Tcherman who plonked me on the floor and ushered his family of blimps into the Trap in our place. The poor horse looked suitably startled. I think I cried. I was only 10. By the time we walked up to the Castle Gate, it was too late to go inside.
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