“Are we in Anaheim?” I asked.

“Anaheim who?” the driver answered.

“Anaheim, California,” I mused, “because that sure looks like Sleeping Beauty’s Castle at Disneyland.”

With that, the driver, my classmate, drove over the lowered drawbridge, through the open gate and into the courtyard of Neuschwanstein Castle.

“Ta Da!” my student acquaintance announced. “We have arrived at the global symbol of the era of Romanticism, commissioned and built — at exorbitant personal expense, I might add — by none other than King Ludwig II of Bavaria!”

“Do you think he’ll be mad?” I asked naively.

“Some think he may have been. Sadly, he only lived in his fairy-tale retreat for 172 days before his body was found floating mysteriously in a nearby lake.”

“I’m sorry.”

“Many are. But the House of Ludwig continues in this magnificent structure. We must tour it.”

“Why are those military types running this way with guns in their hands,” I asked with heightening concern.

“Oh, right, driving is not permitted. I saw the sign back beyond the turn.  You were sleeping.”

“And you drove on?”

“Of course, this is a once in a lifetime experience.”

“I was hoping to continue my lifetime beyond this experience.”

“Tut, tut, my sleepy student friend. I am sure art will triumph over folly.”

And somehow it did. We weren’t arrested. In my memory, my jovial student archive of arcana, with his erudite knowledge of the premises, won us a private showing of the nooks and crannies of Ludwig’s aviary.

It was a once in a lifetime experience.

I’m still continuing mine and had forgotten that particular experience. Then, the email arrived with the picture of Neuschwanstein. A young friend of ours was visiting, and she sent us a shot from her cell phone of the white limestone structure rising high into the skies.

The article on the Internet says construction began in 1868, the topping out ceremony was in 1880, the King moved into the unfinished castle in1884, his mother visited in 1885, and by 1886 the external structure was mostly finished, but not all.

On June 13, 1886, King Ludwig was found, head down, arms extended, shoulders floating above the shallow near-shore waters of Lake Starnberg.

The King’s watch stopped at 6:54 pm.

No one knew or knows what happened.

* * *

Neuschwanstein means the “New Swan Stone Castle.”

A swan floating in the waters, King Ludwig died beneath the ramparts of the house of stone he spent so long to build and lived to enjoy for such a brief time.

The castle lives on and invites its friend to visit. Since it opened to the public on August 1, 1886, only 49 days after the Swan King left us, over 50 million visitors have passed beneath its portals and wondered at its beauty and meaning.

Some say he was mad — King Ludwig.

What he left behind is not the dream of a madman.

It is a vision of another and better place, one reaching to the heavens and freed of earthly bounds.

We hope King Ludwig has reached that palace he sought so long and built to share. Our wish is that the monarch may find it complete, to wander at peace through the spacious hallways and around the soaring turrets, admiring the view beyond and now within his reach.

Beauty is often the product of a kind and determined mind.

Thank you, friend, for allowing us to visit.

Rest well,

Grandpa Jim