Day 7: DIY Chocolate Bars and Disney Inspiration
Soooo, you might be thinking, "Huh, Day 7. What happened to Day 6?" Well, I'm doing the days slightly out of order because yesterday was packed so full of incredible stuff that it was too much to unpack before going to bed. We've been getting back to the hotel very late the last few nights and getting up on the early side (it stays light much later into the evening here!).
So, in this post, I'm going to cover our travel day, and hopefully tomorrow I will get to the big day yesterday which was a highlight for many (I know it was for me!). Though today we had a pretty epic stop... read on!
Today we left Switzerland to end our trip in Munich ("Munchen") via Liechtenstein (a landlocked country with a prince and a population of 50,000 or so who are all upper class and fairly affluent; while the prince is 80, haha, he does have grandsons, and I think all the "countries" featured in hallmark movies with a prince for the female protagonist to fall in love with are secretly pseudo-Liechtensteins 😂). We were technically in four countries today (Switzerland, Liechtenstein, Austria, and Germany)!
Also, it was Mr. Prodan's birthday today, so Bojan led the bus in serenading him with Happy Birthday in several languages.
It was a beautiful drive (a bit cloudy and rainy, but a welcome change after the heat of the last few days), and before stopping in Liechtenstein for a stamp in our passport and lunch, we made a quick stop at the "Chocolarium – die Glücksfabrik von Munz und Minor" or "Chocolaroum, the Happiness Factory of Munz and Minor."
You have the employee behind the counter fill up a tray shaped like a chocolate bar and then you put spoonfuls of over a dozen "topping" options of your choosing to drop in to the melty cjocolate to enhance the flavor to your liking. A good handful of our travelers tried it! They were very excited.
After the chocolate factory we headed to Liechtenstein where we got a quick lunch and a stamp for our passports. Mr. Newton and I had some trouble figuring out a public trashcan, but Matthew H. kindly showed us the obvious directions. It was a great moment of teachability on our parts as teachers. 😂
Each leg of the trip was about two hours (so over six hours on the bus total, today!), and after Liechtenstein and missing a chance for our girls to meet any of the prince's grandsons, 😋 we headed to our surprise stop. On the way, the chaperones played a collaborative word game ("collaborative" is the word Mr. Prodan would use) with Bojan on the bus called "Same Page" which kept us busy for a solid hour and a half.
The surprise visit (it was removed from our itinerary but Bojan put it back on; go Bojan!) was above the small village of Hohenschwangau, which is a castle called Neuschwanstein. This castle was considerable inspiration for Walt Disney, and once you see it, you'll know why it was an inspiration. It was commissioned by King Ludwig II who sounded like quite the colorful character, and who never got to enjoy it as he died before its completion. It was meant to be a refuge from the confines of the main palace of the Bavarian royalty in Munich (much like Versailles?).
