Post by Lorpius Prime on Aug 22, 2008 4:15:49 GMT -5
Regina Odette pushed her black-framed glasses further up her nose to press against her eye sockets, as if doing so would somehow help her to decipher the meaning of the numbers arrayed before her in perfectly neat and completely inscrutable columns. Unfortunately for Reg the problem was not with her eyes, with which she could see perfectly well so long as she had her glasses, but rather that she did not understand the thought process which had gone into creating the little chart which she so badly needed to understand. It occurred to Reg, not for the first time, that the success or failure of her entire vacation hinged on her ability to figure out this one, utterly unremarkable, bus schedule. To Reg's considerable dismay, however, she could not find any combination of numbers which appeared to represent time in the same manner as the digital watch on her wrist. Were the commas supposed to divide minutes and hours? Minutes and seconds? Or was she looking at the fare column instead of the departure times?
Reg looked away from the schedule in disgust as her cell phone rang. She groped at empty air for a moment before remembering that she'd left her purse behind in favor of a more "practical" backpack for this trip. She un-shouldered the bag and started unzipping pockets, looking for the one which contained her whining phone. Eventually, she located the correct one snatched up the little pink phone, flipping it open to silence the ring and holding it to her ear.
"Yeah?" Reg asked, absently, as she bent forward again to continue studying the bus schedule.
"They're in my drawer, Bob," Reg said to the phone after a moment. "Bottom left, I think, but check all of them to be sure."
She paused again, then said, "No," and rolled her eyes, perhaps at the person on the phone and perhaps at the bus schedule. "Terry has the keys, I left them with him."
The person on the other end of the phone must have protested, because Reg straightened up again, slightly exasperated. "Well I can't help that! Just send someone over there."
Another pause, then, "So what do you want me to do? I can't exactly just walk over and give them to you myself right now."
Finally, Reg shook her head, "I'm on vacation, Bob, just deal with it. Goodbye."
She snapped the cell phone shut between her fingers and started to replace it in the backpack. Then she thought better of it, and shut the phone off completely first. Crisis dealt with, Reg returned to the bus schedule, running a finger down on of the columns, as if trying to be sure she had the right one; and truthfully, she did have a one-in-eight chance of being correct.
"Hmmm," she muttered, thoughtfully.
"Excuse me, Fräulein." Reg glanced to her left to see that the woman from the hotel desk had ambled over towards her. "You are looking for the bus to Neuschwanstein, correct?"
"Er, yes," Reg replied, blinking.
"That is it, there," the woman said, pointing out the hotel's front door where there was indeed a large bus idling on the street.
Reg squeaked and bounded for the door, lest she miss her ride. She only just remembered to turn and shout "Thank you!" to the hotel woman before she pushed out the door.
The woman just shook her head and waved, smirking.
Reg hopped through the open door of the bus where a bored-looking old driver demanded a couple of Euros for a ticket. Reg paid the extra Euro for a round-trip. Her legs were still sore just from wandering around the Alpine town of Schwangau the previous evening and she had no intention of making the hike from there to the castle unassisted in either direction.
Ticket secured, the bus driver, whose face Reg noted was exceptionally wrinkly, waved her towards the seats behind him. Happy to have made it onto the bus at all, Reg complied wordlessly.
The bus was already filled nearly to capacity with other tourists, most of whom Reg recognized from her own hotel. Apparently she had been the only one who failed to comprehend the schedule, or perhaps the only one who hadn't worked up the nerve to just ask earlier.
She settled into a seat between a young Swiss couple whom Reg had met at the hotel bar yesterday and a man about her own age that she did not recognize and who was wearing a three-piece wool suit that seemed thoroughly inappropriate for Alpine sightseeing.
The Swiss couple, whose names were Rodolfo and Emilie, recognized Reg and exchanged friendly greetings before returning to their own conversation, which was punctuated by heavily accented giggles. Reg smiled as she looked out the window at the green forested mountainsides up which their bus was now climbing. Behind them, Reg could see the town's older castle, Hohenschwangau, which was blocky and plain compared to the one which she was going to see now, but which was still impressive on its own hilltop overlooking the town. Reg wanted to visit it too, if she had time, but she wasn't certain how likely that was.
Her gazing was interrupted when the man sitting on her left turned his head and leaned towards her slightly, "Pardon me," he said, "but could I trouble you for a cigarette?"
Reg didn't say anything for a moment because she had to puzzle through the man's accent; it was some sort of Cockney dialect which Reg found even harder to understand than the second-hand English of the local Germans she'd spoken with. When she finally worked out the question, she had to shake her head, "I'm sorry, I don't smoke."
The man snorted and resumed his own seat, looking away from Reg. She wrinkled his nose him. Reg had been amazed at the prevalence of smoking among the Germans here, who didn't seem to have heard of lung or mouth cancer. Memories of her struggles to breathe in smoke-clogged restaurants would probably mark the low point of this vacation.
The bus trundled up the mountains and soon stopped at their destination. It didn't quite go all the way to the castle entrance, but instead left its passengers at a scenic lookout where they could get a nice view of the castle exterior from a high bridge before navigating a trail down to the gates. Reg fished her big digital camera and a tour brochure from her backpack before setting it on her shoulders and leaving the bus to join the other gawking passengers.
Reg had to suppress a delighted squeal as she started snapping photographs. The view really was delightful, but this wasn't the only thing which impressed Reg, who had a somewhat more experienced eye than most of the people around her. The castle walls had been built right along edges of the mountain face, its towers rose up almost like extensions of the cliffs on which they sat. Fitting a heavy building to a vertical landscape like that was no easy task even in the 21st century, and Reg did not envy Neuschwanstein's builders, who would've had to work from rather precarious positions with only 19th century safety standards. What they had accomplished was spectacular.
Reg lowered her camera and started to walk across the bridge towards the path which would take her towards the castle entrance, but she stopped when a great black bird flew down and landed on the handrail in front of her. It looked like some sort of crow; but it was by far the largest such bird Reg had ever seen, and the deserts back home produced some pretty mean crows. The bird peered at Reg for a moment, then opened its beak to squawk at her. Reg glanced around, but the other tourists were already most of the way over the bridge, and no one else seemed to have noticed the big bird. Reg wasn't much of a nature lover herself, but the bird was interesting, so she raised her camera again to take a picture.
Before she could place it in the viewfinder, however, the bird hopped off the handrail and over to one side of the bridge, where it squatted on the edge of the path and squawked at Reg again.
Reg was disappointed, the big crow was no longer framed by the castle in the distance, but she moved her camera into place to take the picture anyway.
The bird was having none of this, however, and it flew up into the air briefly, then settled into the grass a few yards further back from the path, then squawked again, just as loudly, and still looking straight at Reg.
Which is when she noticed the man behind the bird; making his way down the rocky side of the mountain. Blinking, Reg slipped the camera strap over her head to let it hang from her neck, then walked off the path towards the stray tourist. The crow she had been attempting to photograph hopped off to one side, squawked again, and started following Reg from a few yards away.
The other tourist, Reg realized, was the same man she had sat next to on the bus, in his gray-brown wool suit which had to be a hideously expensive thing to risk damaging by climbing down the side of a mountain. As Reg approached, she realized that the man had actually found some jagged rocks on the slope which made passable stairs, and was cautiously making his way down these.
"Hey," Reg called as she reached the edge of the rocky steps. But the man had already descended to a ledge below, and he passed around a curve in the cliff side. The crow which had been following Reg now leapt into the air and swooped around the rocks in the same direction.
Reg pursed her lips, standing there at the edge of mountaintop by the approved walkway. But she was too curious to let this all pass uninvestigated. So, leaning with one hand against the rock wall of the cliff, Reg stepped slowly down the rocks after the strange man and strange bird.
Happily, she made it down without losing her balance, and once securely on the ledge below, she jogged around the bend in rocky wall to see what was going on.
Once past the curve, she caught sight of the man she'd followed again. He had walked a ways further along the side of the mountain, and was now staring intently at the face of the slope, running one hand along the rock.
"What are you doing?" Reg called to him, picking her way carefully among the stones and tree-roots which threatened underfoot.
She seemed to startle him, and the man jumped backwards and whirled, tensing. He held up one hand defensively, while Reg noticed that his left arm was suspended in a sling. He stared at Reg for a moment or two before relaxing and straightening up out of the half-crouch in which he'd landed.
"I'm looking at… well, you can see it for yourself," he waved her forward.
Reg quirked her eyebrows, and continued to walk towards the man and whatever he had found. When she got closer, however, it just appeared to be only a depression or a crack in the rock face. She gave him a skeptical look.
"Look at it from over here," he said, and gestured for Reg to stand next to him, slightly back from the wall so she could face it head-on.
Reg did so, and found that the crack in the side of the mountain had not been carved by the natural erosion: someone had cut it.
"Huh," she said, and turned her head to look at the odd image.
It was like someone had started to carve or sculpt a design into the side of the mountain, but never finished. The gray stone had been cut and smoothed to look like the top of an archway, wreathed with vines. But the top was all that been carved, and the flat stone of a portal beneath, the sides were still unfinished rock. There was even a partial inscription:
Reg turned her head and screwed up her eyes, still staring at it. "Huh," she said again.
The man in the wool suit chuckled.
Reg knew the castle here had been unfinished. The King who had commissioned it had died before it was finished, and the whole story was now mystery-shrouded and made a great lure for tourists. But none of the brochures or guides she'd read had mentioned anything about this little mystery, it hadn't even been on the path. Still, she supposed it could be part of the rest of the castle complex, although it seemed strange to place it so far away, and to have been left unfinished with no other obvious structures around it. Perhaps it had been just the very start of some much more elaborate and grand design, but quickly forgotten after work had stopped.
Reg held out a hand to touch the stonework, while she used the other to ready her camera for some pictures. But when she leaned forward to push on the surface of the carved stone, she found nothing there to support her weight. Horrified, Reg stumbled forward, falling straight into a rock wall, and then straight through as if it were nothing but air. With a gasp, Reg left behind the entire world and the man in the wool suit, who screamed and clawed uselessly at the solid stone and dirt.
Reg looked away from the schedule in disgust as her cell phone rang. She groped at empty air for a moment before remembering that she'd left her purse behind in favor of a more "practical" backpack for this trip. She un-shouldered the bag and started unzipping pockets, looking for the one which contained her whining phone. Eventually, she located the correct one snatched up the little pink phone, flipping it open to silence the ring and holding it to her ear.
"Yeah?" Reg asked, absently, as she bent forward again to continue studying the bus schedule.
"They're in my drawer, Bob," Reg said to the phone after a moment. "Bottom left, I think, but check all of them to be sure."
She paused again, then said, "No," and rolled her eyes, perhaps at the person on the phone and perhaps at the bus schedule. "Terry has the keys, I left them with him."
The person on the other end of the phone must have protested, because Reg straightened up again, slightly exasperated. "Well I can't help that! Just send someone over there."
Another pause, then, "So what do you want me to do? I can't exactly just walk over and give them to you myself right now."
Finally, Reg shook her head, "I'm on vacation, Bob, just deal with it. Goodbye."
She snapped the cell phone shut between her fingers and started to replace it in the backpack. Then she thought better of it, and shut the phone off completely first. Crisis dealt with, Reg returned to the bus schedule, running a finger down on of the columns, as if trying to be sure she had the right one; and truthfully, she did have a one-in-eight chance of being correct.
"Hmmm," she muttered, thoughtfully.
"Excuse me, Fräulein." Reg glanced to her left to see that the woman from the hotel desk had ambled over towards her. "You are looking for the bus to Neuschwanstein, correct?"
"Er, yes," Reg replied, blinking.
"That is it, there," the woman said, pointing out the hotel's front door where there was indeed a large bus idling on the street.
Reg squeaked and bounded for the door, lest she miss her ride. She only just remembered to turn and shout "Thank you!" to the hotel woman before she pushed out the door.
The woman just shook her head and waved, smirking.
Reg hopped through the open door of the bus where a bored-looking old driver demanded a couple of Euros for a ticket. Reg paid the extra Euro for a round-trip. Her legs were still sore just from wandering around the Alpine town of Schwangau the previous evening and she had no intention of making the hike from there to the castle unassisted in either direction.
Ticket secured, the bus driver, whose face Reg noted was exceptionally wrinkly, waved her towards the seats behind him. Happy to have made it onto the bus at all, Reg complied wordlessly.
The bus was already filled nearly to capacity with other tourists, most of whom Reg recognized from her own hotel. Apparently she had been the only one who failed to comprehend the schedule, or perhaps the only one who hadn't worked up the nerve to just ask earlier.
She settled into a seat between a young Swiss couple whom Reg had met at the hotel bar yesterday and a man about her own age that she did not recognize and who was wearing a three-piece wool suit that seemed thoroughly inappropriate for Alpine sightseeing.
The Swiss couple, whose names were Rodolfo and Emilie, recognized Reg and exchanged friendly greetings before returning to their own conversation, which was punctuated by heavily accented giggles. Reg smiled as she looked out the window at the green forested mountainsides up which their bus was now climbing. Behind them, Reg could see the town's older castle, Hohenschwangau, which was blocky and plain compared to the one which she was going to see now, but which was still impressive on its own hilltop overlooking the town. Reg wanted to visit it too, if she had time, but she wasn't certain how likely that was.
Her gazing was interrupted when the man sitting on her left turned his head and leaned towards her slightly, "Pardon me," he said, "but could I trouble you for a cigarette?"
Reg didn't say anything for a moment because she had to puzzle through the man's accent; it was some sort of Cockney dialect which Reg found even harder to understand than the second-hand English of the local Germans she'd spoken with. When she finally worked out the question, she had to shake her head, "I'm sorry, I don't smoke."
The man snorted and resumed his own seat, looking away from Reg. She wrinkled his nose him. Reg had been amazed at the prevalence of smoking among the Germans here, who didn't seem to have heard of lung or mouth cancer. Memories of her struggles to breathe in smoke-clogged restaurants would probably mark the low point of this vacation.
The bus trundled up the mountains and soon stopped at their destination. It didn't quite go all the way to the castle entrance, but instead left its passengers at a scenic lookout where they could get a nice view of the castle exterior from a high bridge before navigating a trail down to the gates. Reg fished her big digital camera and a tour brochure from her backpack before setting it on her shoulders and leaving the bus to join the other gawking passengers.
Reg had to suppress a delighted squeal as she started snapping photographs. The view really was delightful, but this wasn't the only thing which impressed Reg, who had a somewhat more experienced eye than most of the people around her. The castle walls had been built right along edges of the mountain face, its towers rose up almost like extensions of the cliffs on which they sat. Fitting a heavy building to a vertical landscape like that was no easy task even in the 21st century, and Reg did not envy Neuschwanstein's builders, who would've had to work from rather precarious positions with only 19th century safety standards. What they had accomplished was spectacular.
Reg lowered her camera and started to walk across the bridge towards the path which would take her towards the castle entrance, but she stopped when a great black bird flew down and landed on the handrail in front of her. It looked like some sort of crow; but it was by far the largest such bird Reg had ever seen, and the deserts back home produced some pretty mean crows. The bird peered at Reg for a moment, then opened its beak to squawk at her. Reg glanced around, but the other tourists were already most of the way over the bridge, and no one else seemed to have noticed the big bird. Reg wasn't much of a nature lover herself, but the bird was interesting, so she raised her camera again to take a picture.
Before she could place it in the viewfinder, however, the bird hopped off the handrail and over to one side of the bridge, where it squatted on the edge of the path and squawked at Reg again.
Reg was disappointed, the big crow was no longer framed by the castle in the distance, but she moved her camera into place to take the picture anyway.
The bird was having none of this, however, and it flew up into the air briefly, then settled into the grass a few yards further back from the path, then squawked again, just as loudly, and still looking straight at Reg.
Which is when she noticed the man behind the bird; making his way down the rocky side of the mountain. Blinking, Reg slipped the camera strap over her head to let it hang from her neck, then walked off the path towards the stray tourist. The crow she had been attempting to photograph hopped off to one side, squawked again, and started following Reg from a few yards away.
The other tourist, Reg realized, was the same man she had sat next to on the bus, in his gray-brown wool suit which had to be a hideously expensive thing to risk damaging by climbing down the side of a mountain. As Reg approached, she realized that the man had actually found some jagged rocks on the slope which made passable stairs, and was cautiously making his way down these.
"Hey," Reg called as she reached the edge of the rocky steps. But the man had already descended to a ledge below, and he passed around a curve in the cliff side. The crow which had been following Reg now leapt into the air and swooped around the rocks in the same direction.
Reg pursed her lips, standing there at the edge of mountaintop by the approved walkway. But she was too curious to let this all pass uninvestigated. So, leaning with one hand against the rock wall of the cliff, Reg stepped slowly down the rocks after the strange man and strange bird.
Happily, she made it down without losing her balance, and once securely on the ledge below, she jogged around the bend in rocky wall to see what was going on.
Once past the curve, she caught sight of the man she'd followed again. He had walked a ways further along the side of the mountain, and was now staring intently at the face of the slope, running one hand along the rock.
"What are you doing?" Reg called to him, picking her way carefully among the stones and tree-roots which threatened underfoot.
She seemed to startle him, and the man jumped backwards and whirled, tensing. He held up one hand defensively, while Reg noticed that his left arm was suspended in a sling. He stared at Reg for a moment or two before relaxing and straightening up out of the half-crouch in which he'd landed.
"I'm looking at… well, you can see it for yourself," he waved her forward.
Reg quirked her eyebrows, and continued to walk towards the man and whatever he had found. When she got closer, however, it just appeared to be only a depression or a crack in the rock face. She gave him a skeptical look.
"Look at it from over here," he said, and gestured for Reg to stand next to him, slightly back from the wall so she could face it head-on.
Reg did so, and found that the crack in the side of the mountain had not been carved by the natural erosion: someone had cut it.
"Huh," she said, and turned her head to look at the odd image.
It was like someone had started to carve or sculpt a design into the side of the mountain, but never finished. The gray stone had been cut and smoothed to look like the top of an archway, wreathed with vines. But the top was all that been carved, and the flat stone of a portal beneath, the sides were still unfinished rock. There was even a partial inscription:
ist niemand hier ausgeg
Reg turned her head and screwed up her eyes, still staring at it. "Huh," she said again.
The man in the wool suit chuckled.
Reg knew the castle here had been unfinished. The King who had commissioned it had died before it was finished, and the whole story was now mystery-shrouded and made a great lure for tourists. But none of the brochures or guides she'd read had mentioned anything about this little mystery, it hadn't even been on the path. Still, she supposed it could be part of the rest of the castle complex, although it seemed strange to place it so far away, and to have been left unfinished with no other obvious structures around it. Perhaps it had been just the very start of some much more elaborate and grand design, but quickly forgotten after work had stopped.
Reg held out a hand to touch the stonework, while she used the other to ready her camera for some pictures. But when she leaned forward to push on the surface of the carved stone, she found nothing there to support her weight. Horrified, Reg stumbled forward, falling straight into a rock wall, and then straight through as if it were nothing but air. With a gasp, Reg left behind the entire world and the man in the wool suit, who screamed and clawed uselessly at the solid stone and dirt.