Castles in the Air

“Now put foundations under them."

My wife and I never argue unless it’s about castles.

She is absolutely obsessed with castles. Where this obsession originates, I cannot guess. I only know that at least once a week I receive an email linking to a castle listing – usually located in northern Scotland, and usually surprisingly cheap, I suspect since no one can afford to maintain or heat them – with the subject line How about this one? My reply is always a series of carefully worded but extremely rational (in my view) arguments against flirting with this foolishness.

My wife’s vision for our ideal retirement appears to be restoring some ancient ruins on the outskirts of a medieval mountain village and hosting candlelit dinner parties for groups of visiting friends. I’ve yet to be able to picture it. Instead, I see us isolated, and myself teetering on steep rooftops chasing leaks and replacing countless slate tiles for a slow eternity, welcoming a fatal slip or at least the arrival of the first snow when I can climb down and drag our mattress into the castle kitchen where my wife and I will overwinter, living next to a space heater and gnawing on raw potatoes to ward off scurvy. It starts out brilliantly, no doubt, this fantasy, with wildflowers lining a winding pebbled drive and shaded woodland walks beside a picturesque loch in between bouts of tending to our summer vegetable garden; but it ends, I fear, with us shuffling around in drafty, mildewed halls, feeding the furniture stick by stick into fading fires and reciting lines of Shakespeare or the poems of Robert Burns for an audience of so many ghosts, while wrapped in our woolen housecoats that we’ve stuffed with wads of old newspaper and salvaged clippings of our own hair.

“But, honey,” I protest, “they shit in garderobes in those old castles. That’s a hole in a closet that leads to a cesspool. And there’s no insulation.”

“Don’t be silly,” my wife replies. “They’ve updated the plumbing. And there’s a darling fireplace in every room.”

I knew what I was getting into, of course. Early in our relationship I was enticed on more than one occasion into accompanying her on various castle scouting missions, agreeing to go if for no other reason than to plant seeds of doubt into this infatuation that would surely pass. I quickly learned, however, that she possesses a fortitude greater than mine, and that feminine wiles, especially those of the charming variety, those of a beautiful fiancée, say, trump the most reasoned male reservations.

(I submit Boldt Castle on Heart Island, NY and Dobroyd Castle in Todmorden, England into evidence, your honor. And don’t forget the Taj Mahal!)

And even when castles are not our destination, if one appears on a map within a hundred miles of our travels, a detour must be taken to see it, even if we end up gazing upon a jumble of weathered stone in some farmer’s field.

“Yes, it’s lovely here,” I mistakenly conceded on one of these early trips, quickly adding, “But it’s summer. And wintertime here would be hell.”

She smiled, apparently recognizing my poorly planned move and seeing a path to checkmate appear on the board. “Well, then,” she said, squeezing my hand, “I guess we’ll just have to come back and see, won’t we?”

We weren’t home for two weeks when I received an itinerary for a winter castle tour, starting in the Scottish Highlands and ending in the mountains of Bavaria. There was some back and forth, resulting in a bit of compromise, or so I believed, but come December we were wheels up and jetting across the ocean, two kids setting off in search of a worthy backdrop for an eventual misfit marriage between a peasant poet and his betrothed princess who chases castles in the air.

The following entries are observations I jotted in my notebook after our arrival in Isle of Skye, Scotland:

Long, long drive from Inverness on the wrong side of narrow roads. I spun the rental Beamer on the mountain pass and nearly sent us over a cliff.

The island is beautiful. Colors as vivid as a child’s imagination – purple trees, red heather, snow dusted mountains and a leaden sea as backdrop.

Small white cottages everywhere with cattle grates across the drives.

Our hotel is a Baronial-style manor. We appear to be the only guests.

Drinks in the firelit parlor. A five-course dinner, mostly wild game. Each time I thanked our server, who appeared quite drunk, his response while backing away and bowing was, “No, thank you, good sir. Thank you.”

The radiator in our room makes strange sounds but seems to produce no heat. Woke up freezing. Lukewarm shower.

The “full breakfast,” served by the same man, still drunk, included blood pudding, which Bridget would not eat. I had to eat double so as not to appear rude. Not my favorite food.

Unless he has a twin, our server is also the concierge. Perhaps he’s the chef too. Or maybe he owns the place. At Bridget’s request, he’s marked out castle ruins on a map for us to visit.

“No, thank you, good sir,” he says, bowing. “Thank you.”

He did however pocket the offered tip. What a character!

Off to view castles. Cold as hell here. Bridget’s still shivering from her shower.

So far, so good.

One small travel concession I did win was my insistence that these cross-country European trips, often involving regional flights and numerous train and ferry transfers, be made with no more than one carry-on bag each. But how Bridget packs hers is a state secret. If it’s ever weighed by the attendant, it must be checked, and more than once we’ve reclaimed it greatly expanded and wrapped in yards of tape by customs officials who opened it without the proper spell and couldn’t zip it shut again. Her taste in clothing matches her taste in architecture (she is a whimsical traveler!) and through some complex system of laundry origami and vacuum bags, full-length bedazzled period-piece gowns emerge from her carry-on, one after another, a new one for each castle it seems, and sometimes even a complimentary suit for me. From what bottomless pocket the matching shoes are drawn, only she and David Copperfield know.

Most of the castles we visited in Scotland on this trip were lost to time, thankfully, and beyond the means of even eccentric millionaires or doting husbands to restore. This, together with the frigid weather and blood sausages and black puddings, allowed me to make some progress, I thought, toward dispelling the fanciful dream. My hope now rested with whatever inhospitable climate and exotic dishes the Germans had to offer.

So, it came to be, after a short flight to Munich, where we boarded a train for Füssen, that we eventually found ourselves on the morning before Christmas Eve, dressed to the nines from Bridget’s bottomless carry-on, staring out through our hotel room window into a blizzard and catching fleeting glimpses of the spires of Neuschwanstein Castle high against the Bavarian Alps.

“There’s no way the tours are going forward today,” I announced. “How would they even get us up there in three feet of snow.”

Bridget, who thinks of everything and misses nothing, promptly drew my attention to a line of horse-drawn carriages waiting at the hotel entrance.

Here my notebook reads: Glossy black carriages hung with lanterns and pulled by draft horses making ghosts with their breath and stomping their feathered feet in the fresh snow while bearded Bavarian coachmen hold their reigns.

If greater Germany had a Norman Rockwell or Thomas Kinkaid, he couldn’t find a more pleasing scene to paint for a postcard.

As we stood under the hotel portico waiting on our carriage, Bridget in her harlequin gown and faux fur and me in my tie and tailcoat, a woman approached us and addressed me in the loud, slow English that American tourists sometimes use to speak to foreigners.

“She-is-very-pretty,” the woman announced, nodding to Bridget by my side.

“Thank you,” I replied. “Believe it or not, she also speaks.”

Bridget laughed, the woman blushed and withdrew, and soon we were all in our own carriages, our own worlds really, being pulled up the hill and into the baroque past.

I can’t possibly describe Neuschwanstein Castle properly without using overwrought language and more adjectives than any writer worthy of the title should. I’ll only say that from the window seat of the Swan King’s bedroom one glimpses a fantasy world never seen, even in the loftiest of dreams. It’s as if you’ve ascended to a high chamber hewn from the granite by hermit demigods and set amongst mountains rising from mountains too numerous to count. You can almost feel Ludwig’s lonely presence and hear his spirit humming Wagner’s music, even as you pass Tristan and Isolde painted as murals on the bedroom wall. If you get the chance, go. But not in summer when crowds of kids drag their parents out to see the real Disney castle. Go in the winter. Go at Christmastime if you can.

Here are the observations I jotted in my notebook recounting an uncomfortable but ultimately beautiful episode that happened on the carriage ride back to the hotel:

As we boarded our carriage for the ride down, a group of Korean women crowded in after us. Our driver was clearly not happy. He tried to forcefully remove them, but when the women refused to budge, he took us up front and sat us on the bench beside him, draping a blanket over our laps, and producing an umbrella to hold above our heads.

When he caught my eye and nodded, as if to suggest he’d rescued us, I felt I should protest. I felt as if we were being used, or were complicit even, in a display of racism. I cowardly held my tongue, telling myself that it probably had less to do with our skin color and more to do with Americans being coveted passengers for our tendency to tip.

Our discomfort increased as the driver turned around to bark angrily in German at the chatting Koreans, clearly telling them to shut up. They fell silent. I could see Bridget was uncomfortable, so I put my arm around her, hoping she wasn’t judging me for my silence.

Sounds to remember: the creak of carriage wheels and jingle of tack and the horses’ labored breathing and the thumpity-thump of their shod feet in the compacted snow.

The snow fell thicker and faster as we rolled quietly along.

Then, as if at some unseen conductor’s cue, and in pitch-perfect harmony, the Koreans began to sing “Silent Night” in perfect English. The carriage behind us had become a Christmas concert hall.

Hesitantly at first, Bridget and I joined in. Then, even the driver began singing along, though badly out of key and in the original German.

When we arrived back at the hotel, whatever was between them had melted, and the driver rushed to gently help each of the women from the carriage onto the icy walk. He even shook hands with a few, and hugged one, showing her the cross pendant he wore around his neck.

We thanked the women, and a brief chat in broken English informed us that they were members of a South Korean women’s Christian choir on holiday.

What a Christmas gift they’d given us! Their sweet voices saved the day. And shame on me for having thought they needed the American man to defend them.

Visiting Neuschwanstein Castle set me back at least a decade as things relate to overcoming my wife’s castle obsession. But although this romantic palace had captured our imaginations, Scotland had captured her heart. And in case you’re wondering how my dissuasion campaign went, a few years after the trip recalled above, we were back in Scotland’s highlands, this time having me fitted for a kilt.

On a cool November morning in Scotland, one might have observed a small, intimate party preceded by a bagpiper where a proud groom leads his princess, or perhaps it was her leading him, across the stone footbridge to Eilean Donan to be married there, high in the island castle’s keep. It had been relentlessly raining for a week, but just before the handfasting ceremony was set to begin, and even as the piper warmed up his chanter, the clouds lifted, and beams of morning sunlight broke through. The priestess looked at the groom and chuckled.

“This wasn’t in the forecast,” she said. “You’re marrying a witch! And what a lucky lad you are for that.”

Yes, I thought (and still think today), a very lucky lad indeed.

I had no idea where this piece would go. I only fished out my notebooks to review our past travels in search of castles because I sat down at my desk this morning to find a fresh listing for one waiting in my inbox, sent last night from my wife. Subject line: How about this one?

I’m not so sure that I married a witch, but I definitely married up, and I fear that in this castle contest playing out between us, she is proving my superior, and that my defenses are wearing down, even crumbling. So, don’t be surprised if someday these reflections on life and writing are penned not at my cozy desk, but from beside a space heater in the damp kitchen of some fortified manor, and sent not from this island in the Salish Sea, but from an island in one of Scotland’s 30,000 lochs.

But even if that’s how it plays out, even if I end up spending my retirement mortaring over cracks in old stone and stuffing pillowcases with clippings of my own thinning hair, I know better, as every man should, than to ever say “I told you so” to my wife. But at least now my reservations are on record here with you.

I’ll leave you with a quote from Walden Pond by Henry David Thoreau:

“If you have built castles in the air, your work need not be lost; there is where they should be. Now put foundations under them.”

An audio recording of this essay can be found here:

Audio: Castles in the Air