Forty degrees and drizzling rain, mid-September, Hohenschwangau—Guiding tours, the worst days are the cold and rainy days. But I’ve had worse best days at other jobs. The most rewarding part of the cold and rainy days is when I’m telling stories to a crowd of tour guests, up to thirty at a time. It’s the hundred-and-somethingth time I’ve told these stories, but I put all the emotion and enthusiasm into them as though I just wrote them this morning. I know them by heart, so I have time to enjoy the telling as much as those listening.

Rain patters on overhead leaves. Gusty wind rattles branches. From green hills beyond, mist rises into blue-gray clouds on a close horizon. An odor of damp, decayed wood wafts in the air. The audience is a diverse crowd of folks of all ages, from different countries, different cultures, from all around the world. They came to a small corner of Europe to see a castle built by a crazy guy who enjoyed going to the opera and building monuments to his idols and to his own imagination. They came to go inside the castle. They didn’t expect to be outside before going in, listening to all these stories about the man who built it and how he came to do so.

Still, here they are, huddled under umbrellas and bundled up in parkas and scarves, arms around each other for warmth—as surprised to be standing there, in the cold and rain, as I am that they stay. They stare holes through me while I talk, some with furrowed brow, some with creased smile. They nod when they recognize some historical fact. They ooh and aah at the intriguing parts. They laugh at the funny bits. After the story about a knight, I point to his statue on the castle’s peak, a silhouette against clouds. They say that was a great story. I tell them I can do better. After the story about a dragon, they say they see the dragon, there in the landscape, shrouded in mist, and they say that was the very best story. Rain runs along umbrella ribs, while time stands still. Time spent in communion with the past and with our fellow humans from way back then and from just now. Time in the cold and rain. Time not they nor I regret not getting back.

“…the participants can then be allowed to make their first descent into the dungeons beneath the ‘huge ruined pile, a vast castle built by generations of mad wizards and insane geniuses.’”—Gygax and Arneson, DUNGEONS & DRAGONS: Men & Magic

Some say Ludwig II was a genius. For others, the king was mad. The vast castle he built is yet far from ruined. Though when the time comes, the pile will be huge.

“And the dungeons beneath?” a friend asked after I posted yet another photo like the one above on social media. Since I left the Isle of Myth a year and a half ago, base town is across the river from Bavaria’s most famous castle. In reply I recited a local legend:

An old man lives outside the village in the castle’s shadow. He is blind and frail, so doesn’t often leave his hovel. But if you bring him a bottle of single malt and tell him stories of daring adventures of youth, he’ll tell you to go, on a winter’s day, to the bridge behind the castle. Bouncing planks take you high above a gorge. Cool mist rises from a laughing cascade below. It brings an odor of pine and earth. The sun at its zenith reaches deep between two central towers. There, dazzling rays reveal to the keen observer a cavernous portal of unknown depth, into which few have ventured and from which none have returned.

This article was originally published on DONJON LANDS, April 10, 2024.