Fairytale Road

Yes, there is such a place. And I want to go there. I have been researching Germany and stumbled upon an article in the Feb. 2012 Conde Naste Traveler on Fairytale Rd. Unfortunately it is outside Frankfurt which is nowhere near Munich and all the other places we want to go. Which has me thinking do we really want to do Germany, Austria and Switzerland? Or do we want to just do Germany and see all of it? This trip is a ways away. There are some things going on now preventing us from setting a date. But we will go this year. It may be December 31…but we will go. So I have time to figure out where we want to go. 

Okay…back to the fairytales. When I was little we had a fairytale book. A big book with lots of stories. They were stories we all knew (Snow White, Rapunzel, Cinderella, Little Red Riding Hood, The Three Little Pigs, Hanzel & Gretal, etc…) But in this book they were much more dark and scary than the Disney version. I was afraid of that book. I think this was a Brothers Grimm book. At least that is what my research points to. Back then I had no idea what it was besides scary. The Brothers Grimm are German. And all of these stories where written in German long ago…before Disney, in the early 1800’s. They grew up in the towns on this Fairytale Road. They wrote hundreds of stories. Stories that Disney later made a fortune off of. But the originals were different in a twisted way. For example…did you know Cinderella’s step sisters cut off their toes to try and fit in the glass slipper? And at some point birds pecked their eyes out…yep, that happened. Did you know Rapuzel was pregnant before she married her prince? And there is some rumor about her mother and the prince. And the “stepmother” in Snow White and Hanzel and Gretal was actually the mother. So you see why this book scared me, right? They were intended to be children’s fables but were far from appropriate for children. The Grimm brothers traveled all over this area listening to these stories that had been passed on for generations and eventually wrote them all in a book form.

I have since decided I need to find this book and read it again. And I am not a reader. But I want to know these stories and then go to Germany and see where it all came from. As you drive the 370 miles down Fairytale Road you can stop and visit the forest where Little Red Riding Hood lived. You can visit the tower Rapunzel supposedly lived in. You can see the castle where Sleeping Beauty slept for 100 years. You mean it is not in California??? And you can visit the Pied Piper. Yep, there really is someone who dressed up like the Pied Piper. He will tell you stories, play you some music and then try to sell you a t-shirt with his face on it. Most of these stories are based on something. Whether is it is something true we may never know. They say that the Pied Piper stems from a time when all the children disappeared from this one particular town. Rumor has it this was when many people in this area were turning to the Paganism. So they town decided to kill them all one night while they walked to their nightly ritual and rid the town of Pagans all together. Crazy, right?

I don’t know. I guess it is an odd place to want to visit on vacation. But I think it would be interesting. I would be sure to pack my red cape and basket of bread for Grandma.