Paddle to the Palace

The Munich SUP Crew likes to go to places where no man has paddled before. So, while everybody else was celebrating fasching (carnival) or curing the fasching hangover, they decided to paddle to the place where Ludwig II, King of Bavaria, sometimes also called “Mad King Ludwig” was born in 1864: Palace Nymphenburg.

Ludwig is best known as an eccentric whose legacy is intertwined with the history of art and architecture. He commissioned the construction of several extravagant fantasy castles and palaces, the most famous being Neuschwanstein.

He mysteriously died in 1886 in Lake Starnberg (another location often frequented by the Munich Crew) in less than waist-deep water.

Ludwig’s death was officially ruled a suicide by drowning, but this has been questioned. Ludwig was known to be a strong swimmer in his youth, the water was less than waist-deep where his body was found, and the official autopsy report indicated that no water was found in his lungs. Ludwig had expressed suicidal feelings during the crisis, but the suicide theory does not fully explain the death of his companion Gudden.

His birthplace, Palace Nyphenburg, together with its park, is now one of the most famous sights of Munich. The baroque facades comprise an overall width of about 700 metres. The Steinerner Saal, with ceiling frescoes by Johann Baptist Zimmermann and F. Zimmermann and decorations by François de Cuvilliés, is an impressive sight.

The 200-hectare (490-acre) park has an amazing canal system with lakes which the Munich crew just had to paddle for once.