Fraueninsel

The conference center on the island was run primarily by a nun called Sister Scholastica, a Scottish woman probably in her sixties. She was quite a presence! Very organized, no-nonsense, and (of course) fluent in English. Apparently she's the one that turned the monstery around. It was a couple hundred thousand euros in the red, and now it's doing fairly well.

The nuns make a "klosterlikor" (cloister liquor) that is the other claim to fame of the monastery. We're bringing a bottle home, but haven't actually tasted it yet. It's supposed to be good for the digestion.

The island itself is small; we could walk all the way around it in about twenty minutes. Besides the monastery/conference center, there are a few restaurants, some private homes, and a tiny grocery-type store with extremely irregular hours. There's also a art gallery and a small museum. Lots of the people seem to run their own small businesses; there are a couple smoked fish stands (fresh fish is another specialty), a woman selling ceramics out of a boathouse, and various people running fishing expeditions.

We had an excursion to the nearby island, Herreninsel (Men's Island). One of Ludwig II (Mad King Ludwig)'s castles is located there. He built it to be a model of Versailles, but it's much smaller because he ran out of money to finish it. He did have a huge variety of guilded gold carvings and a replica of the Hall of Mirrors. It was actually a bit disgusting to see all that excess, especially because it was being built in the 1800s. It made us glad that American leaders didn't do that! No wonder there were revolutions (although not, of course, in Germany).

Typical for the weekend, it started pouring down rain as we stepped off the ferry, and stopped raining just as we reached the castle (about a fifteen minute walk).