The picture above is of the Bavarian castle, Neuschwanstein. It is in this castle where we found most of the dragon statues and paintings (photographs were prohibited so I can’t show you how cool they were). The coolest one was a solid gold statue of a dragon. He was being stabbed. By Saint George. For no actual reason. We always hear about how the amazing and wonderful Saint George (known as the dragon slayer) stabbed the dragon and saved everyone. But what did the dragon do to him? We never hear about what the dragon did to make everybody want it dead.
But aside from that, the dragons around Europe are really cool. I wish we had gotten a picture of the gold dragon, because almost everyone would recognize it. The castle, too, might look familiar. That is because Walt Disney bought the visual rights to use the image of the castle after a vacation to Bavaria. He had at the time been making a huge bet that would make or break his company. He gave it the name “Sleeping Beauty.” Disney used the dragon in the scene when Maleficent becomes the huge purple-and-black dragon and attacks the prince. He rejected the scene at first because the castle used looked too much like his logo and he didn’t want a scene that “violent” to be associated with his company logo. But since he had just bought the rights from the castle, he used that one instead.
Back to the dragons…
The very first dragon that we saw was in Tivoli Gardens amusement park in Copenhagen. It was a huge Chinese dragon that was right underneath the Demon roller coaster, probably to give it a creepy effect. It didn’t really work, though, because the dragon was really cute.
The next one was also in Copenhagen on a giant billboard advertising Virtual Reality. It was obviously fake and was really weird-looking.
We didn’t see any in Munich, but we did come across those dragons in the castles near Garmisch, on crests and stuff. It really is too bad we didn’t get any pictures.
Now, here in Switzerland, I found a really cool sketchbook in a little shop with a really cool dragon on it, but other than that, there hasn’t been any dragons in Switzerland. *Sadness Tear*
From,
Piper, the Most Amazing and Coolest Peron Ever
Piper! Such a great intro to dragons and what a shocker that we run across none other than St. George, the Dragon Slayer! It will be great to hear more about your dragon insights as the trip goes along. I wonder if there will be more in southern countries or less… nicely written, babe.
Castles and dragons! Especially St. George… Nice post, Piper…thank you. I enjoyed reading it and learned from it — it doesn’t get better than that. I didn’t know you could buy the visual rights to a castle!??!
Love Piper’s commentary! and the loads of information. I learned lots of new things. Looks like you are having lovely weather – lucky you!
In case you are wondering how things are going here….Trump is still President.