So, it is true what they say about castles in Germany. There are a ton of them! Most of them are nothing but a pile of rocks at this point. All the really pretty ones are too far away from France to get beaten up. The little bit of research that I was able to find out about some of the less important Nobles/Knights/Lords has given me a very un-romanticized look at Knights, castles, and the ole days of chivalry. Because public transportation was not invented back then, they had some sort of Lord/Knight or what have you on every corner. (They were like the Wal-green of their time.) They didn't want to travel too far to govern over (crush, steal and destroy) their people. 
There are two castles that are 15 minutes from our house in Hutschenhausen. There's one in Landstuhl and one in K-town. The one in Landstuhl, Berg Nanstein, was the site of the fall of castles in the Palatinate area. Franz von Sickingen was a mean SOB of a knight who made it famous and caused its demise. He was smart, but got greedy. I'm not going to give an entire history on it, but I can say that even though Landstuhl is small and the castle is not that famous it made many history books and articles that I've read about in reference to the castles in our area. Considering how many there are, that's big. Ok, back to the castle. Our GPS refused to know where it was. The road to get there is a driveway to a hotel. When you get to the castle itself (not open on Mondays, but gives a military discount when it is open--very nice), there is a cafe right outside its walls. It looks like they have turned part of the castle into a section for parties or receptions. Its tastefully done though. The cafe looks over the entire town of Landstuhl and you can see Ramstein Air Base to the right. They have really nice benches and tables outside, so Jeremy, Harper, and I had a super nice lunch out in the sun watching the heavies take off from the base. The food was so good and it was the cheapest we've paid for a meal since we've arrived. When we were finished with our meal, we went to explore the Nanstein. When I say explore, that is exactly what we did. The castle has two places you can't go: the tomb of Sickingen and a stairwell that looks like it hasn't been excavated yet. I mean we must have walked all over that place for an hour. It was a fun adventure.
Thinking we were up for more adventure, we headed into Kaiserslautern (K-town) to see another one. Well, this one was not as forgiving as the other. There were no signs on how to get there. The GPS, again, was no help. I actually told Jeremy (I'm the navigator when he drives) to drive up what I thought was a road, but ended up being a walkway with steps at the top. So we had to back down in our huge car with the locals looking on (stupid Americans). After asking two different people, we parked behind a church and hiked to the castle. I will not go into detail on how out of shape the Wood family is, but when I say hike, I really mean cry, sweat, scream, and gnash our teeth hiked to the top of that big ole hill to see a couple of walls left over from a long ago life. Burgruine Hohenecken was built in 1200 but first mentioned in 1277. Again, this one was destroyed, rebuilt, and destroyed again by the French. See the trend here. All that remains are about 5 walls and most of those have been reinforced with newer construction to keep them from falling over. The grounds are beautiful. It's a great place to go if you want a little hike and a picnic lunch at the end. This one was free (maybe monetarily, but not in blood, sweat and tears). 
This ended a great day, but we were beat. All three of us. ~Tara
1 comments:
So....when do you Tebow at a castle? I'm still waiting for the pics!!!!!
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