Week 50: Burg Lahneck and Koblenz Bike Ride

We were on the hunt for more castles and were planning on touring two on the Rhine, but didn't get out of the house early enough in the day, so we toured one castle and had coffee at the other. The first castle we stopped at was Lahneck. The castle had a few notable stories regarding it.

Burg Lahneck

One was regarding its dungeon, which was on ground level at the base of the tower, instead of built like a basement. The really weird thing was that there was no way to access the dungeon from the ground. The victims had to be lowered down by rope. It wasn't clear to me how the torturers made it down there. Perhaps they had a ladder.

Another notable story was from the mid-1800s. There was a British family with a 17-year-old daughter vacationing in the area. The daughter went out with her sketchbook to do some landscape drawings and made her way up to the castle, which at that time was mostly a ruin. In an attempt to climb to the top of the tower, the stairs collapsed and she fell. When she didn't return that evening, search parties were sent out. Unfortunately, her body (or, rather, skeleton) wasn't found until 9 years later, when some work was being done to clean up the castle. Her diary with a few entries was found near her body, showing she was alive after her fall, but was unable to attract any attention to her plight. A very chilling story.

We found the tour, though in German, to be very good. They did give us a translation of tour on paper and the guide was nice enough to translate some of the stories he told that were not on the sheet. They also did a couple of really interesting things that we had not seen at the other castles we have visited. First, the tour guide demonstrated a number of the items he discussed, including an unique fold-out card table and a lock-box (cue 2000 election campaign joke about Social Security here--the Guild Chest on this page shows a good example) with 11 locking points. This is very notable, as generally you only get to see these items from a bit of a distance as displays and don't get to see how they work.

The other tidbit on the tour was regarding the older wooden floors that were still in some areas of the castle. In most castles we have visited, they lay down some modern carpets or otherwise cover the area to protect the floor from the tread of visitors. Here they instead had us all put on slippers over our shoes. They had a big bin sitting outside of one of the rooms and we all then slid around on the floor once we made our way inside. It was an interesting way to do it and gave us an interesting story to tell.

Our next stop was at Marksburg Castle, where we arrived just after the last English tour set out, so we sat instead and had a coffee and enjoyed the sun. 

As a real goal for the day was to get a bike ride in, we took a drive from Marksburg into Koblenz and had a nice ride along the Rhine. The picture below was taken at the spot we turned around, just a little ways outside the city. Pretty cool abandoned factory, huh?

Hulk along the Rhine in Koblenz

On biking back to Koblenz, we stopped for some food at a cafe near the river. Though it was a little chilly, we took the chance to sit outside. I had a really great (though a bit salty...) Spaezle dish shown in the photo below--with a class of halbtrocken (have dry) wine.

Spaezle with Veggies!

Week 49: Burg Pyrmont

Burg Pyrmont

We are back into the full-tilt mode of castle visiting. This week's coverage is of Burg Pyrmont (sorry, no English link). This castle was a little bit of an adventure, as there was no materials available in English. We had our choice of German, Dutch and French. We chose German, and did our best to pick our way through the tour material. Luckily, our German has improved enough to grasp the basic information on the rooms from the handout.

View from the Top of the Tower

Burg Pyrmont is located nearby Burg Eltz. In fact, from the tower at Pyrmont, we were able to see the crane at Burg Eltz and just make out the castle. Unfortunately, I did not get a picture, so you will have to trust me on this. One thing that was particularly interesting about this castle was that you could rent out a room or a portion of the castle as a holiday apartment or for a wedding. And, frankly, the rates for the rooms weren't too bad: about 80 Euros for two people for one night, including breakfast. We've paid more where we were not, in any way, staying in a castle. 

Looking Down the Tower's Staircase

This type of repurposing is very common in Europe, where they have lots of old buildings that they don't want to tear down, but can't really preserve as just tourist attractions. We saw a lot of this in Denmark, in particular, where it seemed that every old building that was not being used for its original purpose was turned into art studio. It is quite an interesting approach, as the architectural elements that have developed in a specific area are maintained, but the buildings stay useful and add to the environment. It is an interesting approach and is reminiscent of how some of the downtown industrial buildings in Providence, RI were reused.

Breakfast Room

It looks like a really nice place to stay. We were able to walk around a bit in the building and found the breakfast room, which was really nice, as you can above. I bet the food is pretty great as well...

Week 48: Our Second Visitor

Well, it has been about 9 months, but we had our second visitor a few weeks ago. While you may recall our last visitor was a friend of mine, this time we were joined by a friend of Jason's. We took him to a number of sights that we have visit before, including the Manderscheid Castles, Burg Eltz (a place where we went with our last visitor) and Luxemburg's Casemates.  

Jason, his Long Time Friend and Manderscheid's Niederburg 

Luxembourg City

We, of course, found some fantastic new things, including the slide in the picture below. You may recall a previous slide we had found in Germany. The one was located in a playground in Luxembourg City. I don't have a video (our guest tried, but the video did not really come out very well since the slide is covered), but can attest to it be quite awesome, though the climb up was a bit awkward as it was meant for much smaller people. And no, we did not push kids out of the way to go down the slide...we calmly waited our turn.

Awesome Slide!

Not shown in the photo above is the rest of the playground, which was just as cool. It looked like a pirate ship! And even included a crow's nest that you could climb into. Additionally there was the swing set, shown in the movie below, where kids got to have the excitement of almost swinging into each other, but due to the mathematics of the paths, never did. And, the best part, which I also don't have documentary evidence of, but I have seen in a number of other European playgrounds was an Archimedes's screw and a set of dams and pumps so you can be the Army Corps of Engineers and manage the water flow through the area. European playgrounds are awesome and teach kids about math, science and engineering! It is like spending the day at the MOS! (On a side note--the Boston Museum of Science's web address is mos.org--Jason just wondered if MIT might have provided some help in getting them such a name.)

With our last visitor, we had visited Burg Eltz, which is the old castle in Europe that is still owned by one of the original families, and large section of it was under renovation. As can be seen in the picture below, they are not yet complete and we still get to see a crane with the castle, though much of the other work has been completed and really looks great compared to the scaffolding we saw on our last visit.

Burg Eltz with a Crane

We sent our visitor off with a dramatic train catch. I rushed in and bought his ticket, while he grabbed his bag. We hurried up to the platform, and just as we stepped off the escalator, the passengers were stepping off the freshly arrived train. I've been riding the train a lot in the past year and that is the most perfect timing I have ever been involved in--talk about luck. Two minutes later and we would have missed it!

Week 47: Short Vacation to the Netherlands

A few months ago, we had marked some time off on our calendar to attend the wedding of one of Jason's cousins. Unfortunately, due to our realization that we would spend almost as much time travelling as we would on the ground, we decided that it wouldn't make sense to take the trip. We were left with time off on our calendar. After investigating some last-minute package tours and other options that required ass-early flights, we found a lovely little B&B in the Netherlands (link in Dutch), where we could spend time relaxing and riding our bikes.

The livingroom in our B&B apartment

The drive was about 5 hours from our place to Waspe, where the B&B is located. The area was very nice and surrounded by farms and parkland. (Mom--you would love it! There were horses everywhere. We saw at least two people driving as well.) On our drive in, we followed a canal for much of the way. We had arranged ahead of time to have our hostess prepare dinner for us, which was fantastic and much easier than trying to find a place to eat after our long drive.

We spent our first day out on our bikes. The weather was really nice--sunny, but still a little cool. As you may know, the Dutch are crazy for biking and as we were sitting in our room in the morning, we saw students headed to school and a string of adults headed to work all on bicycles. And the only time the Dutch are seen wearing helmets while biking is if they are on the crazy road bikes with the skinny tires that require you to wear spandex and clippy shoes.

From our B&B, we headed out into the nearby Drents-Friese Wold (a wooded parkland--north of Waspe, if you follow the link to the map above) and rode our bikes to the town of Appelscha, where we had lunch. Jason had the opportunity to experience Dutch noontime cuisine (I've had it a number of times at the companies I've visited in the Netherlands), which consists either of fried croquettes of some type or hot open face sandwiches with cheese and fried eggs. He had the first. I had the latter. His impression: "So good." And once again, we were struck by the fact that really, here in Northern Europe they don't eat that much better than we do--they just seem to spend much more time moving around--or something--to stay generally not-obese.

One interesting thing we noticed as we were riding around is than an inordinate number of roads in this area of the Netherlands were brick. It wasn't like you normally see in Europe, where the roads in the center of town or where people walk were paved with brick. These were all the secondary roads, both in town and outside of it. And in almost all cases that we ran into, even in the more remote farming areas, they were in very good repair.

A sample of the brick roads

After a great day our on our bikes, we found a BBQ joint that was a short drive away. It had all the trappings of your standard BBQ joint in the US, as you can see from the photo below--hats, wagon wheels, barrels, etc. The waiters even had holsters with toy guns in them. I hadn't eaten ribs in ages, so I ordered those and Jason ordered a steak. The ribs were a mistake--they were very odd tasting. It took me a while, but I finally realized what the flavor was--Chinese spareribs. Like you get at that crappy Chinese place that you go to only because it is close, not because it is good. Jason, though, enjoyed his steak, and frankly, the atmosphere in the place was quite amusing, almost making up for the abominable ribs.

Howdy, partner! 

For our second full day, we  drove up to Groningen (pronounced "Hrone-ing-gen"), which is the nearest city to where we were staying. We had lunch in the city, which, like much of the rest of the Netherlands, was full of canals and wandered through the town a bit. Our main destination in Groningen, though was a climbing gym located on the edge of the city. The most notable feature of this gym is shown in the picture below: the highest dedicated climbing structure in the world. It could only be used if you were lead climbing (something Jason and I are currently not qualified to do), but was still quite impressive to see.

For scale, Jason is with the car on the right-hand side of the photo

For our last full day, we went out for another bike ride, this time to the town of Dwingeloo and the Dwingelerweld park land. The best thing about biking in the Netherlands is that there are no hills. None. Maybe an occasional bump for a bridge or a local depression, but no steep valleys or tall hills to be seen.

Lunch in Dwingeloo--Go Sox!

In riding through the parkland near Dwingeloo, we found the radio telescope in the below picture. This is my second time having my photo taken with a radio telescope. The first time was about 15 years ago at Nerd Camp, where my future college roommate took a picture of me in front of a much larger radio telescope located in West Virginia. I suppose I now need to make my way to the largest radio telescope in the world, located in Puerto Rico.

Me and a radio telescope!

Our vacation ended with a 5 hour drive home. All too short, as vacations inevitably are, but a very enjoyable time while it lasted.