Germany: Family Weekend

The first weekend, no field trips were planned. This a Familienwochenende, or family weekend, in which the individual families do what they want. We later learned various families went horseback riding, took trips to France, toured Stuttgart, and more.

As for me, JK and AK took me to the Burg Hohen-Zollern. 

The Burg Hohen-Zollern ( https://www.burg-hohenzollern.com/) is a working castle. The prince and his family still live there, and a flag flies at the highest tower to indicate if he’s at home. The place is ingeniously built around a spiral ramp. To get inside, you have to haul yourself up the mountain to the castle itself (thank heavens for shuttle buses), then start up a sort-of driveway that curves around and around in a spiral around the castle and then finally into it. Naturally, if you’re part of an attacking army, there are plenty of places for defenders to throw dreadful things like arrows, hot pitch, and boulders down on you. The modern version is more welcoming, and is festooned with statues of Kaisers and other luminaries of Prussian history.

I love castles, and spend my time in them in a kind of happy haze. I adore trying to figure out which parts are original and which were added or changed. I live for trying to figure out who did what to whom and where and imagining what the place was like after it was first built.  I got to indulge myself fully here. 

Only limited areas of the castle are open to the public (it’s a private home, after all), but I explored everything I could, including the interesting cellars. Many levels wind themselves deep under the castle, connected with stone spiral staircases and low stone passageways lit only by dim electric lights. The original kitchen was down there, and is still used today to store the family china. I followed one passage and found an old guard room, and then another tunnel, and then a door, and suddenly I was outside the castle at the bottom!  I couldn’t get back in, so I had to wind my way around the spiral back up to the top to find JK waiting for me. (He grew up in the area and knows the castle well, so he mostly let me explore.)

Afterward, we had lunch in an interesting indoor-outdoor German/Italian restaurant/musical performance/petting zoo place at the bottom of the mountain. The place is popular for weddings, and during our time there, three sets of wedding parties came through! I had an embarrassing moment in which I insisted on paying for lunch, only to have both my cards turned down. (AK paid, and I later hit a cash machine to pay him back. I called the bank to complain, and they said they didn’t even have a record of an attempt at payment from the restaurant, so it must have been their credit card system at fault.) 

On the drive home, we stopped at JK’s parents’ place for a moment, and I met his father. We bonded over our mutual dislike of Donald Trump.

I have never met a European who likes Donald Trump. Like, =ever=. I was once in a taxi in Ireland and after I mentioned my effusive hatred of the baboon, said driver replied that he had never met an American who supported Trump. I thought about that and wondered aloud if it’s that baboon supporters don’t often travel outside the USA. The driver thought that might be the case, too.