Ludwigsburg Castle, Part 3: Rapunzel's Tower

Another notable part of the Ludwigsburg castle grounds is this tower.

Jörg explained that this is Rapunzel's tower. Every summer during the many festivals on the castle grounds, crowds of children stand at the base of the tower and shout for Rapunzel to let down her hair.

You can also go inside in the summer, up the 150 step spiral staicase to the top of the tower. The view is most likely excellent.

Both the castle and the tower are original. Neither was seriously damaged in WWII, unlike many of the cool historical buildings in Germany. The main castle was started in 1704, and was modified multiple time up to around the 1780s, and the tower was built around 1798.

Ludwigsburg Castle, Part 2: the rooms

This post will be a little picture heavy, but that's what castles do to me. I wish I had found out the age of some of the art pieces, but the castle in general looks as it did in the early 1800s.

The king's bedroom. Most of the castle is a mirror along the N/S axis, so the duchess/queen has identical rooms where applicable. The chair to the right of the bed is the main reason I wouldn't want to live in this time period - no plumbing.

Speaking of mirrors - The mirror room in the castle has around 250 mirrors. They are some of the few things that are not completely accurate reproductions of the period. It would have been way too expensive to us 17th century mirrors in this room. Other rooms in the castle have original mirrors, though.

The dining room was surprisingly small to me. This room and a neighboring room had pull-cords to ring the same bell. I really liked the blue curtains on the china cabinet.

The castle contains two churches, and the one on the king's side had his personal viewing room. He would listen with the windows open, and if the bishop said anything the king disagreed with, the king would close the windows rather loudly. This would also cause the rest of the congregation to leave immediately.

Reportedly, one bishop was banished to an island somewhere for the rest of his life, which turned out to be rather long.

This seemed to be the main court area. Unfortunately most of the pictures of it failed to come out at all, so this is all I have.

Ludwigsburg castle also has a small theater, which is still used to this day. It's the oldest preserved theater in Europe, and all of the original equipment (from 1758) still works. We're down on the main floor of the theater, looking at the stage, with 5 rows of 'columns' visible.

When I was closer to the front, I could see that the columns were actually flat, and had the various curtains and backdrops hanging between them. From the main area, the perspective was very well done. Above are 3 levels of balcony seats.

except of course in the middle, which was the king's seat.

A cool thing I didn't get a picture of was the central chandelier in the theater. It appeared to be able to be completely removed through a large hole in the ceiling during performances (So as not to block the balcony view)

Another typical feature are murals on the ceilings. The last one of these is particularly interesting.

This room was under renovation during my visit, so I couldn't go to the middle of the floor where this perspective trick is most powerful.

Everything that couldn't be removed from the room was covered, but I think I saw a set of red steps up to a short platform that would indicate this as another court area. This was very different than the usual ceiling murals you'd see in the other rooms.

Next post: a tower from fairy tales.

Ludwigsburg Castle, Part 1

Saturday I went with Jörg to Ludwigsburg Castle. He's a Ludwigsburg native, and he enjoyed showing me around the cute city. I didn't take many photos of the city, but the castle grounds were pretty interesting.

The lower section of the map is the fantasy gardens. Across the street is also Castle Favorite, which is where Herzog (Duke) Ludwig's girlfriend lived.
Here I'm about halfway between the two castles.

The local children were swarming the hillside a few weeks ago in the snow. There was a clear path from the castle wall to the bottom a a neighboring valley between the hills, with about three flat stretches in between. It looked like a 50-75 foot elevation change at something like a 30 degree angle, though that's just the average. The two steps up to the castle were more like 45 degrees. This view from inside shows the hill all the way down on the right.

Herzog Ludwig was a BIG GUY. In his middle years, he was 7'6" and 450lbs. He eventually couldn't sleep lying down, so had to sleep in chairs.

Other notables who owned and expanded on the castle were Herzog Wilhelm, and King Fredrich.

I didn't catch it in the tour, but perhaps these are urns in the hallway?

The castle has a bunch of original artwork and sculpture (of course), and some very interesting rooms, which will all be in the next post.

World's lonliest bench

I've always felt that this bench is a little sad. It's behind a locked gate in the property next to the local train stop. It looked even more miserable in the snow.

It doesn't even have any cat tracks around it.

Snowy weekend

We got quite a bit of snow (for this area), and I had a nice picture taking weekend. From Goelshausen to Kuepferhaelde, there's a little walking path along the forest behind the houses. This particular tree was fairly striking, I think.

The soccer field was completely deserted for a change. I felt weird taking pictures of all the sledding kids, so I didn't.

I really enjoyed some of the patterns on this retaining wall.

The shape of the snow made me think of bite marks, or inverted Santa beards.

A local kitty was here recently.

It's hard to capture the snow on the trees. Most of the shots just looked messy.

I only had the smaller lens with me. I think plant could have made some interesting macro shots.

It also reminds me of an xkcd stick figure, with his arms up like that.

Vacation in Baden-Wuerttenberg

Happy new year!

Since Erica's moved back to the states, I get to take over the blog for a few weeks until my trip is finished too. I was lucky and got to arrange a trip to stay with her for Christmas and New Year's, so I'm just getting to things now.

I got back to Germany on January 6, which happens to be a state holiday in BW.

The streets were basically empty. I couldn't go grocery shopping, so I decided to walk around town instead. Not too many interesting shots, though. Here's the Hundler Restaurant, with just a dusting of snow.

And here's the main Marktplatz, which is deserted compared to the farmer's market on an average Wednesday.

More snow pictures to come in the next post. This dusting is just the tip of the iceberg, as it were.

The details

What am I supposed to be blogging about? I know there was something…

We have about a million pictures, and I had a bunch of things to say about each one, but throw all the pictures in one folder, give me a week or two, and I can't come up with an interesting story to save my life.

I guess that's why you're supposed to keep travel diaries and blogs. So that you will always remember the stories that are so important you'll forget them a week later.

Yup. Blogging is all about the memorable things.

So…a post. How about some pictures?

A dragonfly.

Doesn't he have a funny little face?

Did you know that they can tilt their heads to look at you quizzically?

Me either.

We spent a long time sizing one another up on Saturday afternoon. I guess a macro lens must look pretty odd with all those eyes.

 

A sunset.

Gorgeous, impossible to adequately capture on film (or in pixels, if you want to be all accurate about it).

One thing I really love about this apartment is the west-facing window.

A cat.

Wondering why I think it's funny that she's tucked herself into bed and pulled up the covers, and why I'm disturbing her nap.

Small things.

The details of life.

Bruchsal

I promised you a post about Bruchsal, didn't I?

Well.

Bruchsal is another town close to Bretten, and not quite so small. The people that we met in Karlsruhe were from Bruchsal. We wanted to explore the town, and so we headed out a couple of weekends ago.

We left around mid-morning, and went for a wander.

Sometimes, we go to a new place with a plan. We do our research, find all the tourist spots, make ourselves a list, and strike out.

Other times, we don't. We go, we walk, and we see what we find. Our feet take us places without any real direction, and we get a better feel for a place than we would if we stuck to the tourist spots.

This first day, we just wandered. When we got off of the train, we followed the crowd of people until it thinned to just one or two. We walked through the Saturday market in the town square. We wandered down side streets, looking for something to catch our fancy, to cry out to be explored.

We walked up a long hill, and happened upon a Kindergarten museum.

We weren't in a museum kind of mood, so we didn't go in. But they had a beautiful garden.

Then, we found a church with onion-shaped steeples.

It's too bad it was closed, because the sign said it had an incredible interior.

We wandered some more, and found a park with a bike trail that ran along the river. We didn't take photos, but we stopped there for lunch. We picked Mirabelles from a now-wild tree.

They later became part of the stachelbeeren jelly. Small, sweet. For those of you that know Rainier cherries, these are very similar, except that you replace the cherry flavor with plum.

We stopped at a café, and Branden had an icecream. It's practically a national pastime here, apparently. On a sunny Saturday all the Eiscafes have outdoor tables full of people enjoying elaborate icecream sundaes. I didn't take a picture. Probably because I was jealous.

My non-dairy ice tea was also quite good.

When we'd walked enough, we went back to the train and headed home.

We mentioned our trip to some of our friends, and they were surprised we hadn't gone to the castle. So, when we were close by with them, we stopped in and had a look.

In all our wanderings, we'd somehow missed the palace. A whole little world unto itself.

Or, if you prefer, you can be in the center of it.

(Click and drag in the picture to look around. It's interactive!)

The funny thing is that the entire façade is painted onto a very simple, almost flat exterior wall. No marble necessary. I've never seen this in a castle before.

I guess it saves on decorations.

Of cabbages and cats

I like cabbage. The problem is, that cabbages are never small. In fact, they are usually downright huge.

We bought a cabbage last week that was very big. Like, as big as a cat.

See?

Artemis: You're comparing me to what??

Artemis: Oh. Ok. At least you're taking my picture.

Artemis: What is that thing, anyway?

We've been eating a lot of cabbage this week.

Comments?

It's been pretty quiet around here lately, and I've had one report of broken comments. We've checked, and are having no trouble from our end, so I'm not sure what's wrong. Send me an email (erica dot gunn at gmail dot com) if you're trying to comment and it's not working! (browser and login info would be helpful)

Butterfly Flutterby

A week or so ago, I was walking back from town, and saw a bush full of butterflies.

There were at least 20 or 30 of the orange ones, and 2 or 3 black ones.

And then there was a funny hover-bee kinda thing:

A little bit of unexpected beauty in the day.

I am so glad we got a macro lens.