“The real voyage of discovery consists not in seeking new landscapes but in having new eyes” Marcel Proust
We sailed over night and in the morning we cruised through what was described as the most picturesque part of the river, and they weren’t lying. This part of the river was littered with castles, with 0% exaggeration as soon as one castle was out of sight there was another coming up, this went for nearly two hours. While Bjorn commentated the history of each castle the staff served us spritzers and we helped ourselves to coffee and pastries to our hearts (and bellies) content. The day was warm, the breeze lackluster, but the views… muah (insert meme here). We passed a castle with a grim story that Bjorn told us over the speaker system about the rich man in power who once presided over the small town. The people came to him one winter and asked for enough grain to survive, as they were left with nothing after they paid their taxes in gold and grain/supplies. The kind gentlemen said “why of course” and opened the gates to the storehouses allowing all of the towns people to flood in. Just as the last food deprived orphan made his way into the storehouse he slammed closed the gates and razed it to the ground. He believed he’d gotten away with it…. Until the rats, fleeing from the fiery embers, fueled by the vengeance of God, chased him across the river to a castle built on a sandbar between the two shores, where they survived the winter off of his flesh. Dun dun dunnnnnnn. While the story sounded familiar as if I’d heard it somewhere before, Bjorn summarized my thoughts perfectly as he stated “it wouldn’t be a German folk tale if everyone wasn’t miserable or dead at the end.”
While digesting this grim fairytale Alex spotted just around the bend (just around the river bend) another castle! Who would have thought we’d see one of those here. She found this one to be her favorite and we scurried to get photos of it while passing. To our surprise the ship docked at the base of the mountain the castle sat upon. It so happened to be, this was our next excursion, a literal fairytale castle. I’ve never seen Alex so excited to get off of the boat. This was one of the castles used as a model for Sleeping Beauty’s castle.
Like clockwork we ticked away in our quick ascension to the mountains peak… or close there to it. When we arrived at the base of the castle, we were greeted by a series of winding, steep, staircases made from railroad ties. We were in Group D and had a half hour of free time prior to our tour starting, so we found a cozy bench to soak in the views and spend the time. When the time came for us to tour the castle we congregated near the entrance and were greeted by a lanky young fellow with a classic NES t-shirt. Appearances were deceiving as he proved to be quite the wonderful guide. Right as our tour began, the sky opened up and dumped a torrential amount of water on our heads. We had not prepared properly and were subsequently drenched. Despite this setback we ventured on.
For as big as the castle seemed at a distance the inside was quite small. And I mean small… I hit my head (almost) on just about every doorway. We took a tour of the grounds, saw the main gate with a staircase carved into the stone of the mountain. We saw some of the castles defenses along with a demonstrative garden. The entire castle was set up as it would have been in medieval times, complete with furniture and fake food. We learned that people would sleep sitting up because you only laid flat when you were dead, so the beds were very small and half inclined, more like a wide lounge chair. We saw a toilet with a lock on the outside to prevent intruders from climbing the poop shoot…. interestingly, the toilet was located right next to the dining table so no conversations would be interrupted. We are thinking of bringing this floor plan back when we remodel our house.
From here we saw the horse stalls with original ceilings, the wine cellar, armory, and torture chamber. Just at this time the weather cleared up for us to head back down the stairs to make our way back to our ship which had now moved further up the river, leaving us in the chase.
Erroll & Alex's European Honeymoon Trip! 