Day 12 -Red Forests and a Castle in the Grimmwelt (23 Des 2022)

Friday 23rd of December 2022
 

We rose to the best buffet breakfast we have ever had...and that for 5E per person at Hotel Chasalla. Well, see in the light of the cost of a small cup of gluewein between 4,50 and 6,50E, this eat-as-much-as-you-can breakfast, was a HUGE treat.  Eventually we had to tear ourselves away from the feast.... if we stayed any longer, they would have started charging us for lunch too!!!

One of Kassel's tourists must-sees is the 240 hectare Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe. Arno turned the nose of our rental in that direction. The work of art combining nature, architecture and landscape is designed and arranged in the style of an English landscape garden. It is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and Europe's largest hillside park. 

We parked beside the train station and started our nature walk. What an beautiful experience, especially since we were inside the car for most of the previous day. 

The baroque grounds which extend from the Hercules monument down past the cascades, were created at the end of the 17th century under Landgrave Charles of Hesse-Kassel (1677-1730). 

Landgrave William IX (1785-1821) had imposing water features added to them at the end of the 18th century in line with an English landscape garden.

Incorporated into the gesamtkunstwerk of the mountain park, Wilhelmshöhe Palace came into being from 1786. First the side wings - the southern Weissenstein Wing (Weißensteinflügel) and the northern Church Wing (Kirchflügel) and finally the corps de logis, the central section. 

Only in the 19th century were the buildings joined together by the connecting buildings to form the present day Wilhelmshöhe Palace.The palace houses the Old Masters Picture Gallery (Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister) and the Collection of Antiquities (Antikensammlung) The Weissenstein Wing was not destroyed in the Second World War. An unique collection of furniture from that time of the Empire is preserved there. 

We explored from bottom to top. Maybe the harder way to do it, but we did not know that there was a different car park on the hill, at the back of the Herculeus monument. The elaborate fountains, aquaducts and streams only runs form May to September, according to a time schedule. Once down the hill, the water needs to be pumped back up the hill. Being interested in waterworks and the enginering behind the flow, Arno really enjoyed this exploration. The girls loved every photo opportunity amongst the little secret gardens and statues and Thomas was stretching his long legs by running a few cuircuts. We did not even noticed that we covered more than 10km!!

Once back at the car, everybody was starving!! To Arno's delight (not!!!) we fell back to an old habbit which started on our WorldTour in 2014... a fast solution to hungry tummies: a pot of chocolate spread and a few tortilla wraps!! Whalla!!

We snuggled ourselves back to our cozy car, just before the heavens opened upon us. No visit to Kassel is completed, if one has not set foot inside the GrimmWelt. This is a museum, dedicated to the life, work and achievements of the two Brotthers Grimm. As most people are aware of, Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm,are the authers of most of the fairytales we know. What most people does not know, myself included, is that they dedicate their lives to the creation of the German dictionary. As we followed the letters of the alphabet inside this intriging display, we were moved through the lives and achievements, heart-aches and joys of the two iconic brothers.

The Grimm brothers spent about thirty years in Kassel. The two German librarians specialized in philology - which is the study of language in historical texts. During the early 19th century, they became interested in cultural research and began to collect and publish local follore.

They did not actually write any of the stories their name has become synonymous with. Instead, these stories existed as part of a longstanding oral tradition in Germany and had been passed down form one generation to the next for many years.

The brothers interviewed friends and family, writing down these staories to save them from extinction. Eventually, they published their collection of about 200 folklore and fairy tales between 1812 and 1822. The Children's and Household Tales, or "Kinder- und Hausmärchen" were eventually translated into more than 160 languages.

All the adventures in Kassel led to us jumping on the motorway pretty late. We were still heading north, direction Brünsweich. Still raining continuously, Arno did a brave job in driving us safely to our next destination, Villa Krause. House of Peter and Barbara, and their three children (Mirja, Linéa and Frederick). They live in the village of Schwulper, about 15min west of Brünsweich. 

 

Our life stories started together in 2009, when we met each other in a random campsite, Münstertal, in the Schwartswalt in Germany. Nina was not even born the last time we met up in  2010. Over the last 11 years we stayed in touch - with Alana and Linéa connecting in August 2022 and travelling together for a month. Now 18 and 19 years old, it was as if they have found a soul-sister in each other. 

 

We stepped over their threshold ( in a house they build themselves 20 years ago) and it felt as if we've arrived home!! The warm German hospitality, with Christmas candles, gluhwein and the biggest variety of German spiced Christmas cookies, had everybody smiling. We had to tear ourselves away to bed. So much to catch up on… 

Day 11 Fairytale Route to Kassel (22 Des 2022)

 22 December 2022

The days were getting even more shorter...and darker. We travelling further north and the year was drawing closer to Christmas...AND being 11days into living out of suitcases...travelling with teenagers..... You all must agree that leaving Valkenburg round 9:30am was a GREAT VICTORY!!! Do also take into account the we had to heave our 6 HUGE travel bags and all other parivinalia down the narrow stairs; squeezing it all into our car, while the heavens opend on us, paid our outstanding bills with cash...which had to be collected at the atm around the corner, a few (there are 4 girls)  final bathroom stops...you get the picture!! In an ideal world we would have departed at 7:30am and savored the daylight, but....it's called 'holiday' and not 'bootcamp' for a reason!!

Our route for the day was going to lead us through the "Grimm World" of central Germany for our fairytale lovers.

The brothers Jacob (1785 - 1863) and Wilhelm (1786 - 1859) lived in six cities during their lifetimes. They are all located along the German Fairy Tale Route. In Steinau you can relive how the Grimms lived as children. The GRIMM WORLD Kassel presents Jacob and Wilhelm as linguists who were networked worldwide.Here you can also view their personal copies of the "Tales of Children and the Home", part of the UNESCO "Memory of the World". The university town of Marburg takes you back to the time of romantic world, while in Göttingen the two brothers are mainly known as politically committed scholars.

First stop Marburg. It was still raining a little bit, but we left our rental in a carpark and missioned to the tourist office. En route, we were already stunned with the beauty of ancient ruins of buildings. The enormity of the churches and their steeples took my breath away.....An we have not even reached the bespoke 'alten stad' yet!!!

Our map took us through the authentic Main Street (now tourist street, packed with coffee and book shops and souvenir grotto's. )

 The cobbled streets, lined with wooden framed houses were just picture perfect. We could not resist loosing ourselves in on of the little side alley ways, going up sets and sets of moss-overgrown stone steps.

 It keep on leading us even higher up, passing the Mirror on the Wall and one of Cinderella's shoes, perched on a cliff (not sure why the shoe was red, but it sparked the interest nevertheless!!

The Brothers Grimm studied in Marburg between 1802 and 1806.In letters, the Grimms raved about the "castle on the mountain", which was "gilded by the evening sun".

About the city itself, Jacob wrote, "I think there are more stairs in the streets than in the houses."

 

Taking a different street down, we stumbled upon our first German Christmas market, in the square outside the Rathause (City Chambers). I wished we could have lingered there a bit longer, but it was almost 3 pm then, and we still had a few stops to make. 

There was so much more to see and experience in Marberg, but we had to explore some more in the few hours of the day that remained....

A short drive further, we found a parking place, almost inside the car-free centre of Alsfeld. Another stunning quaint litlle wooden-framed town.

 While Nina, Philippa and myself went to visit the Fairytale Museum, Arno took the older sibbe for a coffee. The little German lady in the museum tried her utmost best to speak to us in....German...so we can understand her. Luckily my dusty school Deutsch helped, and we were off exploring the 3 story heigh museum. It was ok. A little bit old and dusty.  I expected a bit more, since all the guidebooks were raving about it, but we did enjoy the historical dolls houses, some dating back to 1856!!

At this stage I realised that we will not be able to see all of the other places that I have hoped for. Dusk was setting over the rolling hills of the Red Riding Hood Country. We managed to catch a glimpse of Snow White and her 7 Dwarfs in the little hamlet of Bergfreiheit, but unfortunately their house was already locked up for the night. 

Driving in the dark on unknown small country lanes, are never easy, but Arno did a super job. We missioned to Bad Wildingun's Altstad. What an eerie experience?? By now it was really dark. Little lights on buildings and Christmas trees everywhere created a fairytale ambiance, but the streets were ...empty...... NO people.... We were very unsure if this was to be expected...a few nights before Christmas. We got so used to the Christmas markets in all the little towns and villages, Bad Wildingun, was not even a little town.

 It has a beautiful cathedral, which was duly explored by the family Theron... in the quiet dark evening!!! Well, obviously we were not where the action was, so we did a little walk in die cobbled Main Street, returned to our car and travelled the last few kilometers to Hotel Chassalla, in Kassel.

Luckily we stumbled upon the night-time cleaner, who opened the hotel front door for us. Travelling with restricted access to internet, we missed this last e-mail from the accommodation manager...the one with the instructions on how to get into our rooms. This was such a reminder, that even if we did not know that we needed God to open doors for us, He was already there!!!

On many occasions during this memorable day, I wished that we could have stayed in each little town longer.... The picture book houses, the German smells around the markets, the dampness of the European winter, Christmas decor in shop windows, tall steeples of churches and ruins of forgotten castles....the magic of expectation, the rolling countryside with promise of another stop inside a fairytale setting -

Well, as Arno and I have promised each other on so many previous occassions: 

        'When we come back, then we will stay longer!"