Fairytale Fantasy

What a great day!  We are truly in fairytale land as we write to you from our own room atop the Waldeck Castle.  Don't worry, we have modern amenities such as electricity, running water, flushing toilets, and internet (obviously), but we do not have air conditioning.

But let's go back to this morning.  After we loaded the bus and said "Auf Wiedersehen" to Heidelberg, we traveled to the storybook town of Alsfeld located in the Hessen region.  This quaint village is not frequented by tourists, and being a Sunday, almost everything was closed (this is common throughout Germany), but the museum was open and awaiting our arrival.  As we started our walking tour, who should we run into but

Wilhelm and Jacob Grimm!  The brothers walked with us for a bit, and then begged leave so they could get back to people watching and listening for new tales.

As we continued our tour of Alsfeld, we saw the pranger, a device used to punish petty criminals in the town square, the half-timbered structures that are original to the town, and the Goose Girl fountain, which pays tribute to one of the lesser-known Grimm's tales.

Next, we walked right into the retelling of Little Red Riding Hood (Rotkappchen). 

After greeting the characters following their performance, we ate a picnic lunch and prepared to leave for Waldeck.

We rode by bus for about 1.5 hours before reaching our own castle retreat.  During the bus rides today, we learned that Germany has more than 20,000 castles, which used to serve the 300 kingdoms of the lands we now know as Germany.  A house need only to be used as a royal residence to be considered a castle.  Fortresses were used primarily for defense, and palaces were fancy show places for the royal families.  Stephanie, one of our guides, also shared with us about her upbringing in East Germany as well as her memories of when the wall came down in 1989.

Tomorrow we will explore more of the castle and its surrounding village.

Tschüs!