Like last week's post, this weekend adventure started with a soccer game. In addition to watching with Joe and Martin, I also met some people from Joe's exchange program. Most of them were from University of Minnesota, but there were also folks from Buffalo and Ottawa. Apart from watching Germany lose to Italy, our group started talking about weekend plans. Most of Joe's program was planning on heading to Eifel National Park. My plan was to head to Aachen, but I was getting wary of city scenes so I asked if I could tag along.
Our group of seven left the Essen train station at 1000. As we made our way to the park, via two train transfers, concrete jungle was replaced by quaint little towns, small farms, lakes, bubbling rivers, and grazing livestock. It was like we were being transported to pre-industrial Europe.
Although this was a man-made lake (i.e. a dam reservoir), it was still very picturesque.
The farms were quite small compared to the U.S. and unlike the boundless farmland in the U.S, each plot was separated by hedgerows and lines of trees.
Many of the houses we saw in this area were painted in this fashion. It reminded me of the stereotypical German style home I had seen from the movies. I don't know if all houses in this area are required to be painted in this fashion (like a home owner's association), but I enjoyed the style.
When we arrived at our destination,we walked through a cobblestone street town up to a castle/fort (burg in German). As an aside, I realize that in the last blog I said schloss was castle, which is true but schloss can also refer to a manor or a palace. Irregardless of what it is called the castle and the surround city was gorgeous. It was also surprising that the castle was still intact, given the relentless bombing of Germany during WWII.
The castle overlooking the Ruhr river. I speculate that the castle was built as an outpost along the river, but I can't be certain.
The little town on the way to the castle.
The gateway to the castle. It would have been a tad bit more foreboding if the weather wasn't so sunny!
View of the castle tower from the veranda.
Shot of the tower from the castle courtyard.
Climbing the tower to the battlements!
View of the town from the castle top.
The beautiful countryside and the Ruhr river.
The motley travel crew!
After visiting the castle, we followed the river upstream to a lake. It was a long trek, but it was worth it to get away from the beaten path.
After the long trek up to the lake we were all very tired, so we took a train and started heading back to Essen. However, as we started out toward home we spotted another castle. Our sense of adventure overpowered our feeling of exhaustion and we got off the train to trek up to the castle. By this time it was about 1800 and we all wanted to get back home before the subways stopped running. This created a sense of urgency and so in 40 minutes our group ran up to the castle, took some pictures, and then ran back down before the next train arrived.
The town square we ran past on the way to the castle. As I was running through the streets it was very out of place in the leisurely atmosphere of the city.
The building located in the middle of the picture are the medieval gates of the wall that used to surround the town.
This shot didn't turn out as well, due to the light saturation, but this is the church that is located on the castle grounds.
Remnants of the battlements for the castle.
The view from the top of the castle. Down in the bottom right hand corner is the train station. We ran up and down the hill from the train station in 40 minutes!
In my opinion, the castle was worth the trek; even though we got back to Essen at 2200. I currently don't have plans for next weekend, but I think it will probably involve a trip to the city.
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