Castles in the Air(Don McLean) - Bad Sachsa to Fritlar via the Wilhelmshohe Castle,Kassel,Germany - 15th June 2016

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After a comfortable night at the ‘Mom and Pop’ apartment we got ourselves packed up relatively early for us as we reckoned we had a full day ahead. Not so much in the kilometres to do but we have a plan to stop at Kassel and visit a Schloss that houses the largest Rembrandt painting collection in Germany and that might take some time to get through.

First though we are going to check out a museum nearby those houses relics of the days when the East German border met the West German border just the other side of Bad Sachsa. We aren’t sure that the museum will be open but we will give it a try anyway and also there may be something marking where the border ran outside the museum.

A little bit of research this morning also revealed that the children of Von Stauffenberg, the German officer who tried to kill Hitler in the latter years of the war by placing a bomb in a satchel at a table in a meeting Hitler was having with his commanders in the forest nearby the Polish border, were fostered out to a family in Bad Sachsa when their father was caught after the attempt failed. A handy bit of history to keep for a pub quiz. You just never know when that question might come up.

As we left Steina we drove up the road past where the action with the 6 fire engines and support vehicles had been last night.

There was no badly damaged house where the snorkel had been stretched out to.......just the local fire station! We can only deduce from all this that lat nights action had been a practice for surrounding fire stations hence the number of engines in attendance and what better place to have it was another fire station.

We took the road to Tettenborn where the museum was located but it was closed and the only remnant of the East/West divide was a post in the ground marking where the divide had been.

Avoiding the main highway today we took the B243 towards Kassel which was to be our stop for the painting exhibition.

We did do a short period of highway into Kassel and our GPS took us through part of the small city and out to the western side where Schloss Wilhelmshohe is located on the side of a hill on the outskirts of the city.

The Schloss or castle was built for Wilhelm the First who was the Elector of Hesse.The elector was second only to the King or Emperor and his title carried a lot of prestige.

Kaiser Wilhelm the Second used the castle as his summer home for 20 years until Germany was defeated in WW1.The castle was badly damaged by bombing in WW2 but over time was faithfully restored.

Today was also one of the two days per week that a water feature is set in motion from the top of the castle grounds down to the bottom, a considerable distance. People come from all over the place to spend the afternoon following the water features. With people come cars and the car parks near the castle were being charged out at a premium so we found ourselves a side street next to the expansive castle grounds and parked for free. We needed the exercise and it was a very pleasant walk through the lightly forested area to stand in front of the very impressive castle which now principally houses the extensive collection of paintings that had been owned by Wilhelm the First.

For the very cheap price of €6 each we entered the building and spent a couple of hours wandering around the three floors where the paintings were hung. We saved the Rembrandts until last and must say we were impressed by most of them including one he had painted of his wife that had taken 8 years to complete.

It was just a short distance on to our night’s accommodation in Fritzlar which was located just off the A49 and was surrounded by a patchwork quilt of rolling countryside, very picturesque.

We had surprised our hosts by arriving a little early for them as they had not finished cleaning the apartment from their previous guests.

We headed back to the main part of town for a late lunch and a coffee before doing some grocery shopping in Ederka, a supermarket that we had not used before and were very impressed by the range they stocked.

Our hosts had given us the key so we let ourselves in to the studio apartment.Tonights accommodation is a bit more modern than last night’s ‘Mom and Pop ‘place although a bit smaller.

We had walked a fair amount today what with the stroll to and from the castle in Kassel and then the walk around the three floors of paintings but we were still up for a walk around the small village the apartment was located in.

We are having difficulty adjusting now to the longer evenings as we head above the 50 degree latitudinal line as the longest day in the Northern Hemphispere draws closer in a few days time. Earlier in the trip and in particular in Spain it had been the mornings creating the difficulty but now it was the evenings and thinking that it was still very light outside that it wasn’t time for dinner resulting in us eating sometimes not long before or even after 9pm.

Tomorrow we head for a five night stop at a small village on the Moselle where we expect to put our feet up, park the car and with our most strenuous exercise being some walks in the hills or alongside the river.

PS:as usual Don McLean's song from the 1970's is available to view on Youtube

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