7.30 on Sunday morning the alarm clock goes off and you begin to question the wisdom of certain decisions.
We got moving, drove around to the bakery and then followed the other car carrying Holger’s dad, mother, brother and sister for about 45 minutes to a patch of the black forest which has a restored castle in it. To get to the castle (Burg Bewartstein) you go walking on trails through the forest for about 1 hour, which was really beautiful. Also it offered many opportunities to ‘make some structure pictures’, as Hannah calls it. Also there were a lot of mushrooms coming up through the carpet of dead leaves, so we had a lesson from Holger’s father Wolfgang about which ones are edible and which ones are very poisonous. The edible ones have little holes in the back from where the bugs etc. have taken the occasional nibble.
Burg Bewartstein is about 800 years old, and just as we arrived there was a tour going. With Holger translating in one ear we picked up most of what we needed to know. For instance, much of the castle is literally carved out of an existing rock shelf, so it ain’t going nowhere, and the well – which is 104m deep – took 15 years to build. As part of the tour the guide drops a little bucket of water down there, and it takes a long time to hit the bottom. There are also multiple ‘secret’ tunnels carved out of the rock down into the cellars, or leading over to lookouts on other hills, and even down to the nearby town, which the owners used when being attacked. There is only one way through the valley to try and launch an attack, and because there were several other ways to get food in the castle was only conquered once, and even then only because a guard was bribed.
One of the more famous owners was a man called Hans Trapp, who had a violent and ongoing – but hilarious – feud with the bishop of a nearby town called Weissenburg. Because they hated each other so much Trapp started by building a dam to stop the river which ran through the town. Then when the townsfolk were just about finished starving to death Trapp broke the dam back down and flooded the village, which had the intended effect of killing the bishop. Then the Church heard about it and word came down from Rome that Trapp had been excommunicated. That was bad news for Trapp; he lost all his money and eventually became something of a mafia Don, with a network of thieves throughout the countryside bringing in the necessary money.
During the tour I had a little episode of nauseousness and turned a bit pale, so I had to go outside and sit down in the fresh wind. After about 10 minutes it went away, and we rejoined the tour in time to go down one of the shorter tunnels into the cellar. People who don’t like confined or dark spaces, or who are taller than 190 centimetres would not do well in those tunnels. Over the afternoon (and particularly after lunch) I gradually felt more and more normal, so we don’t really know what that was about.
The walk back through the forest was just as good as the walk there had been, and we made it home in time to see most of the Belgian grand prix on TV. We had been invited to Lisa’s parents house for dinner (in other words we had to drive around the block again) so I laid down on the couch, after having some tea and bread, and had a sleep. That knocked whatever sickness it was on the head, and I’m pleased to report I was feeling well enough for Lisa’s dad Klaus to take me for a short ride in his 1-year old Porsche Boxster. He is fond of saying that in Germany people acknowledge a Porsche is a car ‘that you don’t really need, it’s only for fun’. And fun it was – there might be better road cars out there in terms of stable handling and the direct feel that you get, but the Porsche was still way better than anything I’ve sat in. And we didn’t even go on the autobahn…
Dinner was a fun combination of potato, cheese, and almost anything else you wanted (tomato, mushroom, onion, pineapple, gherkin, horseradish, and so on), which you put in your own little tray under a small grill on the table and wait for the cheese to melt. After dinner we became reacquainted with the rules of Canasta and had a grand old time picking up and putting down and getting warned for cheating and such like.
Lisa’s parents got us a small present, which was a book about Karlsruhe in four languages and a packet of chocolates; both were really lovely. Although we only there for 5 days, in Karlsruhe we felt like we had gotten to go home for a little while in the middle of our trip. So thanks again to the families Stripf and Huber, and to Lisa and Holger for organising pretty much everything.
Greg
