The next morning I was ready to walk down the hill to the train station. . . which was further than I expected 8-) Then I traveled down the Neckar (this time finding some of its castles) through Heilbronn to Stuttgart, changed trains, on to Nürnberg, changed trains again, and reached Neustein, where I discovered my googled directions to the castle were worthless. I saw a gas station not far away, so I went there for directions. It took MUCH longer than the "4 minutes' walk" google claimed, but I finally made my way up the hill, helped by a rest on a friendly bench part of the way up to my next castle hotel, Burg Veldenstein.
Like many medieval buildings, Castle Veldenstein's exact construction date is not known. The builder is also unknown. Was it King Konrad in 918? The Bishop of Bamberg in 1007? Historical documents mention the main house first in 1269. But when I began putting this page together and trying to explain how the shots above were taken back and forth across a ravine of sorts, I found the castle in one of my castle books. My Burgen des deutschen Mittelalters: Grundriss Lexikon says the castle was first mentioned in 1296. My castle collection is not just fotos. 8-)
 from the foot of the Bergfried |
Then I had a big coffee on the terrace and decided to go buy some travel food while it was still just Saturday and the grocery store would be open. I also headed down toward the train station and found some flyers about possible side trips in the area, and hiking trails of varying lengths. I also explored the big church that shows from the castle, which is a few centuries old, with some lovely Barock plaster work. When I got back to my room and went through the flyers, I discovered, AFTER noticing the "Ritter in Franken" exhibition at Burg Hartenstein, that they were for bus services starting in May. Drat!
|  church from the same place |
Rested up again, I thought I'd take a flyer at the Bergfried, but discovered only the first flight were nice solid cement. From there on up they were not only steep, but almost like a stepladder, so I'd have to back down them. I did go up one level on them, which was enough for my nerves and tired legs, and took some fotos out the windows, then some from the small terrace with benches at its foot.
Then I returned to the outdoor part of the restaurant for a glass of wine and debated whether I could find a small supper, because I'd had a big, late lunch. I asked the waitress whether I could just have a Schinkenbrot. Yes! And rohen Schinken at that. Lovely!
inside the church below Veldenstein  |
The next morning I was going to load up for some kind of hike, but first ask at the train station if there were some kind of bus I could take to Hartenstein. But then I was rescued by the Burgvater! Yesterday morning we were talking enthusiastically about Burgen and how so many people don't know the difference between castle and palace--on which we agree 8-) Later, when I discovered the bus service I'd gotten excited about didn't start until May and asked about a taxi, since Hartenstein is really not far away, I was told Sunday was a really bad day to find one. But this morning he told me he could take me over there and knew a taxi driver who could come get me--he called and said it would be 15 Euros and I said that was fine, so I was shortly on my way over to Burg Hartenstein and the Ritter exhibit!
The castle didn't begin to compare with Veldenstein, but the exhibition was really interesting.
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Burg Hartenstein | |
The next morning it was time to go back over the route I'd taken to get to Burg Veldenstein--back through Nürnberg to Aalen. The trip was no problem, but my arrival in Aalen presented a BIG one. There was a huge Baustelle just outside the train station and I couldn't find any street signs, without which my googled map and my hotel location map were both useless. Finder would tell me where north was, but neither map had north marked 8-( I headed off along a street I guessed might go the direction I wanted, but discovered ere long that this was not going to work. When I DID find a street sign, it was nowhere near the route I needed, so I turned off on one at right angles that I hoped would lead me to a useful one. No, it was still slanting off the wrong way. Turned again and found myself approaching the enormous construction site again, from the other direction this time. As I was standing there attempting to figure out a rational route, a good samaritan asked me whether I needed help. I certainly did! She knew where my hotel was, told me the map wasn't quite right anyway, and since she was going that general direction, I could walk with her and she'd get me within reach of it. Yes!!'
This hotel had no restaurant, but I was told there were several nearby and picked up a map of sorts that was in the hotel folder in my room and set off to check out the (relatively) nearby Fussgängerzone. I found meat markets, bakeries, a cafe or two, a ridiculous number of shoe stores, etc., but the only thing that looked like an actual restaurant with full meals was closed until suppertime, and I was NOT going to be ready to walk back there in a couple hours. I ended up snacking rather than eating a reasonable supper. This is the last trip I intend to stay in a hotel where I can't get food when I'm tired. Bad planning on my part there.
| I had come to Aalen to visit the Roman Limes Museum. (The route here became complicated because I couldn't check into Veldenstein the day I had originally intended to.) I spent over two hours at the museum, most of it indoors, and stopped and sat often. I took a lot of fotos, some of which actually did provide readable text, because I decided the catalog was going to add too much weight to my pack. There was a big bunch of kids I was periodically dodging. They were, I'd say, pre-teens behaving fairly well for the age group. I noticed one girl in particular who seemed to be pretty serious about her photography. By the time I went out to see the actual excavations, I was really getting tired, even though I'd stopped to sit and look at some computerized info first. On my way back to the hotel, I saw a place that said "Doner" and "Pizza". I went in intending to find out what the former was and try it or get a pizza, but saw a notice advertising calamari!!! That was an easy decision. I was the only adult customer; it was full of pizza-eating teenagers.
'Back at the hotel I collapsed for a while and then set off to visit the Urwelt Museum. I had to climb stairs, but there was a short film to watch seated on a cushion to recover before continuing. Lots of fossils.
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Roman pay scales for different ranks in salt and coins |
their horses weren't very large  |
Afterwards I was going to have coffee but ended up with a Banane Eis, visiting with a girl who sat down to eat her Eis. I bought some more of the hard sausages I'd eaten yesterday, this time really for travel food, then I trudged back to the hotel and asked where I could get some good local food and was directed to the closed place I had seen the day before. It wasn't going to be open until 6 and I didn't know whether I'd come back down if I once went up to my room, but a call to the place by the person at the desk got me early admission, so I headed right over there. I had a Schwäbischen Wein and then some Schwäbisches food including Spargel yet again. Hey, April is Spargel season in Germany!
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Roman crane with multiple warnings not to touch, much less climb on it |
The train station in Aalen was a lot closer once I knew where it was; it only took me ten minutes to get back there. When I did, I could see that if I had tended a bit to the left of the exit I had followed in the first place, I'd have found the main bus station and a sign for the Bahnhofstrasse, which was what I had needed in the first place. I was taking the Aalen-Nürnberg route for a third time now, but a different route after that. Once in Passau I stopped at the Info office for a map before walking along the river under the highway, up and along narrow streets. up to the--as it turned out--far side of the hotel from where I'd been walking most of the way.
| I thought it seemed rather jammed into a corner, then noticed the big terrace overlooking the river, and discovered that my 4th floor room was only one floor up. The hotel reached down two more floors of rooms and then a stairs to the Donau street and its garage. My window looked out on the river and some of the ships there. Before long I was down there myself. I knew from the info about ships I got from the Info people across from the station that there was a short ship trip starting late enough for me to take yet that day. It was too early yet; I double-checked about that and the transportation up to the castle for later at the other Info office in the Rathaus, which was on the riverside and near the ship I wanted to take. |  |
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It was a nice trip down the Donau a bit, past where the relatively black water of the Ilz and the lighter water of the Inn join the green-brown Donau, then up the Inn a bit past the Schaiblingsturm and around again to a good view of the Pauluskirche next to my hotel and back around. It was a lovely day to be sitting on the open deck with a glass of Grüner Veltlinger(shades of my Wachau visit!).
Of course, afterwards it seemed about twice as far back to the hotel: too much walking. |
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upstream Inn view: Schaiblingsturm, university 
downstream Inn view with Pauluskirche |
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It was too early for a museum, and the weather was so great that I put off my visit to the castle on the hill and its museum for a longer trip on a ship. That wasn't going to begin until noon, though, so I went to visit the Stephansdom, home of the world's largest church organ(which I bought a booklet about). I have an album of Bach organ music recorded there and it's on my iPod, but I didn't listen to it when I was there. The regular organ concerts were scheduled to start after I left Passau, but someone was checking out some of the bass stops as I took quite a few fotos of the Barok interior. A church here dates back to 450, but there was a monster fire in 1662 that wiped out much of the part of the city on the peninsula, so this building dates back to the late 17th century. |
I was going to explore the Fussgängerzone, but discovered I couldn't get there from the Domplatz, so I headed back the way I'd come and noticed the church just before the tunnel on Paulusbogen just before my hotel was a St. Pauls church and the street curved around it. That made sense. I went into the hotel, picked up some recharged camera batteries, and went down to the riverfront; my ship for this trip was leaving from right in front of it.
It was lovely and breezy up on the top deck of the ship most of the time as we made our way downstream, except when we stopped a couple times to gain or leave off passengers, and for a long time when we passed through the big Jochenstein lock. Because the river was navigable before the big power plant was built there, ships pass through free. I should have gone inside at that point for a while, as one big, slow lock is hardly exciting after all the ones I went through on the Gota canal trip. I should have gone inside to get something to eat while we were sitting there(it was hot with no breeze!) but didn't think of it soon enough. I didn't want to miss any castles along the way. I'd traveled a different stretch of the Donau(Danube in English) a few years earlier, and I expected castles here. I was right.
 Burg Krampelstein |
 Schloss Vichtenstein |  Jochenstein lock |
| |  Burg Rannariedl |  Ruine Haichenbach |
 Schloss Marbach |
| |  | The next day I finally went up to the big museum in the castle and spent several hours there, but not right away. I wasn't going to be able to catch the shuttle bus up there until 10 anyway. A breakfast waitress told me it was Markttag in the Stephansplatz, so I went up that way to have a look, planning to also visit the Neue Bischöfliche Residenz and the museum there. I took a couple fotos and had a couple interesting conversations, then went looking for the alleged museum. I walked along the side of the building it had to be in, but couldn't find an entrance to a museum.
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There was a passage that seemed to go through to the other side, so I went down the stairs into an alley where I also could find no sign of a museum entrance. I was fed up with the search and went on downhill, where I found myself next to the river, but as I looked at it going under a nearby bridge, it seemed to be going the wrong direction. It was the Inn, not the Donau: I was on the other side of the peninsula. I walked along it for a while, but when I checked my map and found I was about even with the Rathausplatz, whence the bus for the castle left, I headed up that way. When I got up to the other side of the Jesuitenkirche, there was a man with a camera. I took the same shot he was lining up and then asked him to take one of me to prove it was really me accompanying my camera. Over at the Rathausplatz I found my bus stop, then my bus up to the Veste Oberhaus and its museum.
| |  | I spent a good 2 1/2 hours in the museum, some of it, fortunately, sitting down watching things. It has a lot of great medieval stuff! Then I went down to the Burgcafe for a delicious Walnuss-Honig Torte, which came with fruit as well, and lots of coffee. Rested and refreshed, I went back in to see the old Apotheke and some Porzellan, then down to a sort of park in a star bastion with a great view of the Altstadt, including my hotel and the terrace where I often ate. | 
terrace on near side of my hotel |
The next morning, after a leisurely breakfast, paying my bill, finishing my packing, and watching TV for a while, I set off for the station, going out the river exit and making my route shorter this time. Since a German Railpass wasn't going to work for a trip almost entirely within Austria, I had purchased my ticket for Salzburg on arrival. The schedule I had looked up in advance showed the route through Wels as shorter AND there was some kind of castle there I might investigate between trains, since I was going to have to change there anyway. Along the way, I caught one castle across the Salzach in Germany out the window and actually identified it: Schloss Neuburg am Inn. |  |
It was gray and threatening rain when I arrived in the lovely modern station in Wels, which certainly must have had somewhere to leave my pack, but since I hadn't been able to find any mention of its castle except the word "Burg" on a map, I went on to Salzburg. The IC had a monitor with regularly updated maps and info about our route hanging from the ceiling. Neat!
However, Salzburg really started out unpleasantly. I thought the construction around the train station in Aalen was bad, but it was even worse here. The bus station outside looked normal, so I figured I'd be able to find my bus for the museum the next day. Nevertheless, despite the size of the city, there was no real tourist info at ALL! There were two temporary structures outside the largely inoperative station with an Info symbol. The first was only for train info. At the second I was told strongly that they did NOT provide tourist info at all! When I said that I needed directions to my hotel because the construction made the minimal one I had pretty useless, I did get a map, some rather confusing instructions as to how to get to Lasserstrasse, and found my hotel, which was a block or so closer than the google map had told me it was. There was more tourist info in a collection of brochures at the hotel!
The room was the tiniest I found on the whole trip and the alleged minibar was more heater than cooler, so I could only get something cool to drink by having someone from the reception desk get it for me. I needed a good meal and asked for a restaurant suggestion. The suggested one, Stiegl Bräu, turned out to have a tree-shaded open "garden" , so I got to eat outside on this temporarily nice part of the day. I actually had the choice of a "smaller" portion, which turned out to be the size I wanted, of real Wienerschnitzel. By the time I'd eaten and drunk some mineral water, I was feeling ambitious again. Since I knew from the adequate map I now had that the Mirabell Garden was not terribly far up the street I was already on, I went up there. I was there with students in March once, when there were, of course, no flowers, and wondered how it looked with flowers. It was a lot prettier in May than in March, and I got a nice shot of Hohensalzburg across the river. I had already collected that castle years before, so I didn't visit it this time. I had another reason for being in Austria this time. |  |
Sunday morning I planned to travel by bus instead of train for a change, out to the Salzburg open-air historical museum. At least I started out fresh. My plot was to work my way over to the restaurant in the middle, eat, and then continue rested. I did that, but even with occasional benches, it required a lot of walking. I started up the Flachgau toward the Hinterseemühle, then up to a farmhouse I'd taken a foto of as I began. I figured it was the millpond. I saw some more water and went to look. I went across a bridge into a meadow, through a fringe of woods, the into the back door of another farmhouse, taking lots of fotos I'm not going to include. |  Hinterseemühle |
 | If you're really curious, look at their web page and click the arrow "Überblick und Rundgang" pointing to the right; it's partly in English, partly in German, but clicking the spots on the maps will get you lots of the buildings and some descriptions.
Flachgau(it's one of the regions in the area) has the most buildings, and I was really ready for food and drink before I reached the restaurant at the beginning of the next section. In the end, I was gone 6 hours from the time the bus left, and the bus trip was half an hour. Needless to say, I rather wore myself out by the end of the day, even though I'd skipped most of one of the sections in order to get to the bus stop in time. My timing had been excellent; it began to rain AFTER I was inside the bus, and I needed my umbrella for the walk back to my hotel from the station. The hotel had no restaurant and my room had that non-functioning mini-bar, but there were a couple actual computer terminals, and I spent some time at one, sending off a trip report. That's also where I found the name of the castle I'd seen across the river from the train earlier. |
It was Monday and I headed for my last stop, in Landshut. The route map from the Bundesbahn hardly hints at the actual route, which wanders all over! We actually went fairly close to the border and not far from Burghausen, which I visited on an earlier trip. Landshut is a lot smaller than Salzburg, but it has an actual Reisezentrum, where I got an answer to a number of questions. AST is a bus to the airport I was leaving from and I got a ticket and the schedule. I also got a Tageskarte for the city bus and found out what bus I'd need to get up to Burg Trausnitz the next day.
| I'd had more than my share of good weather. Tuesday it rained. And rained. My umbrella got a major workout, but that was the least of my problems. The major one was the bus system. I waited half an hour, standing in rain and wind, for my second bus, only to be told brusquely that this bus, which allegedly went up the hill to the castle, did NOT, and I'd have to wait for the next one. Another half an hour. No shelter or bench. With another half hour to kill, I wandered over to the nearby bridge and took a couple fotos. I later discovered this church's name, Holy Ghost. Finally oa bus came. I asked nicely if he'd tell me when to get out for the castle. This usually works. He grunted and didn't reply. The stops appeared on a monitor at the front. We went past many. We went past a sign pointing back the direction we had come from that said "Burg Trausnitz". Finally the monitor said something else and "Burg T". |  |
I got out and started back the direction it had come from, following occasional "Burg Trausnitz" signs. I kept following the signs. I came to a parking lot, but there was no visible castle. I asked some people in a car if they knew where it was. They had the same problem. I found someone else to ask. He said there was a path through the park to it, or I could follow the road.
When it did, we discovered it was going to be with a large group of French teenagers whose teacher was going to translate everything our guide said in chunks. In the end, part of the regular tour was left out because of all the time this had wasted. We not only had to endure it, but were punished along with them. At the end of what we were allowed, I got some almost-aerial shots of the Altstadt below from an upper balcony. The tall church tower of St. Martin is supposed to be the tallest brick steeple in, probably, Europe, though I think she said in the world. |  |
After all that walking, I went in search of caffeine and sustenance. I had seen a "Burgschenke" sign when I first came in. It turned out to be down a long flight of stairs. A woman sat down at the next table and we ended up at the same one, not only eating, but talking for a long time. She was waiting for a friend to finish a meeting and said she could have him give me a ride down to the Altstadt. It was downhill and, according to the map, not even as far as the bus driver had made me walk earlier, but raining again(the only pause was during the castle tour--when else?). Even though I had my trusty orange umbrella, it sounded lovely.
I got out of the car at a traffic light and headed over toward the bridge I could see ahead. Aha! A city gate! OK, that had to be on my map, so I went through the gate. Once I figured out exactly where I was in the Altstadt, I found St Martin, which I'd seen from the castle balcony, and went in to take a look and some fotos. Then I sat down to change camera batteries, look at my map out of the rain, and try to figure out how to get back to the hotel. |  |
Bus stops were not marked on my map, but there was an Info symbol on the Rathaus, which became my next stop. I got actual bus times and the location of the bus stop and decided to skip the Prunksaal my map said the Rathaus contained in favor of finding a bus. This time I had a shelter with roof and bench! The bus was--no surprise--10 minutes late, but it turned up. Having seen how many buses turned around at the Altstadt multi-bus stop area, I understood the "Altstadt" on the front of the bus that had rejected me in the morning. The good samaritan who had told me to get off at the Zweibrückenstrasse stop for my bus up the hill hadn't done me as great a favor as we'd both thought: I'd have had shelter at the next stop, as well as a handy Info office.
This bus left me where I expected and I was soon back in my hotel room, but not feeling too well: too much standing and walking in wind and rain Later, after a large bottle of mineral water with a slice of lemon in my glass, my appetite revived enough for--surprise!--Spargel und Rohschinken!--and then a last glass of their Scheurebe. There were a couple Americans in the restaurant I talked with briefly. He had noticed something on the beer glass that I hadn't noticed on the empty one in my room: Weihenstephan claims to be the world's oldest brewery. That would have to be oldest still operating, since beer is more ancient than any given business in Germany--much more ancient than anything called Germany, in fact. |  |
That's about it. The next morning the airport bus delivered me to the airport, where I was so impressed that I want to fly home from
München any time I have the choice. They didn't even make me take my shoes off. It was the same great plane I'd flown over on. I landed in Chicago, was retrieved and taken back to their house by my daughter and son-in-law, and began relating adventures until I fell apart and went to bed.
It was a great trip!
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"caves": wine and milk cellars
Veldenstein's second gate
first gate 
second gate 
third gate 
fourth gate(from inside) 
