Burgen- und Museenjagd mit Bahn, Bus, und zu Fuß

(Hunting castles and museums with train, bus and feet)

Chapter 1: mostly castles

Herewith begins the tale of the great castle and museum hunt of 2001, in the course of which most of the adventures involved transportation. (Most castles and museums will, after all, await one's arrival. Trains and busses are another matter.)

      Friday-Saturday, September 7-8: My journey began with a train ride at the airport, as my son-in-law, who kindly drove me to O'Hare, left me at the international terminal and it turns out that Lufthansa departs from one some distance away. I had a wonderful surprise on the plane, however: my window seat had NO seat in front of it. Leg room! I still didn't manage to sleep much, however, so my mind was not working very efficiently when I got off the plane. I changed some money and then wandered around wondering why everything looked so strange. I couldn'teven find PassKontrolle and had to ask. I did find a Post and bought a phone card, but then I couldn't find the train station I knew had to be there somewhere. Had to ask directions twice for that, too. Somewhere along the line I realized the reasons why I was so confused by the airport. Last time I flew in and out of München. DUH! It's been enough years since I last flew in and out of Frankfurt that they've had time for some major renovations, which are still going on!!
     There was a train about to leave as I got my RailPass validated, so I was on my way and actually got to Ulm before noon. It wasn't long before I was drinking tea and eating an Apfeltasche at Gerda's, after which we went to a friend's birthday party, where I ate rather a lot of a delicious fruit salad. Then Gerda's friend Werner picked us up to go to Niedergundelfingen, where they had rented the house next door to his(just below the hill the castle is on), Moser Haus, for me! Werner started a fire in the Kachelofen for me. They had two hair dryers, so I was loaned one so I could wash my hair before falling into bed with a big Federbett and pillow to match. I slept a good 10 hours, even allowing for waking up a couple times.

     Sunday was "Tag der offenen Denkmäler", so Burg Niedergundelfingen was open to tourists, since it's a historical monument as well as a home. Later in the morning when the rain let up(it had rained off and on from the time we started over there), Gerda and I went up the hill and managed to visit a bit with Kurt and Traudel between tourists. I naturally took a couple pictures of their dog Snoopy for my granddaughter Alli, who was there in '97 and remembers Snoopy and the donkeys, which they don't have mowing the grass any more. They got rid of them so they could travel when they want to.
     The rain came and went. Werner played some assorted accordions and relatives thereof and told me about them(he collects and repairs them). I began to understand him better with practice: his accent is rather strong. Then back to Ulm and an evening visiting with Gerda before sleeping in her Himmelbett, a 4-poster which has stars that glow in the dark on its "ceiling".
     After a little shopping Monday morning, we went to the Bahnhof, where her younger son met us and we visited. Werner got there before I left, too. All the train connections worked out perfectly .
     Train connections working out perfectly when there's very little leeway requires luck, FRA(airport) Fernbhf to Stuttgart to Ulm even with jet lag was a cinch. Ulm to Mannheim to Frankenthal to Grünstadt to a bus to Burg Altleiningen followed by half an hour uphill was not, but it worked out. That half-hour trudge up the hill with my pack was tiring, but I was hoping I'd be able to swim in the pool they show on the web page. No such luck. They close it September 1. It was dry, I discovered when I got up there. I kept plodding up this hill towards the hostel in the castle ruin, wondering just what to expect. It turned out to be so modern inside that the doors even open with cards rather than keys!!

     Well,the hostel was all very lovely and modern. but the town was so small it had not only no Post where I could find out how much I needed to put on my postcards(and Sascha at Reception, who answered so many questions for me, didn't know that bit), but had no downtown to speak of, and no local museum, so what was I going to do with a whole day to play around with Tuesday? Ask at the reception desk--and get a book of suggested hikes in the area and a bus schedule, what else? On the way over from Grünstadt Bahnhof I had seen this other castle up on a hill, so I knew I could get somewere near it by bus. Sure enough, there it was in the book--as part of a five hour 20 kilometer hike that included another castle across the valley from it. OK, skip most of the hike by taking the bus over there and then think about that other castle across the valley after checking out the first one.
      I had already taken quite a few pictures, and since the evening meal that night at the hostel was Tortellini and there was this nice Burgschänke, where I had a lovely glass of wine while I pondered Tuesday plans with that hiking book just across the reception hall from the hostel dining room, with a menu of varied things to eat that were actually German, my first supper choice was obvious.
     Altleiningen was the original family castle, begun between 1100 and 1110, and by 1120 became the Stammschloß(family castle) of the Leiningen Grafen, built and later expanded by Graf Emich. It became known as Altleiningen in 1242, 8 km east of the new residence, Neuleiningen, which was built by Graf Friedrich III. The town that grew up around it had a city charter already in1354. The Grafen von Leiningen, das "Uradelgeschlecht der Pfalz"(ancient/original noble family of the Pfalz), ruled until 1798, before French troops drove them out.
      I didn't start off walking as much as I had expected. After breakfast at my own table in the Rittersaal(there was a placecard with my name on it) and a little organizing, I headed down to the Altleiningen Busbahnhof Haltestelle and learned it takes about 20 minutes downhill. The only place the 9:31 bus stops in Neuleiningen is down in the valley, but there was someone else getting off there for me to follow up the hill. Just as he started up with me behind him, there was a hail from below with an offer of a ride up from a friend of his and I was included. I was given directions the rest of the way up then and soon found a really neat ruin. A plaque by the gate said(in German of course) " this gate was protected by a castle moat, drawbridge, and a portcullis. " The slit for the latter is still visible above the plaque.

      It was chilly and I had already taken quite a few pictures, so I was going to look at the church, which also looked pretty old, but discovered there was a church service going on. On the building facing it was a sign offering coffee and cake, both of which I felt I richly deserved, so I went in and had some. They were raising money for church restoration and all the cakes were donated and gorgeous. I had a lovely long conversation with the two women in there while we all waited for the church service to end, they for "customers" and I for a chance to look at the church. One of them told me all about its history and also that the castle across the valley belonged to the Battenburg family, relatives of the British royal family(Battenburg = Montbatten). That castle was just as high above the valley as this one was, though, and I doubted I was going to want to climb up the other side once I was back in the valley.
     The church had had an actual Tilman Riemenschneider cross, though that was now in a museum and theirs was a reproduction. After looking at the church, I started downhill, but saw no stores with postcards nor anything else. I had learned before I started out that I was not going to find a Post here, either. Like Altleiningen, it was too small, and the Deutsche Post had been closing small post offices for some time. Downhill was a long way down, but there were a couple benches along the steps, which I'd have needed badly had I walked all the way up. At the bottom I found bus stops going either back to Altleiningen or on to Grünstadt. Hmmmm. . . Grünstadt had a train station. It should have a Post, maybe even a Kartentelephon? (Modern as it was otherwise, Jugendherberge Burg Altleiningen had only a coin phone, and they never make change.) Since I had no postcards beyond one of the hostel and still had no idea what postage cards to the US would need, I took the bus headed for Grünstadt.

Grünstadt Bahnhof

The Busfahrer gave me directions: the Post was inside a grocery store in the Fußgängerzone a couple blocks from the train/bus station. (The Busbahnhof is not always so convenient; sometimes it's a long way from the train.) I got stamps and a Bananemilch which I chugged outside the store next to a trash basket. I actually found a Kartentelefon, but it refused to recognize my card, so I went back to the Post to have it checked. It was OK, but the man said others had complained about that particular phone. Next I found several postcards of Neuleiningen, and a couple of Grünstadt. When I went back to the Busbhf, the bus I was intending to take was jammed with school kids, so I waited 20 minutes and the next bus driver didn't even make me pay; he said his computer was kaputt!

      Then it was back up the hill(trudge/pant/trudge/pant). Shortly after getting into my room, the sun finally came out, so I went out and took a few pictures, then went into the Burgschänke for a glass of wine and trip-diary updating. At supper I discovered the alleged Schweinebraten(roasted or fried pork?) was a Bratwurst, the salad almost exclusively cooked stuff, and I really don't like eating in a large room full of really noisy kids. I should have eaten in the Burgschänke again. I'm not used to having that option.

      Wednesday I took an earlier-than-strictly-necessary bus so I had time at Grünstadt Bahnhof to find and buy some Bananegetränk(I never get enough milk in Germany). The connection at Frankenthal was tight, though, and my first train was a Regional Bahn, the most likely of all to run late. I was lucky: it wasn't very late, and the Regional Express to Mainz began late, so I actually had to wait for it. Mainz Hbf is also under construction(it seemed as though almost all the big ones I pased through were!) but I did get into the IC for Bonn. I wasn't paying attention until Burg Katz caught my eye and I realized the route was taking me past all my old castle friends along the Rhein. Since I was in the train, the sun was shining. I had a backup for Bonn--> Euskirchen, but I caught the first choice. It was red and looked new, so I thought it was a RE, but it turned out to be a RB(aka school bus a couple times a day). I both heard and saw the name of each stop in advance, which was nice. But after barely catching my next train, an old RE, I discovered a major problem: I wasn't hearing even a garbled announcement of the stops and had no idea how I was going to know when to get off! Finally I went looking for info and had to go all the way up front to the driver to ask how many stops we had left before Blankenheim Wald so I could count them. When I got out there, it didn't look like a town at all, though there was a train station. I followed some kids who also got off, figuring they'd probably be heading for a bus, and they were. Between the station and the Blankenheim where the hostel is, there's actually also Blankenheimerdorf. The bus driver took me past the Busbahnhof to the end of a road that led straight (eventually) to the Burg. The first thing that struck my eye as I came in the door was the suit of armor next to the snack machine.

   

     This was all a bit surreal, as I had just discovered what had happened in New York and Washington, D.C. as the bus driver told how he'd been up most of the night ferrying stranded airline passengers from the airport in Frankfurt to towns further out because all the hotel rooms were full. Sascha. my answerer of questions at Altleiningen, had told me of a monstrous terrorist attack , but I hadn't believed him.
      To make up for not needing to climb the hill to reach the hostel, I had to climb up and down lots of stairs inside. Up from Reception, along a hall, up again, through a door, along a hall, through another door, then down two flights of stairs. I was on the ground floor, but the only exit on this floor in this corner is an emergency exit only. So I had to go back all those stairs and halls and then up again to eat on the second floor. Fortunately there are signs to keep me going the right direction! It's rather obvious even without reading its history that this hostel was built in stages from the remains of the castle.
     The fact that I read German fluently means that I can find more information about the castles I visit than someone limited to English, but it also means I can't just paste it in to my trip reports. Blankenheim has a web page, but my information from it is in German. There was an early Frankish settlement at Blankenheimerdorf, which was the original Blankenheim. Towards the end of the 11th century a local aristocratic family built a castle on a nearby hill, around which the new village of Blankenheim grew up. The family was not an unimportant one, also producing important clerics, and in 1380 was raised to the status of Graf. The family continued to grow in importance and to produce members who devoted themselves to religion, but in 1794 fled to holdings in Bohemia as the French invaded.
     As I looked out my window Thursday morning, I could see it was going to be a wet one again. After breakfast, I borrowed a newspaper from the Herbergsvater and read about what had happened in New York and Washington before setting off down the hill. I was going to time my way down to a Bushaltestelle, since I was hiking around in the rain anyway, but couldn't find one. I did find a Post + store and bought postcards and more stamps and got directions to the Verkehrsamt(tourist info office) and a card phone. It took more than one try, but I did finally manage to call a couple people. It's difficult to call most of my German friends when I only find a card phone while most of them are at work, never in the evening. At the Verkehrsamt I discovered there was only one bus that would get me to the train I wanted and it was as far as possible from the castle. As I walked back through the rain to the Eifel Museum, I passed a Sparkasse with a Geldautomat(ATM), but it refused my VISA card!(some of them are temperamental.) I still had some $$, so I changed them instead.

I went on to the museum, which actually occupies two buildings, looked at everything and gabbed with the people in them, and bought its book. Among the old things in the 18th/19th century exhibits there was a wheel with a dog in it that was a method for churning butter, which I naturally had to take a picture of. I also saw a sewing machine much like the one I first learned to sew on. Now and then I'm reminded I've been around for quite a while.       Then I found a restaurant and had a lovely local red wine, Grillteller, pomfrits, and a salad from a salad bar so I could have it MY way, which is highly unusual. While I was eating, I saw a TV back in a corner running footage of the attack on the World Trade Center. I couldn't hear the commentary, but could see it. It still seemed surreal. On my way to the far-off bus stop I was going to need in the morning, I found a bakery with REAL PRINTEN. I think of this variety as Aachener Printen, but this was labelled Blankenheimer Printen. It tastes the same: delicious!!! I also found the source of the Ahr river, and finally the bus station. In order to figure out when I had to leave the hostel in the morning, I had to walk back without too many pauses, but it was uphill most of the way, so my legs were really telling me about it when I got back to my room. Of course, now that I was tired, the sun came out. I went out and took more pictures of the castle, a couple with the little kids I've been eating my meals with(these were nice ones who were doing several medieval activities during their castle stay), but that was about all I had the energy for.

Chapter 2: many museums

      It was time to move on. I set my alarm much too early and sat in my room reading part of my Blankenheimer Museum book for a while Friday morning, then ate my breakfast much too fast when I got it, and hurried down to the Bus Bahnhof to catch my early bus to the train for my next transportation adventure and first Freilichtmuseum a big one. I got down there much too early, but found someone to visit with to pass the time. (People sometimes express surprise that I don't mind travelling alone, but I almost always find interesting people to talk to. Many Germans in trains and busses are happy to visit with someone who speaks their language.) I was worried about getting off the train in the right place, but she told me the morning train was one of the new ones with the red signs for the stops AND announcements. This was going to be another complicated trip, because I was going to visit the open-air museum in Kommern. Kommern has no train, but Deutsche Bahn had told me(via its website) that there was a bus from Mechernich to the museum. No way. There I was in Mechernich with no way to get to the museum. It was too early in the day to go on to Münster. Taxi. Ouch! Well, I didn't have much choice in the matter. In the end, the two taxi rides added up to better than three times the cost of the museum ticket.

The Rheinisches Freilichtmuseum in Kommern was really interesting and I spent a long time going around, reading the info plaques on and in buildings, but I was getting really tired and what benches there were were wet, even though it wasn't raining any more by then(it had been spraying when I started and had obviously rained a lot recently). The farm buildings in the various "villages" had assorted livestock as well. some chickens accompanied me into one house, and there was a loose sheep wandering around in the Westerwald group crying "maaaaa" at everyone. There was also an interesting Handwerkerhaus with toys illustrating how people lived and worked in the past, but there was NOT a nice cafe to sit down to coffee and cake. It was an Internet cafe full of loud children and young people, with awful "music".

      There was one more exhibit, on emigration, but it was too heavily atmospheric for me: groups of figures with dim spotlights in a room so dark I was afraid of tripping, not enough light to really see what was in the display cases along the side, and doors leading to stairs for more info. I was too tired to bother, so I went back to the entrance/store area, bought an excellent book on the museum, picked up the backpack I had left there, and went down to the parking lot to wait for the taxi the nice man there had called for me.
     So then there I was at the train station at an odd time, looking for trains heading--eventually--north. Of course I first had to get over to the Rhein corridor again, but there was a nice combination that would give me some time in Köln between trains. The route info I got in the combination train info/kiosk had me waiting for a RE, but I got into the next train headed for Köln, and it turned out to be a RB, but with the half hour head start we actually got to Köln almost 10 minutes before the RE! 8-) I had even more time to call Angela Nohse in Münster and let her know when I was due to arrive(well, supposed to arrive), get some cash from a Geldautomat which did NOT reject my card, and go into the book/magazine store and look for a particular BildAtlas I wanted.)
     Then in Münster the RB to Amelsbüren fell out and we kept getting "5 minutes' delay" announcements for quite a while. The train was finally half an hour late for a ride of about 6-7 minutes. Angela lives a block or two from the station there and she and Hartmut were waiting with umbrellas. They told me that particular train was pretty unreliable, so I immediately asked whether it would be possible to get a ride to the station in Münster when I left on Monday. After a short walk to their place, it was coffee and cake time!! Yes!
      In the evening I read e-mail from my daughter and wrote some to a couple people, continually making mistakes on the German keyboard! Wintel machines are bad enough, but the addition of ß and umlauted letters as regular keys doesn't really make up for y and z reversed and punctuation marks in strange places. I had to ask for help to find @ to write addresses!!!

Saturday morning it was raining as usual, but we went to Sachsenhof first. The buildings are open and have informative signs all over. I took lots of pictures, of course. Since I was with friends this time, I got to be IN a couple pictures! It was really fascinating to see how these houses were built and I took quite a few shots of structural details. The big house has no interior roof supports; the slanting outer supports help hold up that big roof.

     Another interesting building is the storage shed with raised floor and a roof that can be raised or lowered on its supporting posts to let hay(for instance) dry via open sides but not get rained on. The Grabenhaus is dug into the ground(behind me in the picture) with just a short section of wall above ground supporting the roof. It fits descriptions I've read of some Icelandic houses.
     Then we went back to Münster. Rain. No parking places. Angela and I jumped out and went to the big Buchhandlung while Hartmut waited in line for the parking garage. After he joined us(what? ME spend a SHORT time in a bookstore?) we visited the Lamberti Kirche, the Rathaus(but not into the Westfälische Friede room (I was beginning to avoid stairs and it was really crowded there anyway.), through a Wochenmarkt that even had live chickens and at least one bunny for sale, into the Dom, then into the Landesmuseum for a nice medieval section, and to a café for coffee and cake before my legs gave out!!

Back in Amelsbüren I checked my e-mail, updated my trip diary, and for supper I had this pastry thing with salmon and spinach in it that was absolutely delicious. I wish I could find something similar in the States! We were going to go to a movie later, but the crowd was enormous, the line for the movie we planned to see was so long we might not even be able to sit together IF we got seats(the number still available was posted on a big electronic board up front). We went back and had some conversation and Sekt.      Sunday morning we went to the Mühlenhof, an open-air musuem in Münster. Yes, another museum full of old houses brought from elsewhere and reassembled, as in Kommern. (Sachsenhof was constructed based on archeological evidence.) After exploring this outdoor museum, we visited an indoor one with dinosaurs and other REALLY ancient history, the natural history museum. Then in the early evening we went to see some unnatural history: "Planet der Affen."

outside the natural history museum

     Monday was adventure time: clear across the country to a place where no train runs. Angela drove me to the main train station so I didn't have to trust the train that had been so late Friday. My first train was an InterRegio(my favorite kind, actually) to Hannover. If you have a map handy, this will not seem reasonable, as I was headed east, not north, but I was supposed to catch a faster train, an ICE, there. Well, the ICE is not only faster, it outranks the IR. Mine started late and was 10 minutes late getting to Hannover. The ICE was gone, of course. My record of making tight connections was broken. I got a couple new possibilities from Bahn Info, sat down and had some Banane Eis, found the BildAtlas I had been looking for, and took some pictures of dinosaurs. There was one in the station and several out in front. I have no idea why.
     Then it was time to go find my new ICE to Nürnberg, where I would eventually find a connection to Marktredwitz, then to Schirnding, where there was supposed to be a bus to Hohenberg. Slight problem. This was a short section of ICE and its reservations computer was kaputt. EVERY seat was marked "possibly reserved" and there was no way to know which ones were really reserved until someone came along with a seat reservation card. I sat down with a couple other women, but we were soon evicted by people with cards. By then all the seats were full and one of the women and I ended up for a while in the smoking section(they never seem to be full ). We discovered we were both headed for Marktredwitz and she showed me a quicker connection than the one I had been told about in Hannover. As the smokers fired up, we soon fled for our lives. I found another seat, but we stopped and a card-holder got on. This happened repeatedly. At one point my new friend and I sat together again for a while, but we were evicted again.
      Eventually we reached Nürnberg. My next train was headed for Prag via Marktredwitz and had Polish writing on the outside. I first saw my new friend again when we got off in Marktredwitz. She was going to take a bus along with two friends she had arranged to meet here to where her car was parked and said she could give me a ride to Hohenberg from there if my connections were too bad, but she helped me find a bus that would connect with the bus to Hohenberg and I took that rather than waiting an hour for a short train ride. This bus took longer than the train would have, as we went in and out of even smaller towns along the way, but the driver radioed ahead to tell the driver of the next bus to wait for us(there were others headed that way, too), and when I got off the bus in Hohenberg, I just had to walk a little way up a curving street, and there was the castle. This was a BIG one.

Chapter 3: a border castle

The earliest surviving mention of Burg Hohenberg comes from Kloster Waldsassen in 1222, when a Berchtholdus de Honburg is described as the richly-endowed Eger Ministeriale named after his family castle, Hohenberg. One of his descendents, Künzel, held the castle until 1285 as royal fief. In time the usual village grew up around it as the castle became an important center of power over a larger area. When the original family died out, the castle fell into the possession of the rulers of Nürnberg. Even when it was bound over to Bohemia for a while, it remained in their possession. It became an important administrative center or what was later known as the "six offices" and from 1499 to 1799 had its own court. Inside the castle grounds there was an area bounded by four columns(which are still there) where a person could take sanctuary and be safe until his case was settled by the court. The castle was attacked and the town largely(in 1708 completely) destroyed more than once over the centuries in various wars, culminating in 1945 with heavy damage from American artillery.

So here I was back on my original track again: hunting castles. This is a nice big one, and part of it is a Jugendgästehaus(more like a hotel than a hostel), but I was in the youth hostel part. Nice quiet room on the 3rd floor with a sink in it and WC down the hall. Showers? Well, that was another matter. The only showers were down on the first floor, shared with everyone in the hostel. Nice large sink, though, if I could just get some hot water. I had to ask for help. It turned out there was a heater under the sink. Once it was turned on, there was hot water, but getting it to come out the faucet was tricky. You turned on the cold tap to get water to run at all, THEN turned on the hot tap to get some of the water to come from the little heater under the sink. This was a new one on me!      A problem loomed. Because I took the bus from Marktredwitz and my original route plan was via train as far as Schirnding, I didn't know whether I would be able to make the connection I had down as my first option and hadn't been able to ask anyone in that train station. Furthermore, the train passed through a small chunk of the Czech republic, I discovered as I looked at a large map on the wall, and I had no idea how that would work.

     Neither did the Herbergsvater when I asked him. He knew a couple countries that did or didn't need a visa, but didn't know about the US. He thought my RailPass would probably work. Somehow I was not encouraged. He also know there was no one in the station in Schirnding I could ask. I'd have to call the Deutsche Bahn info number, which he gave me. Of course there was no card phone. And the coin phone in the hostel would not let me call the number. There was another coin phone just outside the gate, and IT was a Telekom phone, which would supposedly behave itself. In the morning. I'd had enough stress for one day.
     The outdoor phone worked, but the Bahn-Info location must be at the furthest end of the country, the way I had to keep feeding that phone money. I should have started with bigger coins, but I had no idea how much I'd end up needing. It cost me about at least $3.50 by the time I had 2-3 alternatives for every train change, but at least it cost less time than a bus trip to and from the Bahnhof in Marktredwitz, even if the cost was about the same. The voice on the phone couldn't answer my questions about the route through CZ any more than the lady I cornered earlier in the hostel, so I planned on a later train.

Then I went off hiking in the off-and-on sprinkle. As I was exploring and taking pictures behind the castle, looking for the path down towards CZ that was on a sketch map I had from the web site and on a big Wanderwege(hiking trails) sign in front of the castle, I found a little cave and a terrific place for a Bardic Circle. The first path, which seemed to be in the right place, looked much too steep for wet weather, as it was covered with leaves as well. So I went back to the Wanderwege sign, then back to my path hunt. I found a nice solid gravel path heading the right direction and started down. I passed another less promising path leading off to the right, but stayed on my civilized path. I came out of the woods and discovered my path was leading me to a road. The map had looked like path leading to path. Hmmm. I took a picture of what obviously had to be hills in the Czech Republic and went on down. I figured as long as I was going downhill, I'd come to the Eger River eventually.

I followed the road downhill until I finally came to a bridge over the Eger, which I was pretty sure was the actual border in this area, and took a picture of some Czech geese on the other side, German sheep on my side, and the river itself from the bridge. Then I went back to investigate a sign that said "Eger Steg" and pointed to a path along the river bank. I came to a whole series of rapids I tried to photograph through the trees with very limited success. Then I came to a picnic area with shelter, grill, and fire ring. It was more open there and I was able to get some good pictures of the beginning of the rapids.

      The return hike was, naturally, uphill all the way, even if a good part was gradual. I stopped to visit with a man going the other way with a large wet shaggy dog who did NOT like me with my jacket hood up, but was friendly when I put it down . That also let me get my breath back at the same time, but the steepest part was still ahead of me. It would have been worse on the steeper path, though.
      THIS noon I finally had a Schweineschnitzel Wiener Art, this time with Bratkartoffeln for a change. Careful as I was, however, the usual drippy German salad managed to attack my blouse. I don't mind the taste of vinegar and oil, but why must the salad swim? I also had a big bottle of mineral water(THIRST!!) and a glass of Sylvaner. Naturally the sun finally came out while I sat in the glassed-in patio area of the restaurant across from the castle. When I came out, I got into a conversation with two women looking at a map. They were about my age or older and were there for a reunion, staying in the Jugendgästehaus. They were Sudeten Germans, born and started to grow up in a town just across the border. They and other Sudeten Germans were expelled by the Czech government after WWII, although their families had been living there for generations.

After trying to wash out the spot on my blouse without getting the whole blouse wet, I set out to find downtown. Hmmmm. Well, I did find a bakery and bought some goodies and 2 bottles of Bananemilch(one for tomorrow's trip), since I had already discovered the Getränkeautomat in the hostel didn't have anything I liked to drink better than I like tap water. I saw signs for the Porzellan Museum again, but couldn't find it. I discovered later it was much further away than my legs chose to walk at this point. After supper we had an interesting tour of the castle led by the Herbergsvater. I learned more of the castle's history and got to see some parts that I hadn't seen before.       I really need to stop setting my alarm so early! An hour was enough to pack, strip the bedding, and be ready to go down, and I still had over an hour left to read before breakfast. Then at breakfast I saw the people from the Sudeten reunion and one of the women I had talked with yesterday said "here's our American!" and told me they'd had a lovely reunion.

On to part 2