May 25, 2018 – Day Ten – Klotten to Kreuztal
Our convivial host has our breakfast all prepared for us
when we come downstairs, just before eight o’clock. We’ve got one load of baggage to take to the
car before we eat and he opens the front door for us. His lovely wife has already gone to work, but
he is undaunted. There is a tray with
three kinds of meats and two cheeses, and a large basket of hot, fresh rolls. There is butter and jelly and he brings
coffee as soon as we sit. He also
teaches us that it is improper to break off a piece of roll. We are supposed to cut it in half
lengthwise. I don’t know if we’re
supposed to make sandwiches then; but
that’s a lot of bread, so I make mine open faced. There are also little crocheted chickens, and
it turns out they are egg cozies! Such
fun! As we are winding down, he added
two little containers of Nutella to our jelly basket! Dessert!!
The drive to Berg Eltz (berg is a castle and Eltz is the name of the
river that surrounds the castle, and the family that settled on it) is only
about half an hour, and, although we have a couple of different sets of
directions, we really just follow the brown signs and arrive in the parking lot
with no hiccups. We pay to park, stash
the car, and walk a short distance to where the shuttle bus picks us up. It’s only two Euros for the drive up and worth
the money since we don’t know quite how far the hike would be!
Tricky Ricky had said to arrive before eleven to avoid the
queues and we’re here about nine thirty.
Perfect!
There is hardly anyone
here and when we purchase our tickets we find that an English tour will begin
in just six minutes!
You can’t take
photos inside the castle, so we use up our time with outside shots.
Our guide is knowledgeable and speaks wonderful English with
an engaging accent. We learn that the
castle was built by Count Eltz in 1157 and that as the three children started
families of their own the castle was enlarged to actually be three individual
homes. There is a council room where the
families could come together to make decisions that would affect them all. There is a jester’s mask because the jester
was the only person who could speak truth to power. It symbolizes the fact that anything can be
said here without fear. There is also a
rose that symbolizes the fact that nothing said within the room will be
repeated outside it.
Through the centuries one of the families died out; later, one of the remaining two decided they
wanted to move to a castle of their own and they sold their interest to the
remaining count. His line still owns the
castle and either the current count or his son visit about once a week to check
on things and to supervise the ongoing restorations. There have been thirty-three generations of
Eltzes in continuous residence! The last
countess loved flowers and for forty years she personally placed fresh flowers
in many of the rooms. She is now
ninety-seven and no longer is able to do this;
there is a flower shop in town which now takes care of it.
One of the rooms is called the Children’s Room because there
are four or five paintings of various family members as children. The fashion of the time required that the
children be painted as though they were small adults and it is quite jarring to
the modern eye.
Another room contains lots of old weapons – arrows, bolts,
suits of armor, halberts, and miniature cannons. When a customer ordered a cannon, the minis
were used as demos so the buyer would know what he was ordering. When the cannon was delivered, he also
received the miniature. They are about
two or three feet long. The current
count collects these miniatures and there are about a dozen in the rooms we
saw.
There are eighty rooms in the castle and forty of them have
fireplaces! And there are twenty
toilets, even though there was no running water. The waste ran down a stone pipe into a large
collecting tank that – someone – had to clean out!
There is a chapel that is Gothic, indicating that it was
part of the newest addition to the castle.
The actual altar is in a bay window, so that no one would live above
God. This is seem in a smaller worship
space in another part of the castle and was common practice for centuries.
The castle is unique in that it has never been destroyed. It was only besieged once, and eventually the
family agreed to be subjugated by Balduin of Luxembourg, the
Archbishop-Elector of Trier. This is
particulary interesting because after a time, one of the Eltz counts became the
archbishop of Trier! The Eltz family also includes another archbishop,
one of the seven “under kings”, making him second in line to the throne!
When the official tour is over we are also allowed to check
out the treasure rooms with lots of gold and silver ornaments, china place
settings, traveling religious artifacts, games, jewelry, etc.
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| The Eltz River surrounds the castle on three sides |
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| This man and his dog were walking the castle grounds; but to get off the island he had to unlock a gate. |
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| And, of course, there are not one but two restaurants. |
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| Notice how the castle incorporates the native rock. |
Back outside we take a few more photos, then take the bus
back to our car. We’ve spent about three
hours here and can see why Rick is so fond of it, especially since it has such
a personal history.
We are embarking on the journey to Kreuztal, where we will
finally stay in the house for which we exchanged!
At first blush “you can’t get there from
here”;
but we are undaunted.
There are four different Autobahns involved
and some of the interchanges happen on the part of the map that is covered by a
yellow blob representing a city!
But the
signage is good and there’s only one minor misstep until we get really close to
Kruetzal.
It gets a little hairier
then;
but we stumble onto a police
station, where a young, blue-eyed blond looks up our address on his computer
and gives us directions.
He only has to
draw a traffic light and a tunnel.
Everything else he communicates in English!
And it helps that Marilyn can offer a bit of
Deutsch.
We were really close!
Less than ten minutes later we can turn off the car!! Apparently there are two apartments in the
house and we have the second and third floors.
We learn later that there is no one in the downstairs unit and I think
Henning and Kirstein own the whole building.
We bring in as much as we can in the first trip, since we’ll be here
until we leave the country, except for day trips.
The front door has a lock, of course. The door to our unit has a lock, of
course. The WC that is outside the door
to our unit has a lock. Hmm. Why is it there and why is it locked? Many of the interior doors can also be
locked, like the dining room and the family room, and the kitchen. Hmmm.
The interior seems to have all been recently and beautifully redone and
is lovely. Marilyn will have the master
bedroom and I’ll take the other bedroom, which is upstairs. The only other space up there is the
landing/office and another locked room which we don’t investigate.
First things first – we try the internet. Nothing happens when we enter the
sixteen-digit password. I go upstairs to
double check the password on the bottom of the modem and realize that there
aren’t any lights lit! Aha! Plug everything in and we’re in
business! I can do IT!!
We look up a Chinese restaurant, but don’t quite get
there. Never mind, we know where there
are three different grocery stores and an Italian restaurant! We go to the Lidl, with which we’re familiar
from Poland and buy enough supplies to get through the next day or two. Then we stop at Ducato, the Italian
restaurant, the find that the menu is all in German and our waiter has no
English. Again, never mind! Marilyn wants water without bubbles, I can
mine “no bubbles” and her drink arrives.
I guess he didn’t think I wanted a drink. Wrong!
I want the local dark beer! We
also know what schnitzel is and I find one with “champignon” sauce and why
mushrooms are called by their French name I don’t know, but that’s what I
want! Marilyn get schnitzel with a sauce
that looks like it might be picante and it rally is! The portions are huge and when we mime “take
home” he gets is right away!
Home again and we open a bottle of Reisling from the Mosel
valley and settle in for the night. Live
is good!
