TIME WITH FRIENDS
Our good friends, the Siebert's, invited us to go see a few of the sites in the country near where Werner grew up, a castle, lake, some pretty towns and have a picnic with them.  What a fun day we had with them.

The wine area along the Bad-Durkheim area is a rolling hills landscape filled with various beautiful vineyards and small towns that make their living growing grapes and making wine.

It was a really quiet day on this main street in this pretty little vineyard town.
Usually it is a bit more busy with tourists.

Many of the homes in this town are set up with a courtyard right next to the main entrance that is a garden or a place where there are tables for people to sit and enjoy time eating and drinking and visiting with friends.
These courtyards used to be where the animals where kept.

Beyond the grape vines, up on the hill is Schloss Villa Ludwigshohe's summer home.

Martin and Debbie.
You can walk or ride bikes all through the beautiful vineyards.

Werner knows many interesting things about the area so he shared history, stories and sights all day and made everything so fun for us.

The picturesque scenes kept coming up on every curve and hill.

There are many picnic spots along the roads.  This is where we stopped for our picnic.

We had a wonderful tour of one of the many castles.  The Burg Berwartstein castle was built on top of a really huge rock. The rock was carved out on the interior to form much of the castle then much more of the castle was built on top with the sand stones.

Inside the castle was a deep well, 2 meters wide (6 feet) and 104 meters (341.2 feet) down to the water.
This way the people in the castle could survive when it was under attack.

Yikes, they had torture rooms.

On the terraces, the tour guide explains some of the history and stories of this castle.

The earliest mention of the castle is in 1152.  It is now privately owned and was rebuilt after a long time being abandoned and burned by a lightning strike.

Do you see the CAT on the roof?

How did this cat get way up there on the roof?

This is part of the rock that is natural.  Inside it has been hand carved out with tunnels and rooms.

 This used to be the only entrance into the castle.  A vertical shaft that a rope ladder was dropped down so men could enter and pull up the ladder when enemies came.   Hot oil would be poured onto the enemies from the top of the shaft.   It is said that when a man in the castle wanted a bride a woman who had never met the man would be lifted up the tunnel in a basket.  If the man saw that she didn't meet his expectations, his hands would become slippery, and she would be dropped.

Looking straight up the entrance chimney shaft.
It is about 45 meters (147 feet) high.

Beautiful hydrangea flowers do very well up here.

When we first arrived, this  nice courtyard area had about 6 fine horses in it waiting to take someone for a ride through the forest.

The crow and the golden ring.  There is a story about a king who had put his rings onto the window ledge and left the room for awhile.  When he returned, the rings where gone.  Since no one except a member of the staff was in the castle, the servant was accused and sentenced to death.  Later the rings where found in a ravens nest on the roof.  So in shame and sorrow, the castle symbol became the raven and ring.  Two ravens where imprisoned and forever kept.

Friederun showed us this cool plant that had seed pods that would EXPLODE when you lightly touched them.
I could have done this all day, it was so interesting how they could do that!

We then went to a small town in France, Wissembourg.  This chapel tower is where Werner first kissed Friederun.  The tower isn't open to go up in very often, so it was just meant to be that when they went there it was open and they went up.  FIRST KISS is pretty special.

The pastries in France are way to pretty to eat, they are works of art.
We had the best chocolate eclairs that I have ever had.

JULY 4TH 2014 TRIP TO AUSTRIA, SWITZERLAND AND ITALY

PLEASE USE THE BLOG LINK BELOW TO SEE OUR TRIP TO AUSTRIA, SWITZERLAND AND ITALY.

http://susanssmith2014-july-trip.blogspot.de/2014/07/to-get-to-my-germany-life-blog-go-to.html

SCHWETZINGEN CASTLE -  April 2014
I have been busy sewing for a couple of weeks so I haven't had time to work on the blog much.
The day after Easter was also a German holiday and some nice weather so we rode our bikes to Schwetzingen Castle about 16 miles south of Mannheim.  It was a nice day for a ride and nice for the castle gardens.  I did have a terrifying awful moment when some nice guy asked me to take a group photo of him and a group, which I did, and then dropped his smart phone on the cobblestones!  I almost died right then and there.  He was really nice tho and checked it to see if it worked, it did work, and had a small ding on a corner.  I offered to pay for it if it was broke but he said it was OK.  I made sure I wasn't in the same area as them for the rest of the day so I wouldn't have to face him again.  I probably won't be accepting any more requests to take photos for other people from now on.    The castle and gardens where really wonderful tho and I would recommend it for anyone but especially on nice weather days.   This was mainly a summer home for the Prince Elector Carl Theodor. So much of the pleasure was for the outdoors and gardens. There is one English tour of the inside per day and it was very good, entertaining and interesting.  Photos are not allowed inside the castle.   There are small out buildings throughout the gardens separate from the castle that are fun to go through, even a garden tool museum.

more information can be found here on this link:
http://www.schloss-schwetzingen.de/en/

The bike ride down and back was mostly through farmland and bike paths.  This is the beginning of the town Schwetzingen.

See Los Angeles is 9313 km from here.

They were very big into hunting at this location so many of the statues are kind of gross, I think, of animals being killed.

The manicured gardens are really interesting with all kinds of hedge shapes and mazes.

The outer parts of the gardens are more natural with a small lake. It is very peaceful and it creates wonderful views and reflections.

Looking back toward the castle from the other side of the lake.

I can see why people who live in this town would want to own a yearly pass to enjoy these gardens whenever they wanted.

Fountains and trellises are very popular and create such a cozy feeling while walking through them.

Bird fountain spouts all along the top of this trellis, very intricate and interesting.

Really large wisteria trellis was beautiful and in bloom.

There where underground grottos which must have been a lot of fun for kids to run around in.

Someone put a lot of work into making these serpentine streams out of pebbles.

Inside the dome of one of the fountain buildings.

Looking down from the fountain building.

One of the side gates used by the gardeners.

What the palace view of the gardens looks like from a window.

The bath house that was very lush and a long way from the castle and may have been a horse ride there and back and maybe they spent the day there.

On the ceiling of one of the side buildings of the bath house.

The ceiling of the entrance to the bath house.

Around the sides of the room of the bath house.

There where a few of these bath rooms with bath tubs the size of small swimming pools made of marble.  That is a bench at the bottom and stair going down into the bath.

This thing that looks like cloth around the bathtub is carved from stone with a skylight above.

Germans like their dogs and bring them everywhere, but this couple brings their CATS! on a LEASH!  Amazing.

Tunnel under one of the small temples.

A temple ruins in the Gardens

Looking out the window of one temple ruin to a Mosque across a pond.

Looking back at the temple ruin.

They had a Turkish mosque built but they never used it for a service, it was more of a novelty thing to say they had a mosque. 

Interesting little rooms around the mosque gardens 

From inside the mosque patio garden