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Happy April Fool’s Day!! No jokes here, we had a very busy, and very tiring day today.

For Jamie, the day started out REALLY early. Her body seems to think that it’s not really here, or in Seattle, since she was up and out of bed at 3am (6pm in Seattle). The upside, is that the dishes all got washed, the apartment straightened, and she had 2 cups of tea. We officially started the day off by enjoying the rolls that were delivered to us this morning (a very big treat that we could really get used to), and then surprised our apartment manager!! Yesterday when we checked in, he was very surprised to find that we didn’t have a car with us (what? Non-locals can figure out the train system from the airport and didn’t get lost??!?!?! Amazing!). He gave us a map of Castle Road anyway, and told us we’d have a hard time getting to most of them; we thought we’d give it a try anyway. So this morning we set off on the 9am train to make three stops to look at castles. As we were boarding the train we changed our mind, and decided to just see two. We spent about 2 hours on the trains to get to a small town called Eberbach (the farthest one on the map for today). We got off the train, found no information booth, but we did locate a map!! Turns out though, that if you don’t know the name of the castle you’re looking for, it’s pretty near impossible to find it on a map written in German. So we remembered that it was tucked up in the mountain behind the town, and we spotted the top of what appeared to be an old tower. About an hour later we found ourselves at the base of said tower. Turns out it was NOT built in the 14th century, but rather in 1970, and housed a cell tower today. Nashon, feeling quite defeated, spotted the ACTUAL castle ruins on the next peak over.

We decided to get some lunch back in town, and decide whether or not to hike up the next mountain (which Nashon will tell you is just a really big hill). What we DID discover during lunch is that German’s DO eat chicken. It’s called Hahnchen (with some little dots in there somewhere). We enjoyed our chicken and fries, and made a choice to hike up to the ruins (better than a cell tower, right?).

Turns out this hike was a bit more work with more stairs and a steeper grade, but we did manage to make it up there about 90 minutes later. The castle grounds here had three buildings, with three different dates on them. The oldest date was 1296, 18th century, and then 1909 was on one of the buildings. Again, if we were able to read German, we might know a bit more about it. We enjoyed being there in the off season, as no one else was up there (though we did encounter a few folks on the way back down). There were great views from the top of the entire town and valley, and the river that ran nearby. We rested, drank even more water, and headed back to the train station. As we got there, we decided it was now 4pm, and the other castle would have to wait for another day (our feet were tired, and we didn’t feel like doing any more hiking). Besides, it was just two towns over, and would likely involve a taxi ride since it’s a full castle and in the middle of a really big city. So perhaps we’ll head there tomorrow and do some shopping in the city.

We navigated the trains back to Deidesheim, and found that while most of the time it can be frustrating not to speak German, that when on the train with crazy people, it’s good to act dumb! There was this lady who spoke a little English, who kept trying to open the window with a screwdriver. Something about not being able to talk with the air pressure from the AC? We just tried to ignore her. When we got off the last train we stopped at the market to pick up some things for dinner and some strudel to appease Nashon’s sweet tooth. Since our town is located in the heart of German wine country (a big tourist attraction form May to September we’re told), we are going to enjoy some nice local wine this evening. Nashon had his eye on a few different types at the market, and we’re going to get a nice Riesling (my favorite of course). It helps, that most of the local grapes go to this type of wine.