So...what to do with a day off in the middle of the week? Our friends from church, Fred and Marta, invited us to join them in Nörten-Hardenberg for the afternoon. Fred's mom lives in this little town about 10 km away from Göttingen. It is a commuter town - with a quick seven minute train ride between the two towns. They thought we might enjoy both seeing some castle ruins and picking apples in the backyard.
Fred met us at the train station and walked with us back to the house. We dropped off our things and headed straight away to the castle ruins. Fred, now retired, was an international business man so he has great English skills. In fact, he is the one that simultaneously translates the sermons at our church into English for the non-German speaking attenders....and those that are still learning!
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| We had the train to ourselves on the way there. |
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| Walking from the station - you can just barely see the tower of the castle in the trees above Tracy's head. |
As we walked the few kilometers to the castle, Fred gave us many details about the castle - some of them being that: 1. it dates back to over a thousand years ago, 2. it was actually two castles side by side with families living them that didn't get along, 3. lightening struck the castles making them uninhabitable mainly because the two families couldn't agree on who would pay for the repair costs, and 4. the grounds surrounding the castle and much of the forest in the area are now privately owned by a Count that inherited it all from the original owners from centuries ago. About once or twice a year, the Count will open up the ruins for anyone wanting to explore and we happened to choose the right day to go! Because it was a national holiday, there were several performances taking place on the castle lawn and a couple of booths selling brats and drinks.
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| The McKenzie Boys with Eva, Fred and Marta's granddaughter~ she was one of the performers as you can tell from her 'cat' facepaint. Her line was, "Meow," and she did this with great enthusiasm! |
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| The stillery - Fred said that there are over 50 variations of Schnapps produced here. |
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| The gardens are just beautiful with paths for walking all over the hillside. At the left of this picture, you can see a few stairs - these lead to the outdoor skating rink used in the winter. I'm hoping they rent skates as I'd like to give it a try this winter as a family! |
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| The Biergarten - the outdoor seating areas of one of the restaurants. |
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| This photo was taken to make Jason Panciera jealous! :) |
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| And this one is for Kim Panciera! Fred told us about the international horse riding competitions that take place at this arena. Joj and Noah decided to give the jumps a go and ran around, under and through many of the jumps - it was fun to be outside to let them run off some of their energy. |
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| The five-star hotel has only 48 rooms. |
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| This is a natural rock cellar - keeps all the drinks cool that the restaurant serves to guests. An employee was filling this crate while we were watching. The rock above Noah's head was engraved with the Roman Numerals for 1841. |
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| The wild boar is the emblem for this family. The restaurants all serve wild boar as a main dish on the menu - shot in the forests that we walked through that afternoon. |
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| The next several pictures are from walking around the ruins. |
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| One of the day's festivities was rapelling over the side of the castle wall. All of the boys would have loved to give that a whirl! |
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| They got there fill of climbing for the day! We were fortunate that the rain held off - only had a few sprinkles all afternoon. |
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| Exploring a cavern...not sure I want them to go any farther! |
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| Fall is going to be gorgeous this year! |
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| The stables |
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| ~the lane between the castles~ Joj and Noah playing rock soccer as they walk back to Daddy and the rest of the crew. |
Marta made fresh lemon cake for us to enjoy once we returned from the castle. I had brought frosted sugar cookies that were to look like apples. I didn't have enough food coloring though so they were pink! Regardless, the boys loved all the treats. We then picked apples, played soccer in the side yard and generally enjoyed being out of doors.
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| All the boys took turns on the ladder attempting to find the biggest apples! |
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| We helped by collecting all that had fallen to the ground and dumping them on the compost pile. |
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| The tree and the ground were absolutely covered with apples! |
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| Eva is such a sweet girl and talks a mile a minute in such rapid German that we often have to ask her a couple of times before we catch all that she is saying. The boys' German is greatly improving though as they didn't have to ask for repeated sentences and instead, were telling me what is was that Eva had said! |
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| We filled four backpacks full of apples to bring home and enjoy. |
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| Yes, my boys are playing soccer frequently these days..... and enjoying themselves! |
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| We are so thankful for how Fred and Marta have reached out to us since arriving in Germany! |
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