Kicking Up Our Heels at Koenigsbourg

So our day trip for this week started out with an empty fuel tank so we had to go get some diesel.  Have I ever told you how hard that is---NOT!   We get to push the magic button on our handy-dandy garage door opener which opens these gigantic doors to our underground parking, drive across the street (a narrow one at that) and into the Shell station.  Man, it's tough!!  Just one more thing that I will miss about Basel and how our apartment is so conveniently located.  However, we do sometimes have to wait in line a bit.

Anyway, even after I reminded DJ that we (he) HAD to clean the windshield (in case I needed to take pics from inside the car again), he forgot.  I was busy in the car reading something or daydreaming or something and so we left Basel with bugs on the windshield STILL, a full tank, NO MAP, and neither of us could remember the name of the castle we were going to!  Didn't I tell you we kind of travel by the seat of our pants???  But....we "kinda" knew where it was (in the Alsace region of France near Colmar and Riqueweir), and we were pretty sure that we had seen signs for it on the freeway.  Well, we had, but we turned off the freeway a little too soon---thought we were so smart, and ended up in the mountains on our way to Nancy, France.  But luckily for us, it was a gorgeous drive, going up through the forested mountains and driving through all these quaint little villages (no, I didn't take pictures---because of the bugs!).

We finally figured out we were too far up the mountain to be going to our castle or to find any connecting road so we stopped for lunch at this cute little restaurant with awesome French food and got our bearings (oh, and it helped when the cute waitress brought us all sorts of travel brochures on the area WITH MAPS INCLUDED). 

This is where we had lunch.  Picture taken from their brochure!

We got to eat outside on the patio in wonderfully, warm weather.  As you might guess, we just kept saying, "Why are we so blessed to have this opportunity to learn about and love Europe?"  Okay, back to the story...

We got on our way and after heading back down that mountain, and across wine country (lots and lots of vineyards)...

and through another half dozen cute little towns,

Yup, there's those dang bugs again!

we wound our way back up another mountain to our castle.  I took picutres (from the car), but the one on the brochure is taken from the air and will give you a much better idea of where we went:



This castle (chateau) dates back to before the 12th century, but was burned and looted during the Thirty Years War with the Swedes.  After being abandoned for more than two and a half centuries, it was eventually given to the German Emperor William II who had it restored.  Under the Treaty of Versailles, France became the owner of the assets of the German crown and obtained Haut-Koenigsbourg.


The whole area was breathtaking.  As with Lake Como two weeks ago, there seemed to be some haze so our pictures don't do it justice, but we took some anyway.  So... here's a few from our excursion through the castle:
 

My pathetic attempt to capture its grandeur from below in a moving car!

We parked our car along the roadway when we got near to the castle (that's the way it is done---in marked parking areas on a one-way road that loops around the castle.  Then we started the uphill trek...

 

One of the first things you see after walking up the road and coming around the corner is this large star-shaped bastion where lots of cannons were ready to defend the castle.
  

Walking along the base of the castle, you can't see much over the very tall wall unless it's the highest points of the castle:

  

There was some major restoration work going on as you will note by the scaffolding in the above picture. I tried to take pictures around it, but....

 

We finally came to the main entrance of the castle:



Above the front entrance.

Near the front entrance. 



This is right underneath the relief above---mentioning Wilhelm II of Germany who oversaw the restoration of this castle between 1900-1908.

We had two cameras going and the tour through the castle went up and down stairs, across drawbridges, through courtyards, along pathways and even into a garden on one of the upper floors of the castle with trees growing in the middle of it.  That could be done, because the castle was built into the mountain and in places the mountain is part of the castle.  Anyway, there is no way to take you on some organized, understandable pictoral tour because I was lost the whole time I was in the place.  So here's some photos of what we saw, organized by commonalities.  There again our photos don't do the place justice.

The following pictures were taken from the portcullis (kind of like a big entry area) and the lower courtyard:

 



DJ in front of the blacksmith shop.

The well was 62 meters deep and was designed and fortified so that it could not be cut off from the living quarters by an artillery attack.

On other levels:

A large cistern collected rainwater from a system of rain gutters throughout the castle.

A gorgeous hexagonal (spiral) staircase.  There are several other spiral staircases, but none so ornate as this.

There was lots to see in the living quarters:  bedrooms, chapels, a musician's gallery, the Kaiser's Hall, a trophy room (as in elk antlers and the like), an armoury (lots of weapons here) and more:



Most of the rooms at one of these---a heater (fireplace) made of ceramic tiles.  You can see the metal door where the fire was stoked.



Here's another.


The windows were amazing.  There were those with lots of metal, creating tiny little panes, and then there was the stained glass:



These grates were added as protection in the open windows of the Greater Bastion or Artillery Platform.

And not that these were really windows, but these small openings were in the Great Bastion as well in several different shapes!

Here's another.

Some rooms were furnished, but we didn't take a lot of pics (I had to limit my flash because my batteries were low AGAIN---go through them like water).  We did get a few---just to give you an idea:



There were some beautiful pieces in there, but for the most part things were very functional.



One of the bedrooms with a beautiful baby cradle.

This one's a little dark, but it appeared to be an office or schoolroom.



These were taken in the armoury (armory in English):

There was some beautiful artwork (mostly murals) both on the walls and on the ceilings:



This mythical dragon hangs from the ceiling in one of the rooms.

One of my favorites were the draw bridges:

Up almost as high as you could go was the large bastion and artillery platform---talk about cannons.  They were everywhere in all shapes and all sizes:

THE VIEWS WHICH WERE THE BEST PART (except the haze):

We figured we were at least six stories up.  You can kind of get the idea of how the castle and the mountain are one in these last two pictures.

And speaking of the mountain and castle being one, take a look at these pictures that we took as we were leaving back down at the lower level on the side opposite the entrance:

The castle walls would just start where the rock stopped!

All in all, it was a glorious day full of history, beautiful nature, and the company of one great guy.  More coming about the flora and fauna of Alsace on another post!