Leuchtenburg Castle

Yesterday we borrowed a van from the Institute and our group of 12 headed out to visit our first German castle. It was a cold and snowy day, but our spirits were high at the thought of actually getting in a car and driving somewhere. Here's our first view from the road, a fairly impressive sight sitting atop the hill.

The castle was first mentioned in 1221. It's so hard to imagine what the lives of the inhabitants were like back then, but from the way the wind was whipping around the top of the turret yesterday I have no doubt that it was a miserable place to be in the winter.

Up until 1552, all the water that was needed for the castle was hauled up on donkeys. This proved to be costly at times of defense, so they decided to drill a well, quite an undertaking considering this castle sits 200 meters above the Saale River. In 1720 the castle became a prison and the old hand-operated crank was replaced by a large wheel which was thus operated by, you guessed it, prisoners. Here's our own little prisoners having their turn at being gerbils on the wheel.

We trekked all the way to the top of the turret via a very old wooden spiral staircase to check out the view of the Saale valley below.

Then we came back down and explored the grounds around the castle.

Of course there was a dungeon complete with torture chamber and the kids had a blast trying out the shackles on Kegan.

One of the most humorous aspects of the outside area was the medieval toilet, which was just a hole cut into the wall about 50 feet above the ground. We contemplated "pooping" on our enemies, and then the more unpleasant "what if your enemies caught you on the potty" and then the really unpleasant "who would clean up the whole mess".

We retired to the Castle Tavern for coffee, beer, streussel and ice cream, served to us by a wench in period costume. Then we drove back home and topped off the evening with some delicious local pizza, a good amount of wine, and some crazy dancing to old hits courtesy of Jonathon and Kim's album and CD collection. Making some gumbo to share with our friends for dinner tonight and being grateful for the quietness of Sunday in our new neighborhood.