Castle ruin Windeck.
Tag: Weinheim an der Bergstraße
Stairway to Hell
Tell Led Zeppelin about it.
There is a small way of stairs in our hometown – it’s narrow and steep and it’s called hell stairs or possibly stairway to hell.
Once a year, the stairs can’t be used properly. Because there are transformed into a slide.
Pretty hellacious, isn’t it?
It Used to be a Secret Garden
The manor house in the Hermannshof in Weinheim was built in classicist style in 1820. The garden was, of course, a private garden. Later it became the property of the Freudenberg family. The company founded by Carl Freudenberg in the mid 19th century is today still family owned. The house and garden was still private when I was a little girl and walked past it every day on my way to school. I used to wonder then what was behind the dense hedges.
The garden was changed to a park open to the public, now called “Schau- und Sichtungsgarten Hermannshof” in 1988 and has become a tourist magnet. The manor house is used by the company as a conference centre and is still closed to the public.
The windows show off the classicist style of the manor house. The representative front overlooks the park and with the beautiful magnolia looks impressive at any time of year. But the back and side views are beautiful as well.
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Looking up while Walking
In summer it is a bit more difficult see the castle ruin Windeck because there are trees in the way. So I took advantage of the unimpeded view.
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A Veritable Oasis
I teach from Monday to Thursday, so Friday is my day for running errants. I had to go to town and combined my trip with a visit to the local botanical garden. The weather has turned, it’s become greyer and colder. It’s still too warm for November but it looks suitably autumnal at least.
The seats are still out but they are more decorative than utilitarian at this point.
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“We’ve Been Robbed!”
For many years the town of Weinheim was very proud of the cedar in the castle parks. It was known to be the oldest Lebanon Cedar in Germany.
And then its 300th birthday approached. And somebody checked the records. And now we all know that the massive tree was not planted in 1720 but around 1835 – more than 100 years later. And the sign was removed:
We still love the cedar.
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