Nideggen

We had the whole Saturday free, so we decided to follow a lead that I got this week at work and go see the castle at Nideggon.  It was about 45 minutes away from us, and since we were on the outer-skirts of our branch-boundaries, we visited a few people on the way.  

The town was very medieval, with old walls and gates and the like.  It was a good place to run and climb around for the kids, and a nice forresty-hilly Eifel setting.

There was a cool little museum in the tower, and the boys were pretty excited to see some knights and armor.  We felt pretty cool visiting a "local treasure" that probably doesn't get a ton of international attention.

What made it even cooler was that we actually got to see a wedding in the courtyard, and they had speakers so we could hear the whole thing.  It kind of felt like we were intruding, but they had to expect that, getting married in such a public space.  Timmy was pretty worried that they were going to kiss, so we high-tailed it before such a revolting event could occur.  Awesome setting for a wedding though.

Finally, we ended the day with a hike around the castle.  Any chance that I have to hike around cliffs is really good for my Rocky-Mountain-soul.  They even had bolted rock climbing routes, but the bolts looked like they had been there since the medieval times too.

Just because I like signs lately: here are a few we saw on the way:

This one is for a "Pretzel-Fest".  Any excuse to drink beer, I guess.

This is a good example of the ever-intimidating German compound word.  This actually means "Nature Protection Area", but in the proper German rules, this phrase exists as a single unit.  I'm used to it by now, but I remember that when I first started learning German, words like that would make my head explode!

Since I'm on the topic, I recently got a newsletter from the church in Germany about internet resources.  There was a section in which the members were advised to not make unnecessarily long words in the church, and try to separate them a bit for the sake of the children or those with child-like reading skills (they didn't actually say this, but I can read between the lines, and yes I am sure they were referring to me).

 This last one shows a sign that says "Please don't feed" in which some sort of animal is implied.  However, it was simply a fence around some logs.  Apparently, some very hungry logs.