From Fritzlar we returned down the Eder and Fulda Rivers to Kassel, a large city that was heavily damaged in the Second World War and rebuilt in practical, i.e. architecturally uninteresting, fashion. But at the far western end of town the city begins to rise into the mountains, and there one finds a fabulous park that drew us in and charmed us.
It's called Burgpark Wilhelmshöhe, or 'William's heights mountain park.' The Wilhelm here is not either of the German emperors of the late 19th and early 20th centuries, but rather a Hessian noble from a century earlier. Today's Schloss Wilhelmshöhe at the low end of the park has a center section with two wings. Oddly enough, the wings were built first and only years later were they connected up. But what drew us in the first day was not the Schloss but the Wasserspiel or 'playful waters' that were designed, together with the castle, in the late 1700s. Water is collected in reservoirs and released twice a week at 2:30 far up the hill. It flows dramatically through various fountains and waterfalls as it comes down the hill, and our hotelkeeper advised us to wait below a fake "ancient" ruin called The Aqueduct. At 3:30, as predicted, the water came. And came. And came. And so did the crowds.
The crowd now started moving downhill to a large pond with a fake Greek temple next to it, waiting for the water pressure to build for the climax of the day. Sure enough, about 10 minutes after the torrent had begun at the Aqueduct, a tiny little island in the pond exploded with a jet of water that shot up 50 meters, about 160 feet. The water roared, and so did the crowd. Although today we see all this as simply a playful use of water, 2 centuries ago it was that but also a demonstration of the power to harness nature on the part of the noble owner of the park, the Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel.
Afterwards the crowd streamed past the Schloss and the water from the Wasserspiel continued downhill in a rivulet that had suddenly become a mini-torrent.
Next morning we were back at the Schloss, this time to take in the Old Masters Collection the Landgrave assembled there. It is one of the largest collections of Dutch paintings from the Golden Age outside the Netherlands. Two of the first paintings we saw were classic Dutch winter scenes. The first one below had the landscape painted by Joos de Momper but the figures by Jan Breughel the Older. Breughel's son apparently learned to do it all and painted the second one by himself, as is normally the case in the world of painting. Both are charming examples of the genre.
There was a Frans Hals painting, smiling of course.
The museum has a large collection of Rembrandt's. Here are two of the more prominent ones, first one of his Old Testament images, Jacob Blessing Ephraim and Manassah, then a portrait of Rembrandt's wife Sakia. He began the painting at the time they became engaged, but left it unfinished until she died 9 years later. The way he handles light and dark -- deep, deep dark -- is so fabulous.
Thomas Wyck's Study of an Alchemist reminded us of some teenagers' bedrooms we have known.
And we saw with interest this painting by Hendrick van Vliet of the Interior of the Old Church in Delft, a place we visited just a few weeks ago.
In art museums we generally point the camera only at the art, but the windows on the top floor of the Schloss gave us a view right down Wilhelmshöhe Allee, a grand boulevard that runs 5 km right up toward the Schloss, and in the opposite direction to a massive sculpture at the top of the hill depicting the Greek god Hercules. Many a palace is built to see and to be seen, but few succeed as well as this one.
When the palace was begun, formal gardens were all the rage, and the straight line up the hill and the geometric garden in the foreground of the photo above are good examples. But tastes change, and they did so almost as soon as the garden was planted. All of a sudden English gardens were the thing, full of wandering paths and romantic ruins or, more commonly, fake ruins. That's when the Aqueduct and the fake Greek temple popped up. But Landgrave Wilhelm was a wealthy man and those weren't enough, so he built an entire fake castle full of spires and turrets up the hill, a place he called Löwenburg. Unfortunately, it took a direct hit from a stray bomb in WW II. 75 years later it's finally getting fixed up, but for now cranes are a bit more prominent in the skyline than spires and turrets. There is nonetheless a nice view of the Fulda Valley from the garden next to the castle.
The next day we biked 4 km from our hotel to the train station and met friends Rainer and Brigitte as they hopped of the train with their bikes, then sat down on a chair nearby for a chat.
They live in Göttingen, a city that is 70 km away from Kassel by bike or just under an hour by train. Having done the latter this morning, they now turned around and prepared to do the former with us. However we all agreed it would be better to spread the biking over two days with an overnight in Hannoversch Münden, or Hann. Münden as it is usually written. This is the town where the Weserstein is, the stone that marks the junction of the Werra and Fulda Rivers to form the Weser River. It is a charming town with over 400 Fachwerk (half-timbered) homes and businesses, plus a city hall in Weser Renaissance style, in the third photo below. City Hall has some most interesting gargoyles!
WW II was also not the first war to scar this town. We hiked up to the so-called Tillyschanze, the entrenchment of General Tilly who looked down on the town from here in 1626 prior to breaching the city walls and sacking the town as part of the brutal Thirty Years War. Today however it is a peaceful place from which to contemplate the city below.
Notice the ridge behind that large salmon-colored building (a former Schloss that now houses municipal offices)? The ridge divides the valley of the Weser and Werra Rivers from that of the Leine, our next destination. We have only two photos, one by us and one by Rainer, to show you from this ride. Both were taken on the flats before we tackled the hill, because once we started climbing, we really couldn't stop. It's just too hard to resume pedaling on a steep hill with a tandem, and there were no flat spots from which we could have relaunched. So up we went, never stopping, shifting gears and slowing our speed until we hit first gear and a speed of 7 kph, or just under 5 mph. Any slower than that and we would have started walking, but we hung in there for about 45 minutes (though it felt like twice that) and pedaled right to the top. Oh, the joy! Oh, the fun of the ride down the other side!
We were the guests of Rainer and Brigitte for 3 nights in the comfortable house they've lived in for a few decades. They raised their three boys there, so the addition of two people didn't faze them one bit. As an added attraction, one or the other of them kept disappearing into the garden and bringing in fresh produce, particularly some simply scrumptious cherry tomatoes.
The highlight of our first "rest" (restless?) day was climbing the tower of the St. Jacob's Church. Starting with the second day we set foot in Europe 5 years ago, we've been climbing church towers, castle towers, city hall towers, pretty much anything tall that gives a good view. THIS one was the most interesting!
The church looks quite solid. Something like this seems pretty much fireproof, right? What's to burn? Well, after ascending to a point just a little higher than the ceiling of the church, we found out why fire is actually a great danger to old churches like this -- there's a LOT of wood up there, where you don't see it from below! Below the timbers it looks like mud and rocks -- that's actually the ceiling of the church nave, as seen from the generally unseen top side.
A pair of sketches showed how the church was built, beginning in 1361 and finishing in 1433. Using that thing that looks like a gerbil wheel, a person inside could lift heavy pieces of timber or stone by simply walking.
But it was the ascent that was so different, so wonderful. It started out with the usual narrow, circular stone staircase, but once we were above the ceiling of the church nave, the remainder was very different: a series of wooden staircases that were more like ladders.
After a few flights up we came to a large room with large bells. Quick! Check the time! These things ring every 15 minutes, and they're loud enough to be heard from a mile or two away. We really don't want to hear them from a few meters away!
Another big ascent and there are more bells! But these appear to be only for the carillon, and since no one is sitting at the "keyboard" we figure we're safe. Sure enough, a minute later the big bells ring out the quarter hour and it's loud but not deafening, since we now have a few floors of stone and wood between us and the big bells. The carillon bells stayed silent.
Finally, the top, where another visitor documented our arrival at the top (Brigitte had other things to do that morning but joined us soon after for lunch nearby)!And the view! First, some of the interesting buildings practically underneath us. Then a view to the south. At the bottom right is a small square where there is a famous fountain known as the Gänseliesel, which translates as "Goose Lizzy." In the distance is the upper Leine Valley. Rainer and Brigitte's home is at the edge of the trees, close enough that we were able to walk from there to the church, far enough away that we were happy to take a bus back after lunch.
Our other adventure was a car trip to the Harz Mountains. These are interesting, the source of some of the grimmer stories collected by the brothers Grimm, but we really need to spend quite a bit more than one afternoon to fully appreciate them. We did however get in one hike and have tried in the last photo to capture the ominous dark colors of the Harz, since they are dominated -- at least in this part of the mountains -- by evergreens.
We did stop for one familiar type of visit, to a church. This one is the largest wooden church in Germany, in the city of Clausthal. It can seat 2,200!
This is our third annual get-together with Rainer and Brigitte since meeting them while biking on the Rhine in 2015. We said our farewells with a hearty "see you next year!"
Brigitte hopped on her own bike and led us 2 km to the Leineradweg, or Leine River Cycle Route, which we then followed for the next 3 days. As it passes a line of birch trees on the edge of Göttingen, you can see the river to the right, looking more like an irrigation canal. A few km further and we had a small challenge getting over a bridge, but with the assistance of that groove for bike tires it was less difficult than it looks.
We detoured for a castle ruins in one town along the way, but the real treat was actually our destination city, Einbeck. We had dinner at the Brodhaus on the town square, the black and white Fachwerk place on the left of the second photo. In fact, the whole town is filled with wonderful half-timbered businesses and homes, including the city hall with its oddball low spires.
We even had several stunning ones across the street from our hotel, as seen the next morning looking out our window.
The owner of the one on the right had a lot to say when he decorated the front of his house. Because of the difficult old German script and the even more difficult local dialect, this was beyond the ability of even our good companion in Europe, Google Translate.
The next day we rode into Alfeld and found ourselves occupied for almost half an hour admiring the outside of the city museum, which used to be the town's Latin School. There was a semester's worth of Latin to be read, most with interesting illustrations.
On the north side, for example, were Visus (vision), Gustus (taste), Ratio (reason), Odor (smell), Tactus (touch) and Auditus (hearing). Be sure to look closely at the illustrations of these senses, as a few of them are quite a hoot.
We had one more photo to take for our "agricultural" series begun in our last blog post -- photos of the crops we have been seeing the most often along the way.We have been encountering this particular plant for some time, and Louise even went up to one a week ago and tasted one of the leaves. It was neither recognizable nor palatable. We had seen some when we were with Brigitte, and she let us know it was sugar beets. Sure enough, as the beets now neared maturity we could at last see the off-white beets pushing up just below the green foliage.
On a side trip to visit the city of Hildesheim we got up on a ridge and stopped to wonder about the white and green piles below us. A woman who lives in the village we were about to enter stopped and informed us that the white heap was a type of salt mined in the valley below, and that the shiny white and green domes contained biogas made from plant parts (sugar beet leaves, perhaps?) from farms nearby. She then told us that the bike trail was closed for construction through her village, and she volunteered to lead us on the unmarked bypass route we would have had a hard time figuring out for ourselves. As we got to the end of the detour, she suggested we might be thirsty and also in need of a bathroom. Yes to both, and so we found ourselves in her kitchen enjoying ice cold mineral water and chatting away, Jeff as much as possible in German and our host as much as she could in English, both relying on high school lessons from many decades ago. Our host's husband soon returned and joined us in our impromptu break before the two of them waved bye from their front yard.
On a lighter note, every summer the city creates a "City Beach" behind the cathedral, complete with lots of sand and drinks with little paper umbrellas in them.
As we approach Hannover, it's time to discuss British History. Say, what??? Ah, from 1714 until 1837 the Dukes of Hannover were also the Kings of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland.
Britain became Protestant in the early 1500s in part due to King Henry VIII, in larger part because a large majority of its citizens chose Protestantism over Catholicism. Move forward almost two centuries, to 1714. Queen Anne passed away, leaving over 50 relatives with a strong claim to inherit the crown but for one problem -- they were Catholic. Parliament had decreed that her closest Protestant relative was to succeed her. And so George, Anne's second cousin and number 50-something in the line of succession, found himself sitting in Windsor Castle. He never bothered to learn English, but he ruled Great Britain for 13 years. His son became George II and his great-grandson was George III, the fellow the Americans rebelled against in the American Revolution.
George III had a passel of kids -- 15 of them. The eldest eventually became George IV. When George IV died without an heir, his brother (George III's third son) became king as King William IV, since brother # 2 had previously died. When William died without a legitimate child (the 10 illegitimate ones didn't count), the next in line was not George III's fourth son, who was by then also deceased, nor the fifth son, but rather the legitimate daughter of George III's deceased fourth son. Her name was Victoria. Those were the British rules.
Meanwhile, the Kingdom of Hannover had to figure out who took over from William IV. Their rules said "no girls," so Victoria was passed over and her uncle (George III's fifth son) became King of Hannover. Got that? Quiz at the end of the blog (not).
Any of our readers who loved Victoria, the PBS series this past season about Queen Victoria, as we did, might recall this uncle as "Uncle Cumberland," for he held the honorary British title of Duke of Cumberland even after he acquired the very real title of King of Hannover. And since he was the next in line to the British throne after Victoria until she had a legitimate child, he was truly someone she had to contend with. Victoria ended up having nine children, however, so Uncle Cumberland (aka King Ernest Augustus of Hannover) drifted off into relative obscurity in northern Germany.
In time he too passed away, and his son became King George V of Hannover. In the 1850s George V started building a dream castle for his queen. When war broke out between Prussia and Austria in 1866 he chose to ally with Austria. Bad decision. His army was easily defeated by the Prussians, his kingdom dissolved, and George left for exile in Austria. And the castle? It was finished just about the time George left, and it sat unoccupied for 80 years. We did not go to visit it, but we viewed it for half an hour as we biked down the Leine past it. It's kind of hard to miss.
Almost a century before the Hannoverian dukes began their double-duty as British monarchs, the family had established a grand garden on the outskirts of Hannover, Herrenhäuser Gärten. The various Hannoverian kings of England kept visiting the place, and in fact George I is buried there, in this crypt, the last British king to be buried on non-British soil. This part of the gardens seems drab, but nearby there is a riot of color, with flowers from all over the world.
This was actually the informal garden. Across the street was the formal one, half a kilometer wide and three quarters of a kilometer from the back of the Schloss to the back of the garden. It was clearly built to impress, both with its size and its formality.
The pride and joy of the place is the Great Fountain. By hiring the best hydraulic engineers in Europe, King George I made sure it was the tallest one in Europe, at 35 m. With 20th century engineering it now does 60 m most days, up to 72 m with perfect conditions.
The Schloss was destroyed in the Allied bombing of Hannover. In fact, the city was bombed 88 times during the war, and by war's end only 6% of all the buildings in the city were undamaged, while more than half were total losses. The Schloss was only rebuilt in the past decade and reopened in 2013. Inside is a small museum where you can see portraits of George I and George II, among others, and learn that George I visited Hannover 5 times in his 13 years as British king, that George II visited 12 times, and George III not at all.
Our visit to Hannover coincided with a heat wave, with several days hitting 90 to 93 F (32-34 C). We found an air-conditioned hotel and mostly stayed inside, except for that foray to the gardens. By happy chance, the Crowne Plaza Hotel rewarded our membership in their loyalty program by giving us a double upgrade, to a spacious room with a balcony. Now a balcony on a hot day is not necessarily a great thing, but chance played another card. It was the weekend of the famous Blood Moon, the longest lunar eclipse of the 21st century. There were some low clouds hiding the moon for the early part of the eclipse, but just past the darkest part of the eclipse we stepped out on to our special viewing spot, the balcony, and the moon revealed itself along with the planet Mars, which was especially visible because (chance again) it was only a few days from its closest encounter with earth for the year. The second photo was taken a few minutes after the sun resumed shining on part of the moon. Not great photos, but we were nonetheless very pleased considering our Canon Powershot camera is only a little larger than a deck of cards and has no tripod.
We've now reached the end of our travels in Germany for this year. Tomorrow we're off to the Netherlands by train. We'll pick up the thread in the next blog.
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