A few years ago I developed a certain interest in castles. At that time, I was writing a story about a princess and was struggling with the exact setting on the inside of her castle. I finally acquired a very detailed map of the inside of one such castle during my 6th visit to one. For a few years now, this story has been indefinitely on hold but I’m still excited, and on the lookout for maps, whenever I get to visit one. And visit one we did, my dad and I, on the third day of our road trip.
This castle goes by the name of Bükeburg Castle and is the former residence of the reigning Graf von Schaumburg. The head of the House of Schaumburg-Lippe and his family still live in a part of the castle. The castle was built at the beginning of the 14th century and has since been expanded up until the 20th century.
The castle consists out of quite a lot of places. First of there is the inner courtyard.
Thereafter, the tour led us into the chapel, followed by the marble passage and the white hall.
The white hall led us to the banqueting hall. This hall is still used for private festivities and cultural events. Our tour guide demonstrated how well music can sound in this hall by giving us an amazing opera performance.
After this came the green hall, the smoking room, and the yellow hall. The yellow hall used to be the drawing room for ladies.
The emblems on the seats below are handmade and a princess was expected to finish such a piece before marriage.
The hunting room and the Gobelin hall led us to the last room; the golden hall. In my opinion, this room is by far the prettiest and most impressive one.
A little extra is that this tour enabled us to take a look inside the horse stables of the castle. I haven’t seen this in any other castle before and it wasn’t just a museum; there were real horses.
After our little visit to the Schloss we passed by Porta Westfalica (a monument), had some very tasty lunch and saw a ‘Hunebed’. (A megalithic tomb (in the Netherlands called ‘Hunebed’) is a ‘room’ made of large boulders in which the dead were buried.)
In the evening, we visited my favourite family member; my Dutch aunt who lives in Germany. By all means, this is not our best picture. Can you see a likeness? I’m not much of a model. As soon as I see the lens of a camera, you get something like… this.
I was very tired when we arrived, but I left with so much energy. Running conversations is often tiring thing to do for me, but that evening it fuelled me with energy instead.
So what did this road trip teach us? Let me get my dad’s list…
1. Having serious conversations with your daughter father isn’t actually that hard and scary.
2. You can survive a (short) trip without fries and burgers. (Well, duh.)
3. Carpe diem. The state of mind in which your moments of zen appear and are meant to be enjoyed.
Well, there you go everyone! This concludes the 3-day mini road trip of me and my dad.
20/08/2015