Just in case anyone is getting tired of the view of giant piles of melting snow outside, I thought I'd share some of the last of the photos from our trip to Kassel last spring break.
Remembering back to our last post about Germany in November, we had climbed up to the huge monument called the Oktagon, where a statue of Hercules overlooks all of Kassel in the Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe.
The 590 acre park constructed during the reign of Wilhelm IX also included a life-size replica of a medieval castle called
Löwenburg, or "Lion's Castle".
The structure is breathtakingly beautiful and romantic.
As is this guy.
It's easy to see why Wilhelm took his lovers here.
Mike and I were able to catch the first half of a tour of some of the rooms. The interior was just as amazing and held centuries old armor, shields, and weaponry.
Then there was the real castle.
Today it is used as an art museum. A group of us teachers skipped one of the seminars to take a look around. It houses some great original works and has the world's second largest collection of Rembrandt paintings.
On our walks back to school we would pass some pretty cool homes in the surrounding neighborhoods.
Our outings into downtown Kassel were very limited, but we still managed to see some neat things. Here, we found St. Martin's Church -- an impressive and old looking building in what otherwise looks like a very modern and new downtown.
We also found out that Johan Sebastian Bach visited this church and played on its organ in the 18th century.
The organs inside now are too new for Bach to have played on, but it was still very beautiful and peaceful.
Louis Spohr, a contemporary and colleague (if you could use that term) of Beethoven, is commemorated in one of the Platz for being music director for the court of Kassel; it was his longest and last post. Today he is probably remembered best for his four
clarinet concertos. Randomly enough, he was born in Braunschweig, not too far from Wolfsburg!
Not too far away was the historic Rathaus.
On our last day in Kassel, we tried to fit in as much sight-seeing as possible in the few hours we had between saying goodbye to teachers at the conference and catching our train back up to Wolfsburg. After having lunch at a
Pizza Hut lunch buffet (all deep-dish, some strange toppings, but still very tasty), we made our way to the Orangerie of
Karlsaue, a huge palace and garden complex.
The palace is now a museum for astronomy and technology. It also has a planetarium.
From the palace steps, you can see the vast gardens and greens that stretch out before it.
Some of the Roman statues in the background up-close.
And still, the walking paths continued...
From here, we headed toward Friedrichplatz, one of the cultural squares of the city. In the end, we decided we didn't have time to go into the huge museums there. We did, however, take a peek at Germany's first permanent theater. Called the Ottoneum, it was built in 1604.
Kassel has a number of interesting museums -- the wallpaper museum, for example. We really wanted to go see the
Brothers Grimm Museum. The famous fairytale writers lived in Kassel for over 30 years of their lives. As was our luck, the actual museum was closed for renovations. They had a little miniature museum set up in the city's old train station, but besides getting lots of exercise trying to find the place, the visit wasn't so rewarding.
Even before it was time to head back to the station to catch our train, Mike and I were ready to go home. We were exhausted from two weeks of traveling. Unfortunately for us, our train was delayed, and because we weren't able to buy our return tickets in advance (long story), neither of us had seats for the more than two hour ride home.
All in all, however, it was a very good trip. We saw many amazing places, ate fantastic food, drank great wine, and met some very cool people. Upon returning from our spring break travels, we had a few days to recuperate before taking our band, orchestra, and choir kids from school on a five-day intense rehearsal overnight trip in the mountains. Obviously, we did not know the meaning of "
taking it easy".
