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Friends...if that ain't a clickbait title, I don't know what is 
. Maybe adding "German women" to it, I dunno, but it's a friendly family forum here.
Anyway, last Sunday, my firlfriend and I went on a little roadtrip to my neighbouring country of Germany.
We kinda like history, archaeology, nature... so ruins of ancient buildings are straight up our alley. If you guys would like to see more intact castles, a couple of years ago I made a post about them in a different thread here at BF (check: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...Outdoorsy-Pic-Thread!?p=10590699#post10590699).
It was quite a trip, 270 km to, 270 back again, and of course we drove around over there too. Combine that with a lot of hiking and climbing, and you can guess we were pretty exhausted. So much so that I seem to have grabbed a serious cold, leading my voice to completely disappear. Even whispering hurts my throat. But... you guys are here for the pics, aren't you? Let's get started!
The picknick
We arrived at noon and were pretty hungry. Good thing we brought a picknick then! First we found a good spot in the woods, overseeing part of the valley.
See, the trip we made was to Manderscheid, in the German Eifel region. The Eifel is a raised (mostly because of volcanic activity) plateau, with some awesome dramatic scenery, and lot's of history.
Scenery, river below
Those two we're about to visist
Someone decided to use the hill we picked for our picknick as a campsite as well
Omnomnom. The 11 was used to clean the site from some young sapplings and thorny things.
Some gear I brought with me. Because I love to carry around things I don't use
More Becker content. I really like this picture
On the road to castle 1
What follows is some scenery from our way up to the first castle.
The Lieser river
A view on the second castle (more on that later)
Trail
A view on the second castle, when we were almost at castle 1
Castle 1: The Oberburg
As I've mentioned a few times now, there are two castle pretty much opposite of each other. What I've called castle 1 is actually called the Oberburg. The name is not very inspirational, it's the "High Castle", since it's situated on the highest mountain of the two on which these castles are built. The "Lower Castle" is therefore called the Niederburg. Of the Oberburg, not much remains standing. Actually, only the "Donjon", or the armored central tower in which valley residents could live when they were under siege, is the only remnant that is still in somewhat good shape. Only the outer walls are somewhat preserved, as well as parts of a guard tower. This castle has been burnt down, destroyed, and its rocks used to build other houses. Both castles originate somewhere in the early Medieval stages (1100-1200) but of course, they were enlarged and/or dramatically altered when time passed by.
Why are there two castles close to each other? Well, one belonged to the Lords of Trier (A nearby German city) and the other belonged to the Lords of Echternach (Luxembourg). The river that ran between 'em was the borderline of both regions. Even though both regions often lived in harmoney, there have been some armed quarrels between them. Enough history, on with the pics...
Sight on the ruins of the Oberburg
Sights over the walls of the Oberburg, looking at the Niederburg
Valley shot, with the Lieser river crawling through the landscape
Spying at each other, before NSA-times
From the top of the Donjon of the Oberburg
*Dramatic chipmunk music intensifies*
Looking down from the Donjon onto the ruins of its former surroundings
More
More. The outer walls do give a pretty good picture of the overall blueprint of the place. Sad to see it's all gone though
Intruder alert
Doesn't show as well in the pics, but the scenery is quite amazing
Castle 2: The Niederburg
This castle has been inhabited for quite a while after the Oberburg was destroyed. It wasn't until the French ransacked it at the end of the 17-hundreds that it was abandoned. It's got a lot of rooms still left standing, with of course the obvious damage here and there, as well as the wooden roofs that are lacking et cetera.
Sideview
Closer
Stairway in a rounded guard tower. Well, it's not for fatter people...
The chapel
Some architecture. The entrance to an underground kitchen
Main living quarters of the castle's Lord and his family
People have always enjoyed voyeurism... Even from out of there bedroom window, they liked to look at their neighbours.
Vertical shot up a central guard tower
Neighbours: The Oberburg
Viewing down on parts of the ruins. The blueprint here is a lot more complex. Since people inhabited this castle for a longer period than they did the Oberburg, a lot of addons were built over the years.
Spot the BK11
Valley shot...
Volcanic lakes
As I said before, the region we're in has an interesting geological past. There has been a lot of volcanic activity, up to some 10.000 years ago.
The region is on top of a "hot spot" (hmm, maybe I should've put that in the title?), much like Yellowstone. Unlike yellowstone, the hotspot underneath the Eifel region is dormant at the time. So no eruptions, yet the landscape is still being raised by around 2mm per year, so pressure is building...
After the volcanos in te region erupted and imploded, they left massive craters in the landscape. These slowly filled up to form lakes, or "Maar" is they call them in Germany. Close to the city of Daun, there are three rather large of these volcanic lakes, and we visited all three of them. It's difficult to get a total view of one lake in one picture, but I hope you get the idea and the scale.
This is the Weinfeld Maar, it has the highest elevation and it's the deepest of the three lakes. Notice the slopes
Some piece of lava that was thrown out when it erupted. It's very striking in person, and it contrasts quite heavily with the slate that makes up pretty much everything in the region.
When this tree dropped its leaves, it left a remarkingly white spot underneath
I had to bring a German knife along, even though the other knife in the pic has a designer with German roots... Here's the Mercator and the BK11 on the shores of the Gemünd Maar
Some scenery of the last of the three, the Schalkenmehren Maar.
Here's an quick pic of some tourist information board with an aerial view of the three volcanic lakes. For a better pic, there's always Wikipedia
In the snark thread, I also said I wanted to taste the local specialty: smoked wild boar... Great success!
So I guess we've come to the end of this thread. A bit of a long read, but I hope it was worth your time. Hope you guys enjoyed it.
Jerry/G-Shark
. Maybe adding "German women" to it, I dunno, but it's a friendly family forum here.Anyway, last Sunday, my firlfriend and I went on a little roadtrip to my neighbouring country of Germany.
We kinda like history, archaeology, nature... so ruins of ancient buildings are straight up our alley. If you guys would like to see more intact castles, a couple of years ago I made a post about them in a different thread here at BF (check: http://www.bladeforums.com/forums/s...Outdoorsy-Pic-Thread!?p=10590699#post10590699).
It was quite a trip, 270 km to, 270 back again, and of course we drove around over there too. Combine that with a lot of hiking and climbing, and you can guess we were pretty exhausted. So much so that I seem to have grabbed a serious cold, leading my voice to completely disappear. Even whispering hurts my throat. But... you guys are here for the pics, aren't you? Let's get started!
The picknick
We arrived at noon and were pretty hungry. Good thing we brought a picknick then! First we found a good spot in the woods, overseeing part of the valley.
See, the trip we made was to Manderscheid, in the German Eifel region. The Eifel is a raised (mostly because of volcanic activity) plateau, with some awesome dramatic scenery, and lot's of history.
Scenery, river below
Those two we're about to visist
Someone decided to use the hill we picked for our picknick as a campsite as well
Omnomnom. The 11 was used to clean the site from some young sapplings and thorny things.
Some gear I brought with me. Because I love to carry around things I don't use
More Becker content. I really like this picture
On the road to castle 1
What follows is some scenery from our way up to the first castle.
The Lieser river
A view on the second castle (more on that later)
Trail
A view on the second castle, when we were almost at castle 1
Castle 1: The Oberburg
As I've mentioned a few times now, there are two castle pretty much opposite of each other. What I've called castle 1 is actually called the Oberburg. The name is not very inspirational, it's the "High Castle", since it's situated on the highest mountain of the two on which these castles are built. The "Lower Castle" is therefore called the Niederburg. Of the Oberburg, not much remains standing. Actually, only the "Donjon", or the armored central tower in which valley residents could live when they were under siege, is the only remnant that is still in somewhat good shape. Only the outer walls are somewhat preserved, as well as parts of a guard tower. This castle has been burnt down, destroyed, and its rocks used to build other houses. Both castles originate somewhere in the early Medieval stages (1100-1200) but of course, they were enlarged and/or dramatically altered when time passed by.
Why are there two castles close to each other? Well, one belonged to the Lords of Trier (A nearby German city) and the other belonged to the Lords of Echternach (Luxembourg). The river that ran between 'em was the borderline of both regions. Even though both regions often lived in harmoney, there have been some armed quarrels between them. Enough history, on with the pics...
Sight on the ruins of the Oberburg
Sights over the walls of the Oberburg, looking at the Niederburg
Valley shot, with the Lieser river crawling through the landscape
Spying at each other, before NSA-times
From the top of the Donjon of the Oberburg
*Dramatic chipmunk music intensifies*
Looking down from the Donjon onto the ruins of its former surroundings
More
More. The outer walls do give a pretty good picture of the overall blueprint of the place. Sad to see it's all gone though
Intruder alert
Doesn't show as well in the pics, but the scenery is quite amazing
Castle 2: The Niederburg
This castle has been inhabited for quite a while after the Oberburg was destroyed. It wasn't until the French ransacked it at the end of the 17-hundreds that it was abandoned. It's got a lot of rooms still left standing, with of course the obvious damage here and there, as well as the wooden roofs that are lacking et cetera.
Sideview
Closer
Stairway in a rounded guard tower. Well, it's not for fatter people...
The chapel
Some architecture. The entrance to an underground kitchen
Main living quarters of the castle's Lord and his family
People have always enjoyed voyeurism... Even from out of there bedroom window, they liked to look at their neighbours.
Vertical shot up a central guard tower
Neighbours: The Oberburg
Viewing down on parts of the ruins. The blueprint here is a lot more complex. Since people inhabited this castle for a longer period than they did the Oberburg, a lot of addons were built over the years.
Spot the BK11
Valley shot...
Volcanic lakes
As I said before, the region we're in has an interesting geological past. There has been a lot of volcanic activity, up to some 10.000 years ago.
The region is on top of a "hot spot" (hmm, maybe I should've put that in the title?), much like Yellowstone. Unlike yellowstone, the hotspot underneath the Eifel region is dormant at the time. So no eruptions, yet the landscape is still being raised by around 2mm per year, so pressure is building...
After the volcanos in te region erupted and imploded, they left massive craters in the landscape. These slowly filled up to form lakes, or "Maar" is they call them in Germany. Close to the city of Daun, there are three rather large of these volcanic lakes, and we visited all three of them. It's difficult to get a total view of one lake in one picture, but I hope you get the idea and the scale.
This is the Weinfeld Maar, it has the highest elevation and it's the deepest of the three lakes. Notice the slopes
Some piece of lava that was thrown out when it erupted. It's very striking in person, and it contrasts quite heavily with the slate that makes up pretty much everything in the region.
When this tree dropped its leaves, it left a remarkingly white spot underneath
I had to bring a German knife along, even though the other knife in the pic has a designer with German roots... Here's the Mercator and the BK11 on the shores of the Gemünd Maar
Some scenery of the last of the three, the Schalkenmehren Maar.
Here's an quick pic of some tourist information board with an aerial view of the three volcanic lakes. For a better pic, there's always Wikipedia
In the snark thread, I also said I wanted to taste the local specialty: smoked wild boar... Great success!
So I guess we've come to the end of this thread. A bit of a long read, but I hope it was worth your time. Hope you guys enjoyed it.
Jerry/G-Shark
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