Project 52, Week 34 – Part 5 – Ruth and John’s Visit!

It’s time for Project 52, Week 34 – Part 5!

1998_10_19 3 Lichtenberg

34 weeks ago, on my 52nd birthday, I began Project 52. Since there are 52 weeks in a year, each week I’m taking one year of my life and blogging about it. This week, I’m covering the year I was 34 — June 14, 1998, to June 14, 1999.

However, I can’t seem to restrain myself when it comes to talking about Germany! This is now the fifth post about being 34, after talking about my new home and new job, our vacation in Spittal an der Drau, visiting the village of Sondra, and yet more castles.

In October 1998, Ruth and John came to visit!

The night they arrived, of course, we took them to eat at Falkensteinerhof. It was too dark to see the castle that night, so we took them to Burg Falkenstein the next day.

1998_10_19 5 Falkenstein

1998_10_19 6 Falkenstein

1998_10_19 7 Falkenstein

But that day, October 19, we took them all over Burg Lichtenberg. (This was a castle we’d already visited, Castle #14.)

1998_10_19a 1 Lichtenberg

1998_10_19a 2 Lichtenberg

1998_10_19a 3 Lichtenberg

1998_10_19a 4 Lichtenberg

1998_10_19a 5 Lichtenberg

1998_10_19a 6 Lichtenberg

1998_10_19a 7 Lichtenberg

1998_10_19 1 Burg Lichtenberg

1998_10_19 2 Lichtenberg

Burg Lichtenberg is right outside the village of Ruthweiler, so I thought Ruth should get a picture with the sign, too.

1998_10_19 4 Ruthweiler

And the next day, we took them to the Rhein River. We showed them an old favorite, Burg Rheinfels, but also took them to Castle #61, Burg Sooneck.

1998_10_20 1 Rhein

1998_10_20 1a Sooneck

1998_10_20 2 Sooneck

1998_10_20 3 Sooneck

1998_10_20 4 Sooneck

1998_10_20 5 Sooneck

1998_10_20 6 Sooneck

1998_10_20 7 Sooneck

1998_10_20 8 Sooneck

1998_10_20 9 Sooneck

Here’s Ruth in front of the Lorelei, where sirens used to sing riverboat captains to their doom.

1998_10_20 10 Lorelei

After this, Ruth and John went off to Bavaria and did some sight-seeing on their own. We did some sight-seeing on our own, too, driving into France on October 24, and visiting Castle #62, Chateau de Fleckenstein.

1998_10_24 1 Fleckenstein

1998_10_24 2 Fleckenstein

1998_10_24 3 Fleckenstein

1998_10_24 4 Fleckenstein

1998_10_24 5 Fleckenstein

1998_10_24 6 Fleckenstein

1998_10_24 7 Fleckenstein

1998_10_24 8 Fleckenstein

On October 25, Steve had to work, but the rest of us went with Ruth and John to Trier, where we visited Castle #63, the Kaiserthermen, the Imperial Baths. Now, I know I had a reason for calling these a castle. They were used by the Roman emperors, and I believe it was part of a palace structure… maybe I was stretching it, but it was fun to roam around in the passages with flashlights.

1998_10_25 Kaiserthermen

1998_10_25 2 Kaiserthermen

1998_10_25 3 Kaiserthermen

1998_10_25 4 Kaiserthermen

1998_10_25 5 Kaiserthermen

I’ll finish off this post with some views from our home in Gundersweiler.

1998_11 Gundersweiler View

And this one from the balcony outside my bedroom:

1998_10 1 Balcony View

I was definitely still loving living in Germany! So far, my family seemed to share my enthusiasm for castles! (I never did get tired of them. This was not necessarily true of everyone else by the time our 10 years were up.)

I’m still not even halfway through Year 34. Next up: Eurodisney!

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