I’ve been blogging about my 60th Birthday Trip to Germany last June, and I’ve finally reached the last day, Friday, June 21.

I had another wonderful breakfast at Waldhotel Heller, packed up my little Fiat 500, and headed north on the 63 Autobahn – the same one we drove so many times going to the airport, that wasn’t even connected up to the other Autobahn when we first moved there. (So a new, straight, flat Autobahn with very little traffic began near our house. I got used to driving at high speeds on that road. When it was connected up, it was a little sad to lose that, but it was also quicker to drive to Ramstein.)

My flight didn’t leave until 5 pm, so I went to Hofheim, right near the airport, where my friend Jeanine lives. Back in 1998 or so, Jeanine and I were both married to members of the USAFE Band, and we hit it off when she and her husband moved there. And then she got a job at the base library where I was already working, each of us sharing a job, so working 20 hours each. And we got to know each other better. Jeanine ended up marrying a German and staying in Germany – I always envied her a bit for that. But it was delightful to see her!

First we had lunch there in the Zentrum of Hofheim.

I’d actually gone all that time without eating Schnitzel. This one came with a green sauce that was delicious.

Jeanine’s apartment overlooks Hofheim.

And then Jeanine took me on a lovely walking tour of the Altstadt.

The old city wall of Hofheim is still standing in spots.

Since it’s a fortification and over 100 years old – built in 1352 – I decided to count it as Castle #175.

I still love those onion dome churches so common in this area.

And then it was off to the airport and flying back to America.

It turned out that my 10-day trip was just about perfect. I’d been able to remind myself of the many things about Germany that make my heart happy, see friends, make new memories, and I was coming home refreshed.

I’m blogging about my 60th Birthday Trip to Germany last June. Now I’m up to my last full day in Germany, which was Thursday, June 20.

As every day, I started out with a delicious breakfast at Waldhotel Heller. Then that day I decided there was some shopping I wanted to do before I left, so I headed for downtown Kaiserslautern and the Fußgängerzone. (Basically that means – foot-walker zone or, yeah, Pedestrian zone.) The grand bookstore Gondrom wasn’t there any more, but there was another bookstore in the same place.

I took a few pictures in Kaiserslautern:

The name of this shop made me laugh:

I did make a couple of great finds at the bookstore. Die Seufzende Wendeltreppe is the German translation of The Screaming Staircase and is absolutely perfect for Sonderling Sunday. The Ebbes game is a fairly simple card game, but it’s got a Pfälzisch translation and includes a map of the Pfalz – so it’s a perfect local souvenir.

After that, alas! The amazing bakery in Enkenbach where I used to go with my German coworker Elfriede with any excuse at all, but particularly on my birthdays – that bakery is no longer open. But I had been craving Erdbeerküchen (fresh strawberry cake) on every birthday since I left Germany, so I wasn’t about to leave without getting some. The second most legendary bakery from our time in Germany was Cafe Goldinger in Landstuhl – so after shopping, I headed there for lunch and finally got myself a slice of Erdbeerküchen.

Okay, once that was done, I’d checked off the places I simply had to revisit for nostalgia’s sake. So how would I spend my last afternoon in Germany? Why, visit a new castle, of course. I’d decided to head south, in the Pfälzerwald near my hotel, and headed for Madenburg.

Once again, it took some ignoring GPS. I actually asked a German about parking, and got good advice to drive a little further. It was still quite a hike up to the castle, but I like hiking, so it’s all a win. Once there, another castle to roam around with a great view.

The view from a German castle is always wonderful! (Rather than moated castles, they’re pretty much always built on hilltops. At least in the Pfalz.)

This picture shows perfectly what I mean when I say I spent a lot of time driving through hilly curving forest roads.

And there was a castle restaurant!

The salad I ordered was delicious and filling. (I was tired after the hike up to this castle – it was over a mile.)

Then more roaming around:

Then it was back for my last night of Balcony Reading at Waldhotel Heller, and the prettiest sunset yet to send me off.

I’m blogging about my 60th Birthday Trip back to Germany last June. I’m up to Day 9, which was Wednesday, June 19. I had spent the afternoon driving over the hills and through the meadows to Burg Montfort, where I roamed around and took lots of pictures.

My plan after Burg Montfort included another favorite restaurant that had been closed on Monday and Tuesday – Falkensteinerhof. But Falkensteinerhof was just a bit up the road from a favorite castle, Burg Falkenstein.

I thought I was clever to come to Falkensteinerhof from the north, instead of taking the road between our former homes and the castle. Because that particular road has a 25% grade. My husband had always been the driver when we drove that ridiculously steep road, and even that way, it gave me the willies. The village of Falkenstein (“Falcon-stone”) is on the south side of the largest mountain in the area, the Donnersberg. So on my trip in June, I approached from the north and went up the side of the mountain more gradually, instead of driving straight up to the castle. There are small roads that encircle the Donnersberg, so I was also planning to go back to the hotel after taking in more of the mountain, going around the back side – and avoiding that 25% grade.

I’m a little sad that Burg Falkenstein was our Castle #2 instead of Castle #1. When we first moved to Germany, we were in billeting at Ramstein Air Force Base for three weeks – so the first castle we visited, Burg Nanstein, was closer to Ramstein. Burg Falkenstein was closer to Sembach Air Force Base, the base where my husband was actually stationed (and where I worked at the library), and only about twenty minutes from our homes.

So – when we had visitors from America, who were inevitably jet lagged – a perfect first night activity was to take them to dinner at Falkensteinerhof and then walk over to the castle and roam around the castle, taking in the view. It didn’t involve much driving, didn’t have to take long, and tired people could enjoy it. And visitors from America always think it’s pretty cool to roam around a castle built in 1135 AD.

The restaurant, Falkensteinerhof, has changed hands in the 18 years since we lived there. Now it seems to cater to backpackers and hikers on the Donnersberg. Instead of wait service, you pick up your own food from a counter. It was still very cloudy, and looked like it might rain, so I didn’t eat out on the balcony, but I did choose a table overlooking the big windows.

I had one of those delicious German salads where they don’t toss all the ingredients together, but you find goodies each in a section of their own.

After I finished eating, I was invited to stay and watch World Cup Soccer on the big screen TV that people were gathering for, and I was tempted (that would have reminded me of our last year in Germany), but I still wanted to roam around the castle and get to my hotel before dark. Since dark doesn’t happen in June until about 10 pm, I still had plenty of time, but it might be awkward to leave before the game ended. So next stop was a few hundred yards down the road to Burg Falkenstein. (I drove because although the distance is short, it, too, is steep to walk – though not the 25% grade.)

Burg Falkenstein really did get my nostalgia going again. I can’t even tell you how many times we visited this castle. As I mentioned, it was our favorite place to bring visitors on their first night in Germany. This stone at the front, declaring it was built in 1135, seriously impressed me when we were new to Germany and first saw it. As an American, I’m not used to 850-year-old buildings!

The entrance is a little spooky. I think the cannon is new, though. (I’ll have to check my old pictures.)

And then, as always, wonderful shapes in the ruins.

And, oh, the view from that back wall!

There’s the village of Falkenstein below us. (The 25% grade road goes through the village.)

Looking south, this is pretty typical landscape for that region of Germany, but up on the side of the Donnersberg, you can see far.

Our landlady told us a story of why there was a bell tower without a church in Falkenstein. I think it had to do with there was a Catholic church in the village, so this bell tower was for the Protestants? (I could be totally wrong about that.)

Donkeys!

Sheep!

This is the back way out of the castle:

This wall at Burg Falkenstein is an icon in my heart. Now I’m outside at its base, looking up.

Walking around the side of the castle back to the front.

This informative sign comes when you’re almost done. Some day, I’ll try to figure out how it fits onto the parts we roam around.

The amphitheater at the front used to host performances in the summer (though we never did attend one). At this point in our castle tours, our kids would play Three Billy Goats Gruff with the bridge. Usually Daddy would be the troll.

So then I drove the back way around the Donnersberg – more beautiful roads I’d driven many times – and back to Waldhotel Heller in Elmstein, where I was still in time for leisurely reading on my balcony and a beautiful sunset.

I’m blogging about my sixtieth birthday trip to Germany last June – and I’m up to June 19, Day 9.

It was Wednesday – and now some of my favorite restaurants would be open. I thought I’d checked all of them and found them closed Monday and Tuesday, so I was planning to head for a big favorite, located in a castle – Altenbaumburg – on Wednesday, and then hit a new castle nearby. But alas! When I checked Tuesday night, it turned out that the restaurant at Altenbaumburg has its rest days on Wednesday and Thursday – so I was out of luck this time. (And it would have been a perfect place to visit after driving by my former homes on Monday. Oh well!)  I guess I hadn’t checked it after all.

I still had gotten interested in the castle close to Altenbaumburg, in the region north of where we had lived, fairly close to Gundersweiler, my favorite home base, and further up B48.  So I decided to go there anyway.

But first I had two things in mind – first shopping at what used to be called Real, and now is called the Pfalzcentre.  I’d already driven past it twice.  It’s a small shopping mall, anchored by a large store kind of like a Walmart.  Back in the day, I used to find awesome German games there, and that was where I learned about the Spiel des Jahres – the annual German prize for the best game.

I was disappointed in the selection of games, and the ones I ended up getting are available in America anyway.  I also bought a book, hoping to use it for Sonderling Sunday. I thought with the name Jane Austen bleibt zum Frühstück (“Jane Austen Stays for Breakfast”), it would surely have an English translation. But alas! I haven’t been able to find any English versions of this author’s books on Amazon. I tell myself some day I’ll get around to reading it in German.

However, all of that was worth it because I scored a special Deutschland Collection Ravensburger puzzle of Burg Eltz!

Yes, later it was a challenge getting it into my suitcase, but it was worth it. The “Deutschland Collection” puzzles are not available on Amazon, and Burg Eltz was my family’s castle number 39, visited in October 1997. (That evening I thought about going to visit it on Thursday, but it was a solid two hours away, so I decided not this trip.) One of the other puzzles I saw in the “Deutschland Collection” was a picture of the German National Football (Soccer) Team. (The World Cup was happening in Germany at the time.) I wasn’t tempted by that one, but I thought it was funny. Those athletes have to be proud to be part of a Ravensburger puzzle!

I lucked out on weather, because it was foggy as I drove through the forest (That was a little creepy – but in an adventurous way!), and it was rainy while I was shopping, but no more rain the rest of the day. After shopping, next up was a trip to the Flammküchenhütte, a restaurant near where we lived in Sembach that specializes in every kind of Flammküchen (a local dish, a little bit like pizza) you can imagine, but is only open for limited hours a few days a week. So I wanted to catch it before the lunch hours ended.

I ordered Spargel Flammküchen, because that seemed like the ultimate German dish. Spargel is asparagus, and when it’s in season, every restaurant in the country makes a special Spargelkarte – Asparagus Menu. So I was glad I was there for part of the season.

So by the time I finished, it was early afternoon, and time to head to a castle!

I’d chosen Burg Montfort because it was near Altenbaumburg up north on B48. But it turned out there was some kind of road closure near Rockenhausen on B48 – so Google Maps took me on even smaller roads.

Reader, it was delightful!

I couldn’t film while I drove, but driving over hills and around bends out in the German countryside simply made my heart happy. I took a picture of a car on a road later when I was at the castle, because it felt like a good glimpse of exactly what I’d been doing:

The picture gives you an idea of the size of the roads, plus the hills, fields, and trees that I traveled over that day.

I was proud of finding my way to the castle. Because Google maps tried to make me turn left a few moments after I’d seen a small sign saying Burg Montfort was straight ahead. After foolishly following Google the day before, this time, I went with my Castle-Finding Skills developed over ten years in Germany. I found a parking place at the foot of a trail to the castle. Yes! A sign there said the castle was built in the 13th Century. Please note that this kind of visitor in a German village parking lot doesn’t even faze me – this is farm country!

And from there – I hiked the half a kilometer to the castle.

Once I got there, I did what I do at every castle – roamed and climbed over every inch and took lots and lots of pictures. Yes, I’ve narrowed these down. But I hope they give you an idea of the joy of roaming over a castle.

Could you resist these stairs? I could not!

And then of course there are amazing views from the top.

When I looked over the main castle, there was a couple there who looked like they’d been backpacking. They left shortly after I climbed down the tower – and those were the only other people I saw at this castle.

Okay, I did get the willies at this part – but that didn’t stop me from taking pictures.

And when I found a short doorway, I had to take a selfie showing that I’m so tall, I fill the doorway!

Now some of the lovely views on the ground floor. (I love wildflowers growing in ruins, and I love the picturesque shapes the ruins make. As you can see.)

Yes, I know I overdo it with castle pictures! (Believe it or not, I weeded them down.) I hope this gives you an idea of the fun I had roaming over the castle, spotting beautiful angles. It brings me right back.

And finally it was time to hike back down the trail through the forest to my car:

It all added up to a glorious afternoon at a 700-year-old castle ruin.

I’m slowly blogging about my 60th Birthday Trip back to Germany last June. The morning and early afternoon of Day 8, June 18, I spent at the Zweibrücken Rose Garden. On the way back from Zweibrücken, I’d decided to revisit Castles #23, 24, and 25 – which my family had visited on July 8, 1997 – during our first year living in Germany. You can read about the original visit in my Project 52 post for the year I was 33.

Why did I want to revisit those particular castles? I think it was partly because the day we’d gone in 1997 had been stunningly beautiful, and I’d taken some pictures that are still on my walls. A lot like the day I visited this year! – blue skies with bright white clouds doing interesting things. Those first castles we visited, I was so excited, I framed my favorites. As the years went by, there were too many good ones, and that fell by the wayside – but I still have some pictures from Dahn on my walls.

Another reason is that the three castles at Dahn are in the center of a part of the Pfälzerwald with lots of castles, rock formations, and hiking. And over the years, my family had visited several other castles in that region, which always reminded me of Dahn, and usually took us through the town of Dahn. It’s kind of a touristy place – for European tourists – and stayed in my mind as a place worth visiting. And it was nicely in between Zweibrücken and my hotel – so it seemed like the perfect time to go.

Now I also had in mind that – this time – I would find Burg Neudahn. The castle complex we’d visited includes Burg Altdahn, but many times we’d passed a sign for Burg Neudahn – but never managed to find the actual castle. I was thinking that now, traveling in Germany with GPS, I’d be able to drive right to it! I looked it up on the internet and it really does exist and you really can visit it. And I found directions, and decided to go to Neudahn first and add a new castle to my Castle Count.

And, reader, I utterly failed.

I did pass the sign for Burg Neudahn, well before I got into the town of Dahn, but my GPS was telling me to drive on. My undoing was that I trusted the GPS. It led me quite a bit further, took me into town, and had me turn down a small street behind some shops and wanted me to drive down a private road – with absolutely no sign of a castle anywhere near.

By this time I was super hot. I’d gotten a bit sunburned at the Rose Garden, and my sweet little car wasn’t air conditioned. And I had spotted an ice cream shop up in the town. So I parked my car there behind the shops and walked up and got a couple scoops of wonderful German ice cream (It’s almost always made on the premises), and that improved my spirits immensely. Here’s a picture of a rock formation I could see from where I parked my car:

I asked the lady at the shop where Neudahn was, and she was directing me to what I knew was the Altdahn Castle Complex, so I decided to just go ahead and go to that, since I knew it was easy to find. And Burg Neudahn is, once again, the castle maybe I’ll find on my next trip.

There are three castles at Dahn, so close to each other, they’re basically touching. I’m not completely sure why they call them three castles, but they are Burg Altdahn, Burg Grafendahn, and Burg Tanstein.

It took a short uphill hike to get to the castles, and I had the thrill of the first glimpse of the castle looming above me.

The hike made me hot again, so when I saw the shop had the popsicles that my kids always begged for at castles – I had to indulge!

And from there, it was roaming around the castles!

You can tell one of the things I love about castles are the intriguing shapes left by the ruins.

So yes, I was in my happy place – roaming all over an old German castle ruin, not having to worry about anyone getting impatient with me for spending my time taking pictures.

The rest will be mainly pictures. Again, believe it or not, I have considerably weeded this down from the number I actually took. When I was there in 1997, I was using a film camera, so I exercised a lot more restraint (but even then, my family got impatient).

Oh, since almost all the castles from our region of Germany were built on a hill, they always have wonderful views.

And I love the wildflowers growing out of rocks.

Some of the staircases were treacherous.

But just roaming all over the castle was so much fun. And remembering doing it with my kids added to the fun.

I laughed when I saw they’d made some of the stairs much less treacherous:

Ha! These! These are the very stairs where my two-year-old decided they’d had enough and threw a fit and sat down and refused to budge – and the stairs were so awful, I was afraid to try to pick them up. I have to say I completely endorse the improvement!

And here’s the picture from 1997 for comparison:

More roaming:

Finally heading back to the car park past the little shop:

Now, when I’d first arrived at the car park, a man I saw there urged me to take a second path for a lovely view of the castles. I wasn’t willing to stay away from the castles at that point, but that was what I did after roaming all over them. A short and blessedly flat walk led to this outlook:

It was shaded and restful and I snapped plenty of pics.

And as all my other days in the Pfälzerwald, I finished my day at Waldhotel Heller enjoying my balcony until the sun went down around 10 pm. Another truly wonderful day in Germany!

I’m slowly blogging about my 60th birthday trip back to Germany last June. On Day 8, I decided to do one of my favorite things for a June day in Germany and visit the Zweibrücken Rosengarten, about an hour from where I was staying.

We did this as a family I think three times when we lived in Germany (from 1996 to 2006). I remember for sure we went once on my birthday and once when my husband’s parents were visiting, so at least twice.

I admit my least favorite part of driving in Europe is driving in cities. I love the country roads and villages, but city streets are more challenging. Still, GPS was easier than the old days of navigating with print-outs from Mapquest, and I made it safely to the parking lot and took a deep breath as I walked the broad tree-lined path to the gate.

Once I got inside, there’s not a lot to say. I roamed among the roses for a couple hours. Took lots and lots of pictures.

So I’m going to post a small selection of the pictures I took on that lovely day, roaming the roses in Germany.

Eventually, I had lunch – some delicious Flammküchen, with Apfelsaftschorle (especially in honor of my daughter – and then when I drank it, I remembered how good it is, and it was for me).

My kids played chess with this chess set when we were here before:

All that time outdoors, and I did get a little sunburned. It was the hottest I got on the whole trip – but definitely worth it. After a soul-feeding time in the garden, I was ready to spend the rest of my day visiting castles – stay tuned!

I’m very slowly blogging about my 60th birthday trip back to Germany last June.

I started the trip in Leipzig, visiting my friend Kate from the library. I’d driven across the country on Sunday, so Day 7, Monday, June 17, was my first full day in the area where I’d lived for ten years from 1996 to 2006, when my then-husband was in the Air Force Band. I was staying in the Pfälzerwald, a National Forest full of castles and hills, where we’d spent plenty of time as a family, but a bit south of where we’d actually lived.

Those ten years in Germany were some of the best of my life – but also some of the worst of my life, because it was where my marriage fell apart and my husband left me. It was where we lived when my kids were young, where we had amazing adventures as a young family, and I knew there was danger both of missing that time far too much, but also reliving the hurt of rejection from my husband.

So – I’d planned the trip trying to draw a fine line between nostalgia and making new experiences.

Mind you, Germany is a place I love with all my heart. Those forested hills are so beautiful. I like the German spirit of efficiency and practicality. And it was just a wonderful place to live. I love visiting castles. I love hiking and driving through forested hills. I even love the cool weather in the summertime. The trip really did succeed in reminding me of the things that make my heart happy about Germany.

But Monday afternoon, I did indulge in a little nostalgia – I drove past all four homes where we lived during our ten years there.

First, I drove into Kaiserslautern and bought gas (just in time). Then I decided to head toward House #4 in Sembach village – and take a look at Sembach Air Base while I was at it. That was the base (smaller than Ramstein, but nearby) where my husband was stationed and where my kids went to school and I worked at the base library. Our fourth home was five minutes from the base in the village there.

The house looks small in the picture, but it has four bedrooms upstairs, a large living room/dining room – and then that much space again in the basement – another bedroom, another kitchen, and a large family room. Oh, also a storage room. The backyard is very large, too. But that is where we lived when my husband started having an affair – so not quite as many good memories there.

And then I drove to Leithöfe, our first home in Germany. We shared a house with the landlord’s family. They were upstairs and we were downstairs.

I was shy about taking pictures of the house at Leithöfe, because I’d called their old number and left a message my first night in Germany, but then when I got some kind of message, hadn’t been able to set up the voicemail with the chip that was allowing me to make European calls. And I hadn’t tried calling again. So it felt like it would be rude to just show up at their house. So I parked in front of a hedge, invisible from the house.

That house has an amazing view out over the valley, because it’s built on the side of a hill. We used to love walking up the hill as a family.

Here’s a stealthy and not at all adequate picture of the house. (What I should have done was driven down the road toward Potzbach and taken a picture from a distance. Oh well.)

And here’s a picture of the road toward Höringen, which was the way I went to get to our second German home, in Gundersweiler.

Driving between those villages, on roads I used to travel often stirred up all the feels! Next stop was Gundersweiler.

Gundersweiler is still by far my favorite of all the homes where I’ve ever lived. It’s full of craftsmanship, lots of wood trim, a balcony upstairs, big huge windows with a wonderful view, and just a marvelous place to live.

Again, I didn’t want to be super obvious about taking pictures of the house. As at Leithöfe, I was tempted to park and take a walk up the hill, as we used to do as a family – but I felt funny if anybody saw me and wondered what I was up to, and I also was a little afraid it would make me miss my young family just a little too much. I decided my hike in a new place that morning was the right approach and I’d keep those old memories as treasures in my heart.

Here are a couple pictures of the view from that house – though not as grand because not up as high.

And they’re building something in front of the house across the narrow street – but I don’t think it will really block the view because it’s all on a hillside.

Then I drove from Gundersweiler back toward Sembach Air Base – and just marveled and marveled at how just plain gorgeous our drive to work used to be. It was a little long – a good solid half-hour (and worse if you got stuck behind a tractor) – but oh, so beautiful. And no traffic lights at all! It’s little country roads all the way, going through a few quaint villages. (There is one place where a train crosses the road, but we rarely had to stop for that.)

I think before I went to House #3, I tried to go into Winnweiler to have dinner at Max’s. But construction had the whole center of the village blocked off except for residents, and I wasn’t bold enough to try to figure out where to park and go in. I drove around Winnweiler a bit trying to figure it out, and then headed toward Alsenborn and House #3.

This place was a big come-down after the Gundersweiler home, but it was brand-new when we lived there, and we had the home on the end.

This one, alas, didn’t have much of a view and wasn’t on a hill, but you could still walk around the corner into fields and forest and go for a hike.

I liked all the flags on display – World Cup Soccer was happening during my visit.

So that was my look back at some wonderful times and wonderful homes. Lots of mixed emotions going on in my heart.

Then I headed back toward Waldhotel Heller in Elmstein. I stopped on the way at Barbarossahof (a nice hotel) for dinner. It’s right on the road to Kaiserslautern.

And that started my pattern for my week in Elmstein. I headed out after breakfast at the hotel. Spent a full day adventuring, and came back around 7 pm. The sun doesn’t go down in June until about 10 pm, so I’d go out on the balcony and read and write in my journal.

That day, the sun had finally come out, slanting and making everything golden. It was simply beautiful.

I did take a picture of the car that had taken me adventuring.

And looking out over the village as the sun went down. Pure peace.