July 8 - Koblenz, Germany, Burg Eltz Castle

Tuesday
This has been a roller coaster day. Verle checked with the airlines to confirm our flight plan and learned that our Air India flight for tomorrow (Wednesday) has been canceled. Our flight has been rescheduled for Thursday, so we notified the kids and booked an extra day at the hotel here and bought some fruit for these three days. When we returned from our visit to the Burg Eltz castle, Verle had to go into the Spam Patrol to find the flight E-mail -- they had rescheduled us for our original time tomorrow, but with America Airlines! So we're back to our original plan!! Oh, my!
We took the train to Moselkern and then a one hour walk up to the Burg Eltz castle. We didn't know if we'd want to walk an hour up and an hour back down, but decided that it should be easy after walking an hour and a half in Budapest carrying our backpacks. We were right -- it was an especially lovely walk through the forests along the Eltz River.



The walk wasn't steep at all except for about 100 steps up to the castle at the end.

As we walked, we were reminded of our walk with Dave and Gaye Traster to the restaurant above the Katy trail near Rockeport, Missouri. Some of the path had rocks and sometimes they were damp and a bit slick. I decided that Lee was right to object to my Ecco sandals for walking on these surfaces. Hiking boots would have been much better. It's amazing that Verle's shoes have held up. He kept losing pieces of the outer layer of the sole of his shoes the first week of our trip. Fortunately, the shoes haven't gotten any worse and we haven't had to pay 1 ½ times the price at home because of the $/Euro exchange if we had bought new shoes here.
We laugh at many of the German words. "Fahrt" in German means trip or journey. We see every kind of combination of words ending with "fahrt" and joke about how funny they sound to us.
Steve's listed Burg Eltz as one of the best castles -- and we agree. It is very well preserved and elegant.

We had a very informative guide for the 40 minute tour of the castle. The information he shared may bore readers of this journal, but is very interesting to us, so it is included here:
-- Three families lived in separate sections of the castle with each part reached only through the courtyard, though they had a large room where they often met for secret planning and decision making. The court jester was an important part of these meetings, because he could say anything he wanted to -- it was not regarded seriously. The castle overlooked a main travel route. Unless noble families had a lot of property, they couldn't build a large castle on their own.
-- The castle was built and enlarged from 1400-1800. Nobility at that time spoke French. Tapestry covered the walls, partly to help keep warmth in the rooms.
-- About 200 people lived in the castle and 100-200 servants lived in the valley below.
-- The castle was abandoned in the 1800's, because living in the villages was more comfortable.
-- There are 40 fireplaces in the castle, but each family used only two or three at a time because of the fire hazard and the large amount of timber required to heat the large building.
-- The beds were elevated with curtains around them, because it was warmer nearer the ceiling and the curtains held in the heat.
-- One very interesting sleeping room was painted with decorations all over the ceilings and walls. 10-20 family members slept in the room that had the burning fireplace in order to share its warmth.
-- The common people couldn't read the Bible and they couldn't understand the church masses in Latin, so they studied the religious paintings of the time to learn the stories of the Bible.
-- The priest spoke from a bay window area that stuck out from the room because it was believed to be sinful to live directly above the area from which he ministered.


-- The castle had 20 toilets with running water -- when it rained. Summers with little rain must have been interesting!
-- Restoration of the castle was carried out between 1848 and 1888. It is still expensive to maintain. (Equivalent of 10-12 million Euros?)
-- The names Jacob and Karl were repeated down through the Eltz family.
-- The princes were chosen by prince electors. They gave their vote to the candidate who gave them the most money, so the electors were quite wealthy. They inherited the right to elect the princes.
-- A picture in the castle showed the signing a treaty at the end of the thirty year war between the Protestants and the Catholics. This war escalated into a war across Europe, which is regarded as the first world war in Europe.
-- The doorways are low, and the armor is for smaller men than today. One suit of armor fit a six foot man. He was considered a giant.
-- Children were married at 14-15 years of age to insure noble offspring. Many did not live to maturity.
-- Down stairways in castles all across Europe were built in a counterclockwise direction so that right handed knights would have an advantage from above in hand-to-hand combat. (Everyone was right handed, because left handed was considered evil and parents forced children to use their right hands.)
-- Each of the three family groups had their own kitchen. Baskets hung from the ceilings on ropes to protect against rats and mice.
-- The Germans have an expression for doing a stupid thing, "Stepped in the fat bowl." This comes from the bowl that was set beneath hanging meat to catch the valuable fat.
-- The walls are about 1 yard thick. Rocks fill the walls. Refrigerators are built into the walls and stay cold for a long time. Small earthquakes move the rocks and cause the walls to crack.