christmas was rather quiet and contemplative this year ( it was all that i needed ) and on the last day off we made our way up north into the neighbor state of saxony-anhalt to visit querfurt castle. it was a very dreary and foggy day and everything in this little town and on this castle seemed so very haunted and ghostly. the castle is one of the biggest castles in middle germany and the cities foundations date back to the 8th century. so the whole town ( which is really tiny actually ) is really old. we made a quick side trip to the graveyard and let's just say that it had so many old grave stones where you couldn't even make out the writings anymore. it was a spooky little cemetery, really. this day was kind of magic, i can't put my finger on why it exactly make me feel this way though. i guess it was the combination of the dark, foggy daylight with the ancient architecture.
a beautiful starry portal with lion head above.
the cemetery building.
entrance towards peace.
look at those huge & beautiful mossy graves! you could very clearly imagine a dead body climbing out of them.
a view onto the castle.
these graves stood right in front of the castle. i guess they were even older than the ones in the graveyard.
finally entering the castle.
this tower is called 'der dicke heinrich' ( the fat henry ).
in this building you could find the castle restaurant. the narrow building on the left is the castle church st. mary, peter & paul. its architecture is quite romanic and it dates back to those times.
view onto the city's church & arsenal.
more bits and pieces of the surrounding buildings. on the left you can see the castle church again.
we climbed up one of the many towers to have a narrowed view onto querfurt. when weather is nice you can clearly see a lot more than what is shown here, haha. but doesn't it look eldritch?
christmas decorations soon started to light up.
the tree in the front without the lights was so remarkable to me. i love when nature is crooked and strange :)
a very good view onto the church. i love the romanesque architecture a lot, because it seems so meagre and minimal and it's so dark like the darkest times in the dark age ;)
more city views.
the christmas decorations were not overdone and i loved this about the castle.
this creepy vintage santa was too much, though. it stood outside of the castle restaurant.
the arch of twinkling lights.
when we made our way back to the car we discovered these trenches around the castle. we didn't explore them, though, as it got very dark by now.
a corridor tree. i like to find curious things like these.
one last view onto the castle. there was also a ruinous building right next to the castle that was really, really creepy. apparently it had been a guild hall ( this photo looks definitely not creepy - but it was so dark - i couldn't manage a good picture of it anymore - it's definitely not in such a good shape anymore as it is pictured here ) but it's atmosphere was more likely the one of an abandoned mental institution. my nerves started to tickle just by imagining to enter this house and exploring what was still in there. we didn't enter it, though, it was just too blood-curdling, haha.
Comments