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october '17: castle of happy return.

castle of happy return in wolfersdorf.

in late october / early november i made my way to thuringia again, to spend the first week of  my vacations at my parent's place ( the second week we drove to potsdam ). on the last day of october we made our way to a tiny village called wolfersdorf, for the main reason of visiting a hidden castle and a market that took place there. the day started out really dark & moody, but it brightened up later. in retrospect i really liked getting to know this little gem of thuringia that's hidden in the back country somewhere near jena. to get there we had to drive on a very bumpy road, passing by cows & hilly meadows, actually a really tranquil region. more than once i thought to myself, my goodness, where are we driving to? because the place seemed so sealed off from civilization. in the end, i really loved exactly this fact. i would love to visit this region again in the future, for sure.

wolfersdorf castle was erected from 1548 to 1550 by nikolaus gromann for john frederick I, elector of saxony. it's build on an island in the middle of a tiny lake ( even though i can't remember that the lake was full with water, at least not entirely. ) it was used for a very long time by the aristocracy until they were expropriated in 1945/46 after the big war. the last owner ernst II, duke of saxe-altenburg, was allowed to stay in the castle until he died in 1955 and after that it was used as a youth facility, which wasn't exactly beneficial to the overall structure and the historical elements got tampered with on a pretty heavy level. after the fall of the wall a citizen of jena bought the castle and since then he's been working on reviving & restoring the beautiful castle to its former glory.

again, i kept experimenting with the programs on my camera. i didn't take a lot of photos, though. why that is, i can't really answer. in my memory i was absolutely impressed with this castle, but i suspect it was so cold that i often buried my hands inside my coat instead of taking photos... another reason might be that we visited this place together with my cousin & his family, so i probably was talking & interacting with them quite a lot and forgot to take pictures. things like that happen from time to time, i guess ^^;

i am so in love with this shot, especially because the sun emerged after a tiny rain shower and shone a light on the beautiful neo-gothic extension and the historic renaissance building. the super dark sky lets the castle shine like a diamond, right?

i love that the turret next to the spiral stair tower is not restored yet and shows the old half-timbered work. there's still a lot of work to do on this castle, but step by step they seem to move forward.


the bell tower of the castle chapel.

yup, clearly i found the HDR button again.

we made a small tour through the castle as well. this room was probably the most beautiful with its blue coloured walls and the wooden interior. a lot of the rooms inside the castle are still in renovation mode - the use as GDR youth center did a lot of damage and it's apparently quite a hassle to restore everything to its prior beauty. 

this room was another restored one, and the main eye-catcher was the beautiful pan ceiling.

absolutely mesmerizing 😍

there were a lot of antlers hanging around as well. apparently this room has always been some kind of conference room.

i really love how this picture turned out. ( notice the modern wire snaking out the door - hissssssssss )

i had to get this shot in HDR as well.
  
these leaveswere really that bright. couldn't believe it myself.

some scaffolding indicates more restoration work being done.

after our castle visit we made a short walk through the nearby woods before we headed back home again.


rootage.

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