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.

may '20: seeking modernism.

super pink rhododendron buds emerging! i start off this post with some flower images to appreciate and praise the time of spring, especially the month of may, which is the most abundant spring month to me personally. all the blossoms, all the fresh greens amass during may, and my heart and mind are hardly ever able to not frolick & gush about it all! for this post i am returning to one walk i did with the sole purpose to find a special mid-century villa in königstein ( which would ultimately prove to be a failure - i did find it, but i couldn't approach it properly to have a good look at it and only ever saw a tiny bit of the garden/forest side ). the whole walk was not a letdown, though, as i did find some other mid-century & brutalism gems and thoroughly enjoyed walking through the old spa town in the taunus mountains. rhododendron shrubs yield all kinds of different blossoms in myriad colours, they are easy to breed, therefore a wide variety can be found all over the wor...

july '20: lake petersdorf discoveries and a plea against genocide.

the green wild meadows of malchow's sandfeld. in the west of malchow there is a big chunk of forest that spans towards plauer see, a widely 'uncultivated' area these days, but it hasn't always been this way. in my last post i mentioned the nazi munition factory that had been built in these woods, away from prying eyes of their enemies and where they also built an external subcamp for the concentration camp ravensbrück. exactly these woods we explored on a pretty sunny day, betraying the darkness that happened around these parts. isn't it weird that there are places in this world that were built or used by dark forces and horrible regimes and you vist them 80 years later and they are the most peaceful places you can imagine? sometimes my brain can't cope with the contrast of knowing what was in the past and what the present looks and feels like. it definitely leaves me with a strange impression often, kind of like a little sting in my heart and brain that is not ...

november: thuringian forest.

the day we visited the thuringian forest near luisenthal we would also receive the death notice of my cousin. while the day in luisenthal was pretty magic - i even found a goat skull to take home for my not so fast growing skull collection - the time we got home and received the phone call of my grandmother, everything went dull. we always had hoped for him to recover - over the course of his sickness there were multiple times we'd thought he was on his way up, but that also counted for the times it was clear that the cancer was severe and probably not defeatable. in the end he fought four years, but he couldn't conquer. his constant optimism & general good will wasn't enough as his body decided to give up on him. i'm still thinking a lot about him, he was such a good natured guy, always seeing the good in everything and everyone. it's so strange to know that he's never going to be on any future family party gathering again. we discussed so many things whe...

ghost of nature.

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