lookout point at the runway 18 west of frankfurt airport.
last year my parents visited me for easter on a long week-end, which we used for visiting various places that were a bit farther away from us. on the first day of their visit we drove to frankfurt's airport in the morning to watch the planes take off on the runway 18 west, an airstrip that got its own lookout point. it's close to walldorf-mörfelden and i had previously passed by it in march, when i visited the city to explore the neutra settlement. my dad is a huge aircraft fan, always watching the planes above our heads when we are out and about, classifying them via a mobile app, so i figured it would be amazing for my dad to see this place up close. we were there quite early around 10 am, but when we arrived there already were lots of people around the lookout point, populating the seating steps, with cameras and viewfinders at the ready. i am not a technology buff, but even for me it was quite impressing to see the launching aeroplanes rising into the sky, their engines making a hell of a ruckus like a formula one race car. and especially in such close intervals. every 10 minutes or so a new airplane takes off towards the south. but there are also some touching down, mostly planes coming in from the west landing on the two main airstrips.
the viewing point with lots of ( mostly male, lol ) plane watchers. in the background you see a lufthansa airplane landing on one of the central runways.
the same plane now almost on the ground. in the back you can see the skyline of frankfurt with its skyscrapers.
barbed wire fences enclose the runway 18 west to stop possible disrupters from running onto it.
a british airways aeroplane driving onto the runway west.
turns out that capturing the start and landing of planes is quite an endeavour, most of my pictures turned out awfully blurry and i ended up deleting them, and decided against uploading subpar images, lol. hence why i now am only showing you a very dialed down set of pictures.
i think we spent about an hour watching the airplanes, until we packed up again and continued to drive to weinheim, a city in the north-west of baden-württemberg, situated near the low mountain range of the odenwald. the district is called 'bergstraße', which historically was a route that passed the western edge of the odenwald in a north - south direction. the route is subdivided into the hessian bergstraße and the baden bergstraße, as it runs through two german states ( hessia and baden-württemberg ). i had heard that the region was quite beautiful, with lots of vineyards and good views on the rhine-neckar landscapes surrounding it. when i researched on which city to visit, weinheim caught my eye because it had two castles and seemed to feature a really lovely old city with gorgeous parks. it looked to me really worthwhile. and it turned out to be a very good decision after all, because, yes, it lived up to its reputation!
our first stop was the wachenburg castle, a rather young building which looks like a castle and feels like a castle, but isn't exactly a castle. it is actually an assembly building for a collegiate corporation ( the weinheim senioren-convent ) built from 1907 to 1928 by arthur wienkoop & august bode. it felt quite elitist, though it was open to the public when we visited. i don't know what it is about collegiate corporations, but to me they always seem like these elitist, bolstered up clubs that might have deep roots in rightist world views, looking down upon the plebs and inferior subjects of society ( probably not all of them adhere to my prejudice, though ^^; ). so, exploring this castle felt strange to me, because there were so many signs everywhere that pointed towards these unions, and the general environment feeling was that of a higher-up society allowing us small people a glimpse into their world. but then again... i couldn't deny that the castle was still very interesting, especially being a good example of romanticized and historicized castle construction, as it was inspired by old salic royal palaces, which were all built in the romanesque style. this style is known for stronghold walls that have tiny windows and also for round arches, tall towers and decorative arcading. all these attributes can be found in this castle as well, but there's a lot of elements typical of the time of the early 20th century involved, too. for example the interiors are decidedly non-romanesque and appear more biedermeier-esque. of course there's also plumbing and and electric light that got added as well.
the fortress walls i referred to as stronghold. i liked the use of the more or less unhewn rocks.
the rocks make you believe that you indeed got an age-old castle in front of you, but it's actually just cleverly disguised clinker work.
the lush greens of spring trees were adding a little zest to the cold stone walls.
this gate tower is probably the most outstanding part of the castle, it bears lots and lots of engraved crests. all of them are crests of the several german student corps that belong to the umbrella association that is the weinheim senioren-convent.
the entrance to the castle is pretty formidable, methinks. the gate tower and also the big donjon are quite the showstoppers. from here the romanesque character gives way to a style that looks rather 'simple', almost archaic even.
it IS quite a beaut, this gate, isn't it?
entering the chapter hall & refectory. back we go to early romanesque times.
i really loved the chapter hall with its old and worn out wooden furniture, the red paneling and the baroque-ly framed statue dude. there's also another reference to the romanesque style, the wheel chandelier.
such a moody room.
another floor down and you would enter the fuchsenkeller, basically a cellar room that got repurposed into some kind of party room? i mean, look at that super modern bar in the back!
back outside we enjoyed a little view of the surrounding landscapes. that's weinheim down there, and also lots of other small towns. in the very far back you can even make out the weinstraße, another historic route that meanders along the margins of the palatinate forest this time. but only if you squint your eyes ;P mannheim and ludwigshafen, two really big cities in this area, are also sorta visible here, way in the back. you see, the rhein-neckar region is quite populated, and is generally kind of like the rhein-main region where i live, lots of industry and agriculture and villages and towns strung up like pearls on a chain.
that tall donjon is also impressive from the courtyard. it reminded me of an italian bell tower.
back inside we discovered the big ballroom, which was decorated quite medieval.
those wheel chandeliers were even bigger here than in the other rooms. typical for corporation assembly rooms are the many flags everywhere, all of them representing the various fraternities. the hall breathed a rather sovereign air. my mind is conjuring up a scene of fencing duels between rivaling fraternities and huge masculine gatherings declaring loud sappy verdicts of honour and pride.
i really hope that this chandelier will never fall down whenever there's an assembly going on, lol.
to the outside we return to marvel at some more details. loved these shutters!
back outside the castle grounds i discovered an underbridge that led to another courtyard. it was hewn into a big rock where you could see the outcrop of it.
this was the second courtyard, where there was a rather cubic annex to the castle that reminded me a lot of more modern architecture forms like functionalism and new objectivity? with a twist, though ;) the slated cladding reminded me of sequinned surfaces that when you sweep over them with your hands, change their direction and change their colour.
next we visited another castle, windeck castle. from the ruins of this castle you will have a fantastic view onto weinheim's inner city, highlighting the medieval character of it.
i mean, hello tiny crammed old city? it's very clear where the old core begins and the outer parts of the city continue. just look for the old and then the modern buildings and you will soon get an idea on what is generally a german city structure.
the church you see here is st. laurentius - a catholic beauty in round arch style. it was built between 1911 and 1913 by church architect ludwig maier and was his final project before he died. on the right next to the church is a big building that belongs to the church as well, it's the parish office, formerly a carmelite abbey. the white building with the many turrets in the back is part of the weinheim palace, now functioning as an registry office. in front of st. laurentius is the market square where in basically every building sits a restaurant. let me tell you, that this square was way too busy for me, even though it was such a beautiful ensemble!
st. laurentius up close. it reminded me so much of byzantine or old roman temples.
weinheim has a wonderful old city, the tanner's quarter. it's super picturesque and charming, i basically wanted to move there immediately.
from windeck castle you also get to see wachenburg castle.
there's a beer garden and small bistro up on windeck castle and they decorated the structure with lots of easter stuffs.
windeck castle, though ruinous, still is quite marvellous. it's a really nice place for excursion breaks, to drink a cool beverage and eat a hearty snack or a coffee/cake combination. and you've got the best view on weinheim and the upper rhine plain.
the castle was first built in 1110 to protect the territory of lorsch abbey. it got damaged several times over the course of its existence because there were always disputes over its affiliations. it was rendered completely inhabitable by 1674 when the army of louis the XIVth of france destroyed it one last time. after that it got used as a quarry for locals to build their homes with, until a count of berckheim saved what was left around 1900 and restored some parts.
we climbed up on a plateau on the thick walls to enjoy some more views. ( but not the tower, we were too lazy for that this time ^^; )
glimpsed some strange cones that turned out to be part of an association for sewage treatment. now that i know what they really are, i think i can't go back to my first theory of 'alien factory' xD
i could finally zoom in on mannheim/ludwigshafen! these are two cities i really want to visit in the future, because of their industrial history. did you know that these two cities, despite being situated really close to another, are in two different states? ludwigshafen is in rhineland-palatinate and mannheim in baden-württemberg. the geographical situation can be compared to that of wiesbaden and mainz, with the rhine being the dividing power as well. a lot of people declare these two cities as really ugly, but to me there's no such thing before i haven't seen it with my own eyes. ugly can be exciting and i am pretty sure that i would enjoy finding all of it. in my opinion ugly is better than boring and generic! and what is ugly anyway? doesn't it always lie in the eye of the beholder? i also keep thinking of all the mid-century architecture that can be found here, as these two cities were greatly affected by the second world war. oh, man, i can't wait making bigger day trips again, i think these two go on top of my city itinerary.
the telecommunication tower is one of the most distinct landmarks of mannheim, but there are other ones as well. i could technically do a research on all the skyscrapers and domes you can see here, but i decided to not check up on them until i have visited mannheim myself ^^;.
these pictures are quite grainy, but it was hard to take good pictures from this distance. add to that the flickering of a sunny day and you have even more difficulties. further in the back the city of ludwigshafen seems to almost reach the palatinate forest mountain range.
we eventually climbed down windeck castle again and finally made our way to weinheim city. time to explore the old city and its narrow, late medieval alleyways!
unfortunately you can't find any public memorial lists for weinheim on the web, so it proved to be really difficult to find any information on most of these houses. here we walked down the judengasse ( jew's lane ). the name suggests that this lane was inhabited by jews, but it turns out that it is not a backed claim. in weinheim jews mostly lived on a street called 'hauptstraße', which was not far away from here, so it is not entirely impossible that their living quarters stretched out to this place, though.
loved the teal portal. i'm guessing the little boarded up inlet was some sort of early door viewer, so when someone knocked you could open the board and see who was visiting. maybe it was an early form of post letterbox as well? so many options!
i don't think there ever existed a much cooler bench than this *_*
looking up the judengasse.
all these tiny half-timbered houses make me swoon greatly 🖤apparantly this location once had a tower standing here, called the judenturm. you can only find a few foundation remains which seem to be embedded into the structure of the house with the red timbers. the house dates back to a time between 1500 and 1560, as some dendrochronologic data suggests.
tiny cellar doors can be found on almost all of the buildings in the old city.
with facades like this, decorating is easy. you don't have to do much besides putting up some plants in the windows! everything works out by itself.
seriously, you couldn't walk this street without stopping every few seconds. the building in the back where my mom stands is the former guild house for the tanners, the büdinger hof. it was probably built around 1580.
i liked this house's entrance situation *_*
the büdinger hof is on the right side of the picture here.
can you imagine me drooling all over the place just because of medieval houses? i want to LIVE in one. since i was a very wee little girl i wanted to live in these gorgeous tiny houses. it's so tough to find them on the rental market, though. these are mostly proprietor material.
next on the tanner's quarter menu, which was built along the little gerberbach stream running through it, we can also find documents of modern design. you all know how much i love a good modern meets old combination. this is one example! by the way, the gerberbach was rerouted while we were on visit because of building measures, so there wasn't any water in the canals passing by the homes. it's probably even more cute when the waters run through this quarter!
some of the embellishments in the timber-framed work were quite elaborate! you rarely find patterns like this in other buildings of the time, my guess is that the owners must've been a little more important so they could afford such ornateness. it belonged to the house below...
... which was giving me heart palpitations! i mean... geeeeeez. it's situated in the middle of a junction basically, surrounded by several lanes leading around it. i utterly adored this dwelling! i read that it was built around 1611, but i can't confirm it officially. apparently it's also a vacation rental!
mid-century design meets medieval house. this doorway was gorgeous!
i won't stop gushing over all these structures! the sun door was absolutely magnificient 😍 and of course the plants and bushes and tiny trees added to that! the house behind these walls dates to 1379, so you can probably guess how old these walls are.
this door, my sweet goodness!
the building on the right side of the image is the 'kerwehaus'. it's from 1559 and houses the historical society and parish fair club. it probably was the city's former coining mint once.
these steps led up to the market square, right next to an old hospital building that had a church attached which is now called ulner kapelle ( the walls you see on the left ). on the right hand there's a building that's interesting because of the figure in the alcove. it's a dude sitting on a beer barrel, drinking a beaker of that refreshing beverage. there's a date underneath him that tells us that this building probably got built in 1652. maybe this was a brewery once? i couldn't find any informations on this house.
that's basically all of the ulner kapelle you can still see today. this church from the 14th century was used until 2012, when it was sold and deconsecrated. it now serves as a special event location.
the market square was filled with plenty of people as you can see here. it's of course usually common to have many people visiting a place like this on the easter holidays, but it was still a little much for me. there was no free seating anywhere! sometimes i wish holidays weren't such a special occasion for many people, because quite frankly it's really annoying to me that they then decide to overpopulate all kinds of places of interest. i realize that i profit from holidays as well, though i don't celebrate them at all. to me, they are just very welcome days off that i get to spend time with my family. i would just prefer it to have less populated streets and squares to roam on instead. and i don't say that because it scares me ( with the recent epidemic and all ), but because i generally don't like crowds.
oh, by the way, the entrance to the ulner kapelle is right in the building with the cross above its portal! ( the one with the rounded gable )
in a side street i discovered this awesome baldachined entrance. it's the entrance, i think, for the evangelical kids and teens organization in weinheim. i think it was built during the 70ies, at least the atmosphere feels really appropriate.
back on the market square the old city hall (1557) comes into view. lovely renaissance facade!
there's a fountain in front of the old city hall that carries the statue of justitia on top.
the entrance to the market square. see what i mean with overpopulating this place? there's too many restaurants in one place here, for sure.
i climbed up on a platform in front of st. laurentius to at least get a better view of the market square. from here, where there were significantly less people bustling around, the scenery looked a little less crowded, too. and you could actually see the houses behind the many sunshades! notice the two castles up on the hills as well, on the left, the tiny red roof of wachenburg castle and on the right the ruins of windeck castle. the statue you see in the shadow is from 1890 and commemorates the dead soldiers of the german-french war in 1870/1871.
st. laurentius from down below. doesn't it feel just like an italian church? i think it's the paintings above the portals that make it so.
from the entrance platform of the church you could glimpse a special tower - the red tower ( roter turm ). it is a remnant of the old medieval town fortification and was used as a prison until the 19th century.
gables and an alcove saint on the market square. the little turret of the old city hall is most prominent here.
i just loved the old-timey feeling of the street lanterns against the baroque backdrop. come to think of it, the market square felt almost like a southern piazza, don't you think?
this beautiful building, the molitor house ( molitorsches haus ) from 1344 is reckoned to be one of the earliest timber frame houses in the region betwee rhine, main and neckar. it once belonged to the family ulner of dieburg ( who donated lots of money for the construction of the ulner chapel and also lived in the weinheim palace for a time ).
the red tower now from ground level. it sits directly next to a residential building that is massively plastered with rocks.
from here we went over to one of the most wonderful parks of the city, the hermannshof garden. it's a botanical garden that is over 200 years old, showcasing lots of shrubs and bushes ( and trees and flowers ;) ). on the property of hermannshof garden existed a mansion and summer house before the industrialist hermann-ernst freudenberg bought it for his family in 1888. it was built in 1820 by friedrich weinbrenner, probably for an agronomist turned baron called lambert babo. when the freudenberg family bought the property they got heavily involved in the creation of the botanical garden and successively made it possible that you can visit it without having to pay entrance fees today. the family ( or better, the company ) still manages the garden today, albeit it is not super apparent and on the nose.
we visited at a time when spring was at its best, flowering abundantly and spreading out green leaves everywhere. let us escape into weinheim's beautiful hermannshof garden 💚
it was blooming everywbere!
most beautiful tulips i've ever seen. they look so silky! it's a flax-leaved tulip.
i think these are a variety of poppy flowers, though the fuzz confuses me.
really exotic looking tulips ( tulipa greenstar ).
always a looker: the judas tree.
a little patch of various tulips.
even though the garden was also well attended, it felt so much less hectic.
yellow rose blossoms ( i think it's the persian yellow rose ).
there was even a lighter variety.
it was tulip season and well, the garden was full of them 🌷
there's a cute little gardening house on the property as well, not far away from the summer house.
who can't get enough of a sea of tulips? yup, i can't.
with the judas trees blooming as well, it created such a lovely scenery.
the gardening house in full glory. actually i liked it a lot more than the summer villa. can you imagine living in a romantic building like this, during goethe's later years? oh, the movie that runs through my head... philosophizing about the world and nature and researching on all the natural ressources earth has given us. you know, sometimes i feel very close to the era of the 19th century, when the enlightenment was on many minds and the world changed rapidly with new inventions and global economic and climate changes. sometimes it feels just like our times today, minus the covid epidemic of course. it was the beginning of modern times! maybe it is the beginning of post-modern times now.
i don't know what kind of shrub this was, but i guess it was a viburnum variety.
beam me back into history and let me frolick around this garden with a little dog and a good book in hand!
my mom taking a break right next to a wisteria arcade.
the wisteria just started to bloom 😍
waldsteinia blossoms crawling all over the floors.
great forget-me-nots, so delicate and frail.
i can't figure out what kind of plant this is, but it was still pretty?
i'm realizing again and again that i sometimes haven't got the faintest clue about trees in their various states. for some reason i think this might be the leaves of a magnolia tree, but then again, i know that a magnolia tree first blooms instead of shooting out leaves. i'll never know. determining trees is a lot more difficult than blossoms.
the summer house, villa freudenberg, was surrounded by old gnarled trees, throwing shadows on its facades.
looking back towards the tulip fields.
lovely purple blooming bush that has to stay anonymous because again, i didn't manage to figure out what it was 😅
the summer house again! basically a bigger version of the gardening house.
tiny fresh leaves of a dawn redwood. redwoods don't usually shed leaves, but this one does! the only other needle tree that i remember shedding its needles is the larch.
discovered some lovely lilies not far away from the dawn redwood. at least i think they are lilies. because the huge leaves really irritate me 😂 could also be some kind of hippeastrum plant.
sweet white blossoms, again, without a name. apparently there's lots of flowers inside the garden that are not typically growing in germany, therefore my usual go-to-encyclopedias don't work out here.
this is a fringed iris, also called butterfly flower.
this round blossom ball belongs to the korean spice viburnum and the smell these blossoms emanate is truly delicious and lovely, a little bit like carnations. ( the scent of flowering carnations is one of my favourite scents in the world, so these blossoms are now pretty high up on that list, too! )
we returned to the dogwood section again, which was close to the access point where we first entered the garden.
i don't know how much more romantic this scenery could get 🤭
the back entry to the summer house. not quite as showy as on the other side, but still pretty and typically classic.
i love all those super fresh greens in spring!
all these cute blossoms are part of the scorpion senna.
tulips again, this time with a very sunny center and artistic rose-coloured tips. she's called 'lilac wonder'.
a feathery tree called silver wattle.
one last view of the hermannshof before we were heading back into the city again for the final leg of our trip. this garden impressed me immensely and i think back towards visiting it very fondly. i'd really like to revisit again someday, maybe in summer or autumn, when the trees and bushes change their appearance again.
the last picture was of this sunlit scene 🤩
back in the old city we decided to walk to weinheim palace next, which is a big ensemble consisting of several buildings. this is the palace tower which is part of the younger palace section that is called 'berckheimsches schloss'. the neo-gothic tower got built in 1868.
berckheim palace was built under baron christian friedrich gustav von berckheim, who came into possession of the real estate in 1849/1853. the neo-renaissance palace is now the registry office for weinheim city. in the back you can see the yellow plastered older section of weinheim palace, the noble court of the ulner of dieburg family. it dates back to 1400, but of course it got renovated several times and now has a neo-classical appearance.
weinheim palace as seen from the palace garden. from left to right: the neo-gothic tower, berckheim palace and the noble court of the ulner von dieburg family. behind that you see another tower, it's the belltower of st. laurentius.
inside the palace garden you can find several sculptures ( naturally ). this one was most prominent to me, because it reminded me of the easter island statues. at the same time i also felt reminded of socialist architecture and design. this head was made by knut hüneke.
the top of the tower 'blauer hut'. it had a slate roof in historic times, which earned it its name 'bue hat'. these days a badly maintained red roof is on top, and i really feel they should remedy that asap. the tower is the oldest remaining part of the old city fortifications, dating back to 1250-1300.
this part of the palace garden with the pond in the front opens up a wonderful perspective on the 'blue hat', windeck castle and wachenburg castle.
loved, loved, loved this mermaid statue! it's a statue by amaryllis bataille, a french sculptor who loves mermaids and has created a lot of these sculptures already which you can find all over the word.
the sculpture is called 'ama du parc', and she fits so very well into the surroundings.
i couldn't decide between the two pictures above, so posting both of them it is!
there's a big aviary inside the park, too, which is home to several parakeet species and other birds. i once had a cockatiel as a pet myself so i was very much in love saying hi to these pretty creatures! this one was all monochrome, a colour i haven't seen a lot! it's called 'whiteface' in cockatiel circles.
this boy was so, so handsome 💖
of course budgies are not to be missed in a parakeet aviary!
there was very active movement amongst the budgies, a coming and going. i love to look at all the colours they come in, so i think i watched them at least for 15 minutes before we moved forward again. plus, they all have such big personalities!
the korean spice virburnum really mesmerizied me with its odour.
as did the lilacs everywhere!
such pretty little blossoms.
as we made our way back to the car, we again walked through parts of the tanner's quarter. this particular bit was really impressive, as it shows you the steep level difference of the homes on hauptstraße above ( main street ) and stadtmühlgasse below ( town mill lane ). the houses on hauptstraße stand on old high terraces, they form a border between the lower level tanner's district and the upper level 'neustadt' ( new town ) district. the tight building density this creates is quite extraordinary.
along the gerberbach moat.
i could never fall out of love with medieval old cities 🖤 the blue timber framed house offers another vacation home you can rent.
saying goodbye to these dreamy houses!
closing up this massive blogpost, i can only recommend visiting weinheim! i fell in love with this city the moment i laid eyes on the old city from up above windeck castle. i hope to return to this area eventually and explore more, the whole region was really charming. i haven't been to the odenwald mountains neither, so that's also something to check out. and of course, i will definitely need to travel to mannheim and ludwigshafen for city desires.
exploring places is my absolute favourite thing to do on this earth, and finding gems like this always fulfills my tiny little soul. and when looking back on these explorations, i realize, despite my life being somewhat boring most of the time when i am not out and about, it's not as bad as i sometimes think it is. i mean, of course there's nothing outrageous happening to me most of the time, no dramas, no love adventures, no crazy mishaps or activities. those things would make my posts probably more exciting and interesting, but in the end, i can't conjure up what simply isn't there. instead my desire to document is what i focus on. like, documenting places must be significant and important for something, too? maybe, when i'm dead, someone will stumble upon this blog of mine, accidentally and rediscover all the places i've been visiting and take them as some sort of impulse to check them out themselves? maybe this blog could be a study object for people interested in learning more about my timeline, my society's timeline, or when germany was still blooming and living and kind of peaceful.
this hope is of course quite small, i know that this space on the internet is not really visited by many people and especially not interesting to most, as i don't have tips, or tidbits or products to offer that might enhance their lives. this blog would need to be somewhat of a more innovative and attractive space to lure more people in and consequently turn up on someone's radar who would find this helpful to them. i'm aware that this space accounts to nothing much in the grand scheme of things. it was always just something that brought me a little joy and something to give my life a little bit more purpose, some sort of hobby, so i would not drown in weltschmerz and depression and feeling insignificant. ( though sometimes this blog makes me feel exactly that, lol )
anyway, next post will lead us into the taunus mountains again, so stay tuned for that.
until then, stay curious!
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