Schönes Wochenende, indeed.

On Saturday Sept. 27th, me and my friends Chris, Matt, Shane and Rachel headed to the city of Kassel for the day. We originally had plans to go to Kassel and nearby Göttigen, but Kassel, as you will see, was just so charming that we stayed the whole day. (To be fair, we also had several transportation problems, namely getting off at the wrong station in Kassel, and misunderstanding the train schedule from Kassel to Göttigen. Regardless, I think that trying to do two cities in one day is rather ambitious, anyway, even with the trains being as great as they are.) Before I discuss our adventures, let me first express my deep love and utter appreciation for German public transportation, aka Deutsche Bahn.

Those of you who have traveled to/within Germany before must know what I mean when I say that it makes traveling so much easier and more fun than it would be otherwise. First of all, I love the fact that my German is now good enough to communicate with the DB employees completely auf Deutsch. There’s something really empowering about having a proficient transportation vocabulary. Secondly, they offer some fantastic deals on group tickets that spare us a fair amount of money and inconvenience. For example, going to Kassel we each saved at least 10 Euro by buying a group “Schönes Wochenende Fahrkarte” (Lovely Weekend Ticket) which not only allowed us to go anywhere in the country for the next 30ish hours, but was also good for us to use the public transportation within each city – buses, trams, etc. And, of course, everything is punctual pretty much to the second (and in the rare event that it’s not – they reimburse you). In short, I am really looking forward to using the trains in this country over the next year.

So, Matt was nice enough to act as our tour guide for the day, even though he had been to Kassel the previous weekend. Kassel is a decent-sized city, but our main plan for the day was to explore a certain Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe (Wilhem’s Castle Park). Before I show you some pictures of this place, which contained some of the most beautiful sights I have ever seen in my life, I have to give you a little bit of a history lesson about how this very interesting “park” came into existence.

The Bergpark is basically the final result of plans that were drawn up as early as the 17th century. The park’s major attraction is a gigantic statue of Hercules that stands atop a huge hill, directly overlooking all of Kassel – he has been here since the early 1700’s. However, in the late 1700’s, Wilhelm I, Elector of Hessen extensively expanded the park – he added features including artificial Roman and Greek ruins, a medieval-style castle (as well as a huge palace at the base of the hill bearing his name) and numerous ponds, fountains and bridges. Matt informed us that a significant chunk of Wilhelm’s funding for this project was compensation from the Brits in exchange for Hessian soldiers during the American Revolution, but I haven’t been able to find any information to back up this interesting tidbit. Regardless – Wilhelm, who also hung out with Napoleon’s little brother in this place, spared no expense and the place is absolutely stunning. In fact, as far as I understand it, the Bergpark is the largest such garden in all of Europe.

The general result of all of this charming, magical “stuff” in one place is kind of feeling like you’re in a gigantic board game. Matt equated it to real-life Candy Land (with perhaps a Lord of the Rings flair). The fact that you would never find authentic ruins, relics and natural formations in such close proximity anywhere on Earth made the whole experience completely surreal.

Since my words will never do this place justice, here is a (representative) sampling of pictures from the major sites in the park:

An Autumn-eque shot of Wilhelm's castle, flying the Hessian flag.

Up the hill and inside the castle walls.


A close-up of the castle, courtesy of Matt and his great eye for photos (and beautiful camera).

Chris and I made friends with one of the many lions at Wilhelm's Castle.


The Wilhelmsschloss gardens. On clear days, Hercules is visible at the very top of the hill from this spot.

I think this is where the centaurs from Fantasia hang out...

One Chris, one Ashlan, and one fake Roman aquaduct.


The constructed ruins are actually falling apart now.

This spot was called the Devil's Bridge, but we deemed it a definite misnomer. Fun fact: Matt, our tour guide and resident paleontologist/geologist, informed us that the rocks in this water feature are specially sculpted in that square shape to resemble volcanic rocks. Wilhelm knew what he was doing.

Being tourists.

A peaceful little duckpond, sans Entchen.

If you look closely, you can see Hansel and Gretel's bread crumbs...


The under-construction Hercules "complex."

The man himself.


There was a whole series of photos that came out of this sunbeam, but this is my favorite.

The Löwenburg, the faux middle-ages castle. I talked to the sheep (in German AND English), just to make sure they weren't also artificial.

Inside the Löwenburg.

The entire castle. Just as all of us were discussing the kind of fairy-tale wedding photos that could come out of this place, a bride and groom showed up....

Another lovely shot by Matt.

All of us, sans Rachel, in a "hallway" of leaves.


The Löwenburg was, by far, my favorite attraction in the park.

After we were all charmed-out by Wilhelm's Bergpark, we took a bus downtown where a festival was taking place:

Some kind of traditional German dancers. I couldn’t translate very much of the spoken explanation of what was going on here, except that the orientation of the male dancers’ hats signifies their marital status.

What's going on here?


Take 2: Brötchen und wurst!


Touché. (“When you work hard, you must also eat well!”)

Kassel Rathaus (City Hall).

Recursion.

We then took a pre-dinner stroll around the grounds of another palace, the aptly-named Orangerie (ca 1700's).

There were men playing bocce outside.

There were statues of Roman deities lining the walkways.

We quizzed ourselves on the names of the deities depicted in the sculptures, game show-style (Rachel was our Vanna). I think that we got somewhere around a 10%, even with our combined brain power of two chemists (me and Shane), a paleontologist (Matt), a writer (Chris) and a political scientist (Rachel)...

Guten Nacht, Kassel.

All-in-all, a great day. If you are ever in Germany, Kassel is definitely, definitely worth the trip!