Category: Europe

I am not a typical traveler. Neither are my friends and Hubby, apparently. We don’t all go in for seeing all of the must-see sights at a particular place. We’re more amble around, take-it-all-in, see-what-you-can-see types. We travel together because we like each others’ company. We have fun together. We laugh a lot. We all like good food and drinks, too, so we tend to eat well and drink more than we probably should. Seeing cool stuff along the way is more of a bonus than the ultimate goal.

That being said, Kassel wasn’t a complete disappointment (see my previous post), it was just okay. The park and fountain were cool, but the city itself didn’t really excite us. Of course, it’s being compared to other places we visited during this particular tour, like Prague, Vienna, and Salzburg. Compared to Detroit, Kassel is awesome!

Hubby and I really enjoy seeing the old buildings in European cities. There weren’t a whole lot of old buildings in Kassel’s downtown because it was 90% destroyed by bombs in WWII. The place wasn’t as picturesque as it might have been, but there was still some interestingness to behold.

Like the Man Walking to the Sky sculpture.

There was nothing else particularly notable, just some things that caught my eye. Like these interesting buildings…

Oh, and a couple of nice shots from the park that I should have shared in yesterday’s post.

I found this weeping-type evergreen tree fascinating both for the type of tree and the amount of moss and lichen growing on the trunk and branches.

I guess Kassel is a wet place. There was lots of moss, lichen, ferns, and other shady forest-loving growths on many trees, stone walls, buildings, etc.

You may need to click on the image above for a closer look. The face jumped right out at me when I saw those rocks.

And that’s it for Kassel. Next up, the Czech Republic.

Annelies and I work together when planning joint trips like the one we just completed. She selected our first overnight destination and I approved it. We both thought it would be cooler than it actually was.

We’d both agreed that the bergpark, which was recently designated as a UNESCO World Heritage Site, would be a nice, relaxing place to visit. I’d assumed “bergpark” meant something like “large city park.”

I should have read more closely AND translated that particular word from German to English. As it turns out, a bergpark is a MOUNTAIN park. Mountain parks aren’t relaxing. A stroll up and down the hills of a mountain park could — and did! — make for an exhausting first day.

When I opened my eyes on Sunday, I was greeted by the scene pictured at right. We’d slept with our hotel windows wide open since there was no A/C, which is the norm at hotels in older buildings throughout Europe. It sure looked like it might be a pretty day, despite the forecast for clouds and rain.

By the time we’d finished breakfast, however, the clouds had moved in. The rain started right around the time we reached the park. We had umbrellas, rain gear, and an “it’s all part of the adventure” outlook, so we pressed on.

In the park, is a big-ass fountain — aka water feature — which dates back to the 17th century. If you’d like more details, click the image on the right.

It really is very big. Since we’d arrived early — about 40 minutes before the buses started running — we decided to start walking up the hill instead of waiting for the bus.

The hill was pretty steep. It wasn’t long before we wisely decided to descend back to the bus stop where we’d started and wait for a bus to take us to the top.

The first part of the water feature is situated at the base of the Hercules statue, which you can barely see through the clouds in the image shared above. You can see it a little better in the next shot.

There’s a palace building behind where Annelies is standing, which wasn’t all that impressive, in my opinion. But I did like the lion.

There was lots of moss and lichen throughout the park. I’ll share some pics of that in a later post.

There was a Visitors’ Center in or near the base of the Hercules statue. I never did figure out why Hercules was the figure selected to adorn the top of the mountain, but then I didn’t try very hard.

You can see that palace building I mentioned earlier in the next image.

The water feature, which I will just call a fountain from here on because it’s easier, really is quite big.

I tried to capture images that would show the scale.

Behind Annelies, toward the upper left of the image above, is where the tiered cascades start.

You know it’s a big hill when you get below the clouds as you descend!

I wasn’t impressed by the statues, which I found to be more like yard art (they are!) than museum-quality sculptures.

The water in the pools was sort of dirty, too. But then, it is recirculated through 300-year-old pipes twice every week, May through September.

Notice that the statue in the image above is a trumpeter? Remember that, okay?

We reached the pool at the bottom of the cascade, which is supposedly the best viewing spot, at least an hour, maybe more, before the water was scheduled to be released. So we decided to have lunch and/or drinks while we waited.

It was really starting to cloud-up by that point, which is why the next image is so dark and grainy.

It may have rained a bit while we enjoyed our refreshments, but we were seated under an umbrella and didn’t care. Afterward, we headed back to the pool.

We were all amazed to see how many people had shown up since we’d left the pool earlier. And there was still about 30 minutes left to wait!

Unfortunately, while we waited, rain started to pour. There may have even been some thunder. Our happy outlook was definitely starting to wane.

But we toughed it out.

Look how many people were lining the sides of the cascade. As the water started to flow, it sounded like there was an air-raid siren going off in the distance. Remember the trumpeter statue? There were at least two, and the flowing water caused their trumpets to sound!

From there, we hurried the half mile or so to the next feature, and waited through still more pouring rain for the water to flow over that waterfall.

We were all wet and not so happy by that point. But, since we’d seen everything to that point, we couldn’t very well miss the finale at the lowest pool. So, on we trudged.

We waited there at the bottom for what felt like a very long time. By that point, we were all tired, damp, thirsty, and ready to leave.

Once the water did reach the lowest pool, the sun had come back out, and the finale WAS fun to see.

You can appreciate the height of the gravity-and-water-powered fountain in the next shot, which was captured from the lawn of the palace.

It was interesting. It’s certainly the biggest yard fountain I have ever seen.

That’s how we spent the majority of our first full day of the road trip.

It could be that the gray and rainy weather dictated the mood. Or it could be that we didn’t focus on the right attractions. Maybe it’s because we were all exhausted by the end of the day from all the walking we’d done. Whatever the case, it was unanimous… Kassel Germany was our least favorite destination.

I’ll share a few more pics tomorrow. But first, below is one of my favorite photos captured during our adventure at the park.

Hi, my name is Kathy. I am a photoaholic. Or something like that.

Before leaving Belgium, Annelies and I swapped picture files. All of the photos the two of us took during our time together are on a thumb drive/memory stick. I figured I’d go through them, but wanted to first upload the pics I took in Iceland (Annelies and Yves didn’t join us in Iceland).

That’s when I discovered that, in all, I’d taken just over 2,850 pics with my camera. In 19 days. That doesn’t include the 943 images I captured on my phone.

In all, Annelies only took 908 pics. That includes camera and phone pics. Slacker.

But then, she doesn’t have a selfie stick like the cool one Hubby bought for me just before the trip.

You have to look closely to see Yves. He’s in the background, basically standing on my head.

Some folks probably think I spent all of my time behind a camera. I didn’t. I’m just a visual person. When something catches my eye, for whatever reason, I tend to snap a quick photo. I’m a sucker for stuff like fun window displays, cool reflections, interesting and/or different signs, etc. I’ve gotten good at capturing images on the fly and/or on the sly, too, you know, discretely and/or while in motion.

Like this hole-in-the-floor shot I captured on the way to the WC (short for water closet aka toilet) at the Zipfer Bierhaus in Salzburg. According to their website, it was built in 1300. They’re big on authenticity (not kitsch) and preserving history.

I was really hoping their site would explain the skeleton-at-the-bottom-of-the-well thing.

Oh, and some of those 943 phone pics were captured in bursts or multiple frames of special group selfies. Some were screen captures of important stuff like hotel addresses and/or confirmation numbers. Some were just silly things I saw, or cool motorcycles, funny signs, crazy-looking people, etc. Or beer we wanted to remember. We drank a lot of different beers.

Others were views I enjoyed, but was so relaxed I didn’t fell like digging out the “real” camera. There are also quite a few phone pics that started out as camera pics, but that I added to the phone for ease of sharing.

Oh, and we can’t forget all of the pics I captured to help tell a story, like this one of Mike and me.

See that big-ass hill behind us? We had to walk UP that hill to go down into a salt mine. That hill was so steep — did I mention the dirt-and-gravel path — that is was very hard to maintain our footing while walking back down the hill. Really.

Anyway, to make a long post short… I have a LOT of pictures to sort through!