Bike Rides and Castles

Sunday was an absolutely gorgeous day.  Contrary to what we've been told, it does NOT rain here constantly.  We've had 2 weeks of beautiful weather and we're enjoying every single minute of it!  We took our first long family bike ride through town.  It was so fun and the kids did great.  I won't mention who fell off TWICE, although I have mentioned that she is most like me in clumsiness.  Joe crossed the street pretty quickly and, rather than look for himself, Josh crossed right when a car turned onto the street.  He and the car screeched to a halt while I yelled in what I'm sure is known as the "panicked mother voice," JOSH!!!!  Needless to say, everyone was scared, everyone was spoken to quite sternly, and everyone was fine.  The people in the car were scared too, but I just waved them away.  I didn't know how to say, "He's fine, it's not your fault," in German.  It really wasn't.  They were driving really slowly, Josh just turned right into them because he thought it was okay to follow Joe.  Joe didn't see the car because it came from around a corner, thus the near-miss.  Anyway, we're all fine.

We went to another castle. This time it was a ruined castle that is local.  It was originally built in the 1100s by the French, I believe, and destroyed and rebuilt a few times, but finally destroyed in the 1500s.  It's called "Burg Nanstein" and you can look the history up online.  From what I gather, the knight that was living in it when it was destroyed was a prominent Protestant Reformist (they're the ones who told the Catholics that they actually weren't God.)  He wouldn't be quiet so they killed him.  He was shot with a cannon (through his castle wall) and lived for 3 or 4 days before his exposed lung/liver killed him.  It's pretty gross, but those were harsh times.  

We got to walk all around, unlike Cochem where we were shown only a limited amount of the castle.  We got to see the entirety of Nanstein, even down to the cellar, which was very dark and cold.  The castle, like most in this area, is built partially into the mountain, kind of like the adobe villages of the southwestern U.S.  They did that so that if the mountain shifted, the castle would just naturally shift with it.  The top of the castle was brick and limestone.  Most of it, obviously, is no longer there and parts of it have been rebuilt for tourism, but we did get to see some really old parts, which is cool.  It's just really neat to see something that is so old and see how people really lived way back then.  The knight himself got a bed, but everyone else slept on the clay floor with some straw, if they were lucky (blessed).  It was a very warm day, but very cold inside the parts of the castle that weren't toppled.  I can imagine how cold a winter day would be in a castle like that and I know that I wasn't meant to live that long ago.  I do think I could've done well in the early 1900s, but God put me in this time period for some reason.  I think I'd make a good Mennonite, except for my mouth.

So, we've seen 3 cool castles/towns now but Joe is working the exercise for the next 2 weeks.  We won't be traveling at all while he's working.  I'll keep you posted when we do, though.