Weinwanderung 2014

This year we went to the von Winning winery in Deidesheim for some wine tasting, a walk through the vineyards, and a cellar tour. We had 30 adults and 17 children so we were quite a crowd to take on a tour through the vineyards. Thankfully the kids had brought soccer balls so they just played soccer while we learned about grapes and wine.



After a nice walk through the vineyards we toured the cellar and tasted 5 wines, 4 whites and 1 red. Most wineries here make mostly rieslings and white wines and only a few red wines. The weather conditions here are just better for white wines. We had also started the vineyard tour with a glass of Sekt (sparkling wine) so we had 6 wine tastes total.



Von Winning used to be named Deinhard, so there are still some wines with that label.



This machine press is made right where I live in Bad Dürkheim. The company in Bad Dürkheim makes the grape presses for not only many wineries in the area but also many wineries in the world.



This was somebody's wedding barrel, made for their wedding day wine I suppose.



Dinner at Schloss Deidesheim. The kids' table, the the adult tables.



The outside of Schloss Deidesheim restaurant:

Hiking Around Erfenstein

Yesterday we drove about a half hour to the small hamlet of Erfenstein, which is basically a field where the train stops and where you can park your car and hike up into the forest. From there we went on an 8-mile hike with the usual stop at a restaurant in the middle of the woods. You could make this hike maybe a mile (or less) longer and go up to some castle ruins in the beginning but we skipped that part. We just went for a nice walk in the woods without much elevation gain or loss since it was in the 90's and we didn't want to do anything too trying.

This is a veiw looking up to the first castle ruin that we could have wandered up to but we didn't. There were all these old lamp posts along the trail leading up to the ruins, which was different:



Some pictures of the forest. The trail ran along a stream for quite awhile which kept us relatively cool (but bug-infested).



The necessary lunch break and wine schörle:



After leaving the restaurant there was a small bit of uphill to get to the town of Esthal. There was absolutely nothing happening in Esthal, not a single person even on the street. Everybody was smartly staying in doors and out of the sun. There was a sheep farm along the way as well. The sheep were also staying out of the sun.



Being in the middle of the forest, Esthal was obviously a big logging town.



Back into the forest for a bit.



The castle ruin at the end of the hike wasn't all that impressive - just a tower, actually (the first picture below is of the second castle ruin). You got a great view of the first castle ruin from the top of it though (second picture below is the view of the first castle ruin). The first ruin looked a lot nicer than the one we went to and we should have gone to the first one. Next time.

Schloss Schwetzingen

I planned a little outing to visit the Schwetzingen Palace with a group of BASF partners today. We had gorgeous weather for it and spent an hour or so wandering around the gardens and inside the palace.

The palace was a summer residence for some of Germany's prince-elects, Karl Philip and Charles Theodore. It was built in the early 1700's from an old hunting lodge and expanded on over the years. There is a main building with two buildings arcing out from its sides, one of which was used just for reception rooms to host the large gatherings required of the court at the time.

Here is a view of the palace from the front. I wasn't able to get a picture of the large arcing buildings out to the sides, you'll just have to believe me that they're there.



The inside of two of the reception rooms. They're beautiful. Definitely a great place for a wedding or concert. Maybe I'll get here for a concert at some point.



Some views of the main building from the back.



Here are some pictures from the gardens. They're enormous - they make the buildings seem inconsequential. It would take all day to explore everything the gardens have to offer; we only explored a small corner of them. I love all the huge hedge arches in them - shown in the first picture below.



There was a long "hallway" of vines leading to a dark cave with a picture on its wall. Supposedly you could sit here and pretend to be looking somewhere far away, out over a river. Neat idea but I'd rather look at the real thing than this picture.



Looking back out towards the sunlight:



There is a bath house on the grounds, where Charles Theodore apparently spent most of his time. It still had its original floors and furniture. We got to wear fun slippers when we were in it.



This is the ceiling in the main room, it symbolizes light chasing away the dark:



The bath was really impressive - it could easily fit 10 people. My picture below doesn't do it justice but we weren't allowed to take pictures of it so I had to sneak this in. You basically walked down some stairs into the "bath" which got filled with water from snake heads. And they filled it twice - once to warm the stones and a second time for bathing. Sounds like such a waste of water. There was also a nice spotlight above the bath area, for atmosphere and romance I suppose.



The first picture is the ceiling in the room with the bath (complete with mirrors, of course), the second is looking down into the bath itself.



I don't remember the story behind these tiles, but they're Dutch. There is a little building just filled with them in the middle of the gardens. They were rescued from another building and put here for safe keeping.