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The Duchesses of Cambridge and Sussex really bring out the worst in people, don't they? Not Meghan and Kate themselves but their very existence. The royal watching world has become an interesting one, to say the least, since Meghan joined the scene. Because, let's face it, there can never be two women peacefully coexisting. It's a truth universally acknowledged that one woman must always be pitted against another. And to join the fun: I will criticise them too. Because I can and I will, just wait for it... (I'm currently still working on my critcism because I'm honestly just not that interested in the British royal family to begin with apart from that period when I was about 13 before I discovered the bad boys from Monaco who were way cuter back then. And still kind of are, at least one of them.)
There have always been different camps in royal watching: Elizabeth vs. Margaret, Mary vs. Letizia, Diana vs. Fergie, and you could go on, and on, and on, and on. Some o…

Schloss von Hammerstein

February 17, 2019

Yesterday was a ten castles kind of day in the life of this Castleholic. So where to start sharing them with you? I suppose the first one I saw on my latest castle adventure is a good beginning: Schloss von Hammerstein in the small village of Apelern near Hanover that interestingly boasts not just one but two castles. (We will get to the other one, Schloss von Münchhausen, in another post.) Now owned by the Barons on Hammerstein in the 12th generation, the history of their castle is actually also tied to the Münchhausen family. Already firstly mentioned in the 11th century, the estate came into the hands of Baron Jobst of Münchhausen in 1550 as a fiefdom by the Counts of Holstein-Schaumburg. After Jobst's line of the Münchhausen family died out in the 16th century, Anton of Wietersheim became the new owner of the estate. It was the Chancellor of the Counts of Holstein-Schaumburg who built today's Weser-Renaissance style castle between 1586 and 1590. About 80 years later, the…

Schloss Pyrmont

February 19, 2019

What do Peter the Great, Friedrich the Great, several British Kings, German poet Johann Wolfgang von Goethe and U.S. founding father Benjamin Franklin have in common? They all went to the tiny town of Bad Pyrmont to take the cure at some point in their lives. Especially during the 16th and 17th centuries, the spa town in today's Lower Saxony gained its reputation as a fashionable place for royal vacations. And so it won't come as a major surprise to you, that there is also a Schloss in Bad Pyrmont - the Bad standing for spa, not, well, bad. That castle, known as Schloss Pyrmont, was the main destination of my latest castle adventure that also led me to some nine other castles which we will have a closer look at over the coming weeks and months. (So far, you can already check out Schloss von Hammerstein.) It was between the years 1525 and 1536 that Count Friedrich VI of Spiegelberg built the first fortification in Pyrmont. The fortified castle stood as a square-shaped rampart …

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