Confessions of a Castleholic

* This post is part of a paid partnership with the cities of Weissenfels, Merseburg and Zeitz. * Weissenfels, deep in the heart of Saxony-Anhalt, is a city full of contradictions. Old vs. new, fallen into ruins vs. beautifully restored. All of this is represented most in the castle towering high above in the town south-west of Leipzig: Schloss Neu-Augustusburg . While half of it, at least from the exterior, shines in new splendour, the other half is falling into ruins. It is a fascinating contrast you will find all over this historically rich little town. Once the residence of the Duchy of Saxe-Weissenfels, it later became the number one shoe-manufacturing city of the German Democratic Republic. As so many places, the aftermath of unification left a lasting mark on Weissenfels with many especially young people moving away to find work elsewhere, and houses left empty. But you will find as many rays of hope here, so let's delve deeper into the things not to miss when visiting Weisse...

* This post is part of a paid partnership with the cities of Weissenfels, Merseburg and Zeitz. * Have you heard of Merseburg? This medieval German town is situated on the banks of the river Saale approximately 30 kilometres west of Leipzig. It boasts a great historical significance. Firstly mentioned in 850, it became the seat of the Bishop of Merseburg in 968 and remained so until the Reformation. During the Early and High Middle Ages, the town once was the most important Kaiserpfalz , roughly translated as imperial residence, in the East of the Holy Roman Empire for the ever-travelling ruler. While its importance somewhat faded when the modern age rolled around, it once again became the home of a ruler between 1657 to 1738 when Merseburg was the residence of the Dukes of Saxe-Merseburg, a secundogeniture of the Albertine line of the House of Wettin. Sounds interesting? Here are nine recommendations what to do and see when visiting Merseburg. Start at Schloss Merseburg , of c...

* This post is part of a paid partnership with the cities of Weissenfels, Merseburg and Zeitz. * Do you know those "It's on my list"-places? Towns or places where you have been wanting to visit for a while but haven’t gotten around to?! Recently I scratched one of those places off my imaginary list: Zeitz . Once upon a couple of centuries ago - between 1656 and 1718 to be precise - this little town was the capital of a small German state and secundogeniture of the Albertine line of the House of Wettin, the Duchy of Saxe-Zeitz. As any self-respecting residential town Zeitz, of course, boasts a palace: Schloss Moritzburg (not to be confused with the probably more famous Schloss Moritzburg near Dresden ). But let's not get ahead of ourselves and start my visit in chronological order. After arriving in Zeitz, I started my tour of discovery of the town in the old market square , known as Altmarkt in German. Zeitz's history actually goes back to the Middle Ages. Firs...

Have you ever driven on the German Autobahn ? And if you have, did you notice those brown signs along the road mentioning more or less obscure tourist attractions nearby? That is how I first learned about Schloss Hundisburg . I saw the sign for it about half a dozen times in the last couple of weeks when going from Hanover to Berlin or vice versa - and one Sunday I decided to do some spontaneous castle hunting, left the Autobahn and stopped at the Baroque palace near Magdeburg. Schloss Hundisburg is a fairly little known place but one with a fascinating history for two thirds of it burned down in 1945 - and reconstruction only started some 50 years later. Its origins dating back all the way to the 12th century, Schloss Hundisburg received its current Baroque appearance thanks to Johann Friedrich II von Alvensleben. The minister at the Hanoverian court of King George I of the United Kingdom had a former Renaissance castle located on the same site redeveloped into what became ...

It's been 10,316 days since the fall of the Berlin Wall meaning it has now been gone for the same number of days that it existed. When I saw the hashtag #OhneMauerfall ("without the fall of the wall" in German) on Twitter, it made me think of all the places I wouldn't have been able to go with the wall still standing. I was born in a town not too far from but on the Western side of the inner German border that, having been born in late 1989, has just very recently essentially lost its meaning. (Germany was reunified a year later in 1990.)  I have no recollections of the wall or living in a divided Germany. For me, it was quite normal to go  to East Germany, both during my early childhood and later in my teenage years when my parents took my sister and me there not only but especially on October 3, the German Unity Day, to discover places they had never been to themselves because during the Cold War, there was no such thing as simply popping over the border for a...