Hi there! I watched a series today that was so bad it made be write the first blog post in one and a half years. Will I write more again in the future? I don't know, I guess we'll see. In the meantime, follow all my latest castle adventures over on Instagram . See you there! Empress Elisabeth of Austria, the immortal Sisi, has inspired the imagination of the people for more than a century now. Her life, her love, her tragedies, her death. Adored, free spirited and one of the original royal IT girls. A face that could launch a thousands ships, well, bring peace to two feuding nations by simply being her charming self. A woman that, 120 years after her death, can still draw crowds and be the foundation stone of what seems like half the tourist industry of several regions. (Okay, that might have been slightly exaggerated but have you ever been to Vienna and seen the souvenir shops?) So it's not too surprising that time and time again, cinema and TV productions have tried to ca...
To say that I have been pretty obsessed with "Magnificent Century" as of late may just be the understatement of the century. The Turkish period drama Muhteşem Yüzyıl is one seriously addictive tv series - and that comes from a person who is a serial binge watcher. The show's first season compromising of 48 episodes is available on Netflix with English subtitles and yours truly cannot wait for the additional three seasons to be added. The plot of "Magnificent Century" is a simple one yet full of twists and turns. The show tells the story of Sultan Süleyman, who ruled to Ottoman Empire from 1520 to 1566 and is is known in Turkey as the Lawmaker, renowned for his innovative legal code, for the opulence of his court and for expanding the Ottoman Empire from the Persian Gulf to Transylvania. It particularly focuses on his relationship with Hürrem Sultan (or Roxelana as she is mostly known in the Western world), the Christian slave girl from modern-day Ukrai...
View image | gettyimages.com Today is July 20, one of the most famous dates in German history. 71 years ago, a group of conspirators around Claus Schenk Graf (Count) von Stauffenberg tried unsuccessfully to assassinate Adolf Hitler. Many of those surrounding Stauffenberg were also of noble descent and mainly based on their actions, there has long been the underlying assumption that much of the German nobility was against the Nazis, which they weren't. Well, first off: There wasn't the German nobility. Looking back, there are two main indicators for a noble family - or, as you'll see later, members of a noble family - to either be supporters of the National Socialist German Workers' Party (NSDAP) or to be against them. On the one hand, the wealth of the family seems to have played a role; on the other hand, their faith. The staunchly Catholic well-off royal and noble families from western and especially southern Germany often weren't closely associ...