Castle Frankenstein
On Saturday we broke the cycle of spending the day aimlessly wandering around the centre of Darmstadt window shopping, eating junk food and ending up in the Ratskeller. Instead we went to visit Castle Frankenstein which is located a few kilometres away from Pfungstadt. I had been informed that the only way to this castle was a long walk uphill through a forest, however it appears there is a windy road all the way up to the castle that i’m sure Nick and his car would definitely appreciate.
Getting the tram to the bottom of the path was pretty straight forward, however that pretty much was the limit of the planning for the walk. So after a broken German conversation with a nearby gentleman we were pointed in a direction and told the walk would take 2 to 3 hours (I nearly went straight home at this point). We pressed on walking following random numbers painted on trees and trying to keep sense of direction that our German tour guide had pointed us in.
After walking aimlessly in the direction we assumed was correct we spotted what appeared to be the top of a castle, which still appeared quite away in the distance. After stumbling through a stables and being attacked by numerous crazy dogs, we started the ascent up the hill again vaguely in the direction of the castle. We managed the walk in one hour and twenty minutes, which beats the time given to us early quite respectably and includes fifteen minutes walking in the wrong direction at the top of one of the hills. I enabled the GPS application I have on my iPhone to give us an idea of what we were dealing with ascending/speed/distance etc.. This spat out a Google maps file that overlays the over the top route we took, which can be viewed here.
The full Gallery can be found here and if you are bored there is a wikipedia page too.
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