Germany - Museums, Castles, and Churches

As Rachel wrote, we don't have many functioning museums here in Doha, particularly ones that would be interesting to kids, so a lot of our plans involved museums. Most castles involved museums, too, since they're rarely lived in anymore, so I'll write about castles in this post, too.

Our very first outing was to the Kindermuseum in Frankfurt. They had a play room and an exhibit. We started at the playroom, which consisted mostly of a large collection of foam blocks covered in felt. The ceiling and wall had velcro to which the felt would stick, so the blocks could be either stacked or stuck. I had fun helping Big E and Miss A climb on them at first, but I quickly tired of making sure they didn't fall off the blocks onto the hard floor. So I switched to building castles for them to play inside instead. That kept them on the ground while still enjoying the blocks. A few other kids were there, too, and Big E and Miss A enjoyed playing with them.

There were a few costumes to try on.

There was also a wall of laminated pictures with magnets on the back, just pictures of objects and a vague instruction to group them together. When we finally got into the exhibit, this made more sense. The exhibit was all about collections--cup collections, stamp collections, toy collections, soap collections, button collections, rock collections, candy collections, etc. There were a lot of little doors for little hands to open, and plenty of details to be pointed out to excited eyes, but most of the interactive stuff was a little too advanced for either of our kids, so we mostly just looked around and named stuff together.

I attempted to interest Big E in making things out of pipe cleaners since I had fond memories of making bugs out of wire once at a museum, but he wasn't in the mood. So I just made him some glasses instead.

Miss A really liked them.

Our next museum was the Senckenberg Museum of Natural History, also in Frankfurt. The kids loved this one, and I did, too, though I would have liked to take a bit more time than they were able to tolerate. I know, Mom, you thought I'd never say it: I wanted to slow down in the museum.

I was amused and pleased to see items on loan or replicas from other museums I'd visited, such as the coelacanth from the Cleveland Natural History Museum, the supersaurus leg from BYU, and the t-rex from Night at the Museum. Big E liked that one, too.

 I liked this backlit slice of amethyst because it reminded me of the stained glass we'd been seeing in churches. Every time I see gems and cool looking crystals and stones in real life, I realize why people have always valued them. They're beautiful and amazing!

Although we didn't take any pictures of the taxidermied animals, those were the kids' favorite part of the museum. They had a huge collection of birds, many of which I didn't even know existed, and a very large and varied collection of mammals, as well.

Our first castle was Marksburg. We knew we'd have to hike to reach it, but we didn't really give much forethought to the logistical problems of a hike with two exhausted kids and a stroller. We couldn't even get to the trail with the stroller because the trailhead was up so many stairs. So I asked a cafe owner if I could leave it with her, and she kept it in her daughter's store of baby stuff next door. Then Rachel and I each put on a backpack. I carried Miss A in my arms (note to self: bring a baby carrier next time you plan to hike with a baby), and she fell asleep despite the coooooold wind. Big E kept up with Rachel pretty well, but I hiked ahead because I just had to keep moving. When we finally got to the top, the entrance to the castle was up another five or six flights of stairs, so I was pretty exhausted when we got there. Then Miss A woke up, Big E got cold and cranky, and we found out there wouldn't be a tour available in English. So things were stacked against us from the beginning and only got worse when Miss A decided she'd had enough of the cold and being carried in the very first room we visited, and proceeded to cry and outright scream for the rest of the visit. I'm sure those of you with kids know the feeling of being stuck in an airplane holding a crying baby and people annoyed at you for it. You know they're perfectly justified in being irritated, but you're also irritated back because what are you supposed to do about it? Well, it was about the same reaction from the guide and the tour group. I was all for leaving, but the guide had locked the gate behind us when we came in, and Rachel wanted to see it all. So I just stayed a few rooms behind everyone as well as I could. Unfortunately, another group started catching up with ours, so I got sandwiched between them, trying to stay far enough behind ours and ahead of the other one not to annoy either. As you might expect, this was not the highlight of the trip for me. But the castle was pretty cool, and I'm glad we went.

The first stairs to climb.

Big E had to use the bathroom about half-way up. Fortunately, he was able to hold it.

More reasons a stroller wouldn't have worked.

The view from the trail.

Miss A before she fell asleep.

It was nice to see so much green, even if it was still winter-brown green.

Another view from the trail.

Rachel staying with Big E while I rested.

Me carrying the now-asleep Miss A.

The view from the castle.

The castle up close.

Me feeling unhappy and trying to distract Miss A with "The Lion King" on my phone.

Trying to distract Miss A with some dirt and little plants.

The cafe where we left the stroller, next to the alley from the first photo.

We visited a cool fort above Koblenz called Ehrenbreitstein. It was a well-designed fortress that clearly would have done a good job of keeping unwanted people out in its day. Here's a model.

 It was accessible to us by cable car over the Mainz up to the very top within the fortifications.

 Then we descended into them and discovered they had all been converted into galleries and exhibits.

There were restaurants, photography displays, an exhibition on eating local foods, an exhibit about wines of the Rhine with a really cool display in which we could smell various kinds of wine (honey, peach, rose, mint, etc.), and at least one building with two floors dedicated to the history of the fortress itself -- uniforms, living quarters, weapons, etc.

A very powerful mounted crossbow.

Big E liked this gun best of all once I described how it worked. He kept asking to see this photo for the rest of the day.

Next museum: the Gutenberg Printing Museum in Mainz.

I don't have any photos from inside the museum, but it had examples of printing presses from every era from Gutenberg to the present. They were very cool, and Big E surprised me by actually paying attention to my explanations of how they all worked. A security guard watched my animated attempts to give hands-off demonstrations of how the presses worked, and ushered us downstairs to a just-announced-in-German-so-he-knew-we-didn't-hear-about-it live demonstration of the printing process. It was also in German, but the presenter was clearly very keen on impressing people with how all this history happened RIGHT HERE IN MAINZ.

We also saw pages from actual bibles printed by Gutenberg personally. I was surprised to learn that the press only did the black text of the Bible.It was popular at the time to have the first letter of a page large and fancy and colorfully illuminated. This was far beyond Gutenberg's technology, so every single copy had to be illuminated by hand as Bibles always had been, and so every single copy was different. They were beautiful. A temporary exhibit showcased the old industry of hand-copying businesses in China, and it had a whole wall of miniatures showing the layout of the shops with workers busily copying, a rotating table full of later Chinese character typesetting, and some beautiful examples of their work. We stayed right up until closing.

Our next castle was Schloss Heidelberg, and I've already written about our ascent and descent from there in my travel post. But the visit to the castle itself I'll cover here. I dreaded a repeat of Marksburg, so I asked Rachel to just go tour the castle herself while I entertained the kids on the grounds and in the few parts open without a tour guide. She promised to take lots of photos for me. The kids and I enjoyed a small museum dedicated to the history of pharmacies, which had several preserved alchemists' shops, just beautiful to behold in their meticulous organization and old-fashioned-ness.

 They also had a miniature hands-on kids' pharmacy the kids enjoyed.

We visited a giant keg in the wine cellar and took photos of the view from outside the castle to the city below.

You can see Philosophers' Way across the river, a trail where Goethe, Kant, and other philosophers were wont to wander over the years.

After Rachel came back out, we explored the rest of the castle grounds, which were beautiful, even in their dormant winter state.

I'm not going to detail all the churches we visited since most of them were spur-of-the-moment visits, we didn't know much about them, and we didn't stay very long in many of them due to the kids. Most of the time, Rachel and I would just take turns stepping in while the kids stayed in the entry room in the stroller. But my general overall impression is that I like old churches very much. I like stained glass, and Big E does, too. I like echoey silence and music performed in places with such beautiful acoustics. I like their genuine craftsmanship and attention to detail. I liked feeling the Spirit in such places. I liked that when Big E was awake, he was generally quite interested in looking around and pretty willing to be quiet. These weren't the first cathedrals or old churches I'd ever visited, but they certainly were the oldest.

Germany: a beautiful place. At least the touristy parts.