Tuesday 22nd to Sunday 27th October 2024.
Days 39-44.
As always we received a warm welcome when we arrived in Gahlen to visit our good friends Wolfgang, Arzu and Bedia. We try to make a visit here each year and in between Wolfgang has been to stay with us in England. We have an arrangement about the visits,we don’t necessarily need to be do “touristy” things we like to experience every day life.
We visited two branches of a local supermarket on the “special offers” day to take advantage of whiskey and Bordeaux red wines on offer. Then trying for the first time a donner from a food van outside.
We even at our request visited the local Ikea to compare goods on sale and prices, of course we had to buy a few kitchen items.
We had a wonderful meal in a Chinese restaurant we have visited several times before which is self service eat as much as you like where the food is always excellent and as it was Wolfgang’s birthday he excelled himself by consuming 5 courses.
Wolfgang did take us to a nearby attraction we hadn’t seen before Schloss Raesfeld, known as a water castle due to its moat.
There has been some form of fortified building on this site for 800 years and it’s fortune has ebbed and flowed as various families owned the properties here. In 1882 the baronet of Landsberg-Welen bought the castle and grounds and turned into a farm.
The buildings had been acquired by the chamber of handicrafts and during the war and afterwards was used for a variety of purposes, a military hospital, temporary shelters for expellees from the East and a school room. In the 1950’s new owners repaired the damage and the castle regained some of its old splendour and is still the centre for training of craftsmen. The castle is used extensively for weddings.
The main castle has now been bought by the municipality of Raesfeld.
Now at the end of a very pleasant break we move on to Holland.
taraabit 