Opa Peter posing in front of the main gate

Day Trips

Berching is a quaint little town 20 minutes from our house that has a wonderfully intact Innenstadt.  You can walk on top the roofed medieval city walls and really get a feel for how life used to be.

Here the kids (with our friends the Millers) are jumping over the old sewage drainage system that runs through town.










Since so few people could read in the middle ages (only the nobility and monks received that sort of academic schooling), guilds used signs to advertise.  Some of these symbols are still used today.

We discovered a fantastic restaurant near Berg that is built right over a mountain spring.  It provides the restaurant with all its water needs and also serves as a refrigerator!

Apparently, this water is so pure and full of goodness that several breweries have looked into using it for their ventures.  Logistics in transportation prevented that but on the bright side, now the village of Berg gets to keep this gem for itself.











Across the street is the Gnadenburg Monastery, founded in 1426. Additional nuns from Denmark arrived in 1435.  Today just the shell remains but the atmosphere on the grounds spurred more than one round of "How do you solve a problem like Maria?"

Andrew and Emma discovered a little "secret" passageway which led up to the tower.

That same day, we hit a Mittelalterfest, Medieval Festival, in Parsberg complete with jesters, minstrels, knights, monks, and priests galore. It's amazing how so many of the vendors and visitors really got into the medieval state of mind and dress! 

Kids activities included shooting a crossbow. blowing your own glass bulbs and filing a stone pendant.  We grown-ups enjoyed a round bread made of roughly ground grain and Met, a warm honey wine.

A second Medieval Festival in Sulzburg offered similar activities:  shooting a bow and arrow, perusing the "old" trades and trying on chain mail and armor.  It's heavy! I would have been exhausted even before picking up a weapon!

This one included a medieval fairy tale storyteller and a witch hunt.  She was accused of bewitching a goat to produce sour milk and was condemned to death...but just not that day as it was a Sunday.

Bottom left - can you guess which one is the witch?