Kamp Castles

After his hearty breakfast, Heinrich spent the morning exploring. Above the town of Kamp Bornhofen there are some old ruins of a castle that was named Berg Liebenstein.

It used to be a very strong fortress up on a tall hill but now it is only a ruin of old stone walls.

From the walls of the castle Heinrich could see the Rhine River down in the valley. The Rhine is a long and very important river way that helps people move all through Germany.

It is a narrow river valley where the Rhine goes past Kamp Bornhofen. In this valley along the river there are many cities. Each one snuggles up to the river and also stretch up onto the hills.

As Heinrich watched down over the river he saw a lot of traffic along the river. Instead of cars and trucks the traffic was made up of boats.

As Heinrich watched, he saw several boats come and go to small piers that stuck out into the river. Boats would pull up and people would get on and off. In this part of Germany the boats are like buses and people ride them up and down the river. The people would get off onto the piers when they got to the city they were headed for.

Kamp Breakfast

The next morning Heinrich had breakfast in the Hotel restaurant. It was a very nice place and had an wonderful elegance. The napkins were embossed in gold letters with the words,”Guten Appetit”. That means, “enjoy your meal”.

There was a very nice buffet set up for breakfast with a great selection of breakfast foods. After Heinrich dished up, he had a wonderful spread set up on the breakfast table.

He had a bowl of double chocolate cereal. It's called double chocolate because there are too different kinds of cereal. One kind of cereal is puff balls. The other kind is like round flakes with a chocolate flavor. Really yummy.

Heinrich also had a bowl of granola. Besides the oats there were also grated nuts, chocolate puff balls and square chunks of chocolate.

There were some big breakfast rolls. The buffet had several choices of foods to eat with the buns. Nutella is a chocolate cream made out of hazelnuts. There were also some special meat spreads. The restaurant had three different kinds. Each was made out of a spread called liverwurst. It tastes better than it sounds. There were labels with red, green and orange stripes to show the three different flavors.

Extra choices to eat with the buns also included slices of cheese, salamis, and ham. It was a very very good breakfast.

 

Kamp Streets

On one of Heinrich's weekends he went to a charming little town on the Rhine river. The name of the town was Kamp Bornhofen.   When Heinrich got to the town he went for a sight seeing walk. There were two gates in the town that he really liked. One was a huge garden gate to a churchyard. The handles for the gate looked like groups of priests. The handles actually were really big.

On another gate, the house owners painted two knights. They were decorated with armor and had shields and swords.

As he walked, Heinrich noticed that the city was really old. Near the center of the city there was a fancy hotel with a restaurant and some very nice decorations.

As he looked closer Heinrich noticed on the Hotel sign that it was originally built in 1384.

 

Further up the street towards the edge of town was another beautiful old building. Painted on the wall was the date of 1635.

 

Out at the edge of town was the “new section” of town. The buildings here were much newer. Heinrich saw a date chiseled into one of the support beams in the wall.

When he looked closer he saw that this was one of the new buildings in the city. The date on this building was 1707. It was more than 300 years old and is older than the United States.

Kamp Hotel

On a weekend adventure Heinrich drove over to a town named Kamp Bornhofen. On the drive over Heinrich enjoyed the beautiful German countryside. In the fall the trees turn many beautiful colors. Germany has many very pretty sections of countryside.

Not only are the trees and hills exciting to enjoy. There are also lots and lots of historic stories and buildings. Almost everywhere around Heinrich's part of Germany there are old castles on the hills and old churches in the valleys.

The cities are very different in Germany. The roads are very narrow and the houses and buildings are right next to the road. You have to be careful when you walk out of a door not to get hit by a passing car. This was the street where Heinrich's hotel was in Kamp Bornhofen.

Looking out of his hotel room, Heinrich could see a pretty old building across the way. The railing in the picture was from Heinrich's balcony. It was a pretty evening and he ate his dinner out on the balcony.

The room had a comfortable bed. The pillows are square and kind of lumpy. The blankets don't cover the whole bed but there is a different one for each side of the bed. The sign for the door was in three languages: German, English and French. They all mean, “Please don't Disturb”.

 

Roadside Decorations

Heinrich has had a lot of opportunities to travel and see some very nice places in Europe. Most of his travel has been in a car and driving on the roads. Many of the places where roads meet are round abouts or traffic circles. That also means that there are big round areas in the middle of these circles. Some of the towns put some creative and interesting displays in the traffic circles near their city. Heinrich found one with a big black cat standing on a huge wine vat. It was kind of funny.

 

He found another area in France where the people had a bird theme for their circles. In one circle was a bird family made out of bushes. There was a mother and father bird and some babies in a nest.

At the other end of the town there were lots of bird house in the middle of the round about.

Some cities don't have traffic circles but just normal intersections in their towns. But a lot of them like to make decorations to greet visitors as well. A lot of towns have beautiful displays that use many flowers.

One of the cities had a big horse made out of shrubs. These are called topiaries. This was like a gigantic chia pet in the shape of a horse.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Another city made a miniature vineyard with a wooden grape keeper. It makes traveling for Heinrich a lot more fun. Every city visit can turn into an imaginative seek and find.

 

Calais

In between England and France is a narrow strip of water called the English Channel. It is close enough that on a clear day you can look across the water and see England. The part one can see is the White cliffs of Dover. It is close enough that some people have even swam between the two place. A couple of years ago the French and English dug a tunnel under the ocean between these two places. You can ride a train in the Chunnel (Channel Tunnel) but cars aren't allowed to drive in it.

Many years ago there was a war that was fought here. The Germans built big cement bunkers to put huge guns in. That way they could keep the English Navy ships from attacking and could control who got to sail in the channel. Some of the old bunkers can still be seen even though the war was more than 60 years ago.

 

The point above Calais is known as Cap Blanc-Nez. That means the Cape of the White Nose. It has that name because the cliffs are white like Dover's. A little way down the coast is another cape named Cap Gris-Nez. That means the Cape of the Grey Nose. Its cliffs aren't quite as clean and so they look grey instead of white.

 

Crecy

 Another important battle in the hundred-year war was fought at Crecy. It was the between a very small group of English archers and lots and lots of armored French knights. When it happened, nobody would have believed that the English had a chance. Almost all they had were archers on foot without much protection and very small numbers.

But the French got too excited and rushed straight at the English. The English had a really good position at the top of a long hill. There were woods on both sides, so the French couldn't go around.

They had to charge straight up the hill towards the waiting English archers. The English shot so many arrows the French said it was like a thunderstorm of arrows that clouded the sky so much that it blocked out the sun.

 

The French knights were almost wiped out that day and the English suffered very few losses. It was one of the first indications that knights in armor wouldn't be as tough as people who could shoot. Especially later when those people figured out how to make guns.

There were some very nice signs posters to help explain what happened at Crecy. But some mean people broke some the signs and wrote all over the pictures. Some people really aren't very nice or smart.

 

As Heinrich was leaving this important battlefield he passed a herd of French cows. They seemed very unimpressed that they lived somewhere famous and they just kept eating the grass. Maybe cows are smarter than people.