No shortage of bridges at Schloss Ahrensburg, given that the castle itself is an island within an island. To see what I mean, enlarge the castle photo below – if you’re on computer or full view, it’s the left photo in the circular gallery below; if on a plain phone view, it’s the next photo.
The castle at Ahrensburg, outside Hamburg, was completed in 1585 during the hundreds of years in which most of what’s now the German State of Schleswig-Holstein was Danish. At least one Danish king visited this place in the 1700s at some point. It was the very first rather-legitimate nobility-related castle I saw with my own eyes, back when I spent a year living nearby before college. Oddly enough, I never went inside, never even entered the gardens and grounds to explore, ’til last weekend when I was back for a longer visit than I’ve managed in recent years. If you’re in large-screen or full-view mode, you’ll see three round photos in a row below; the one in the middle was taken from the ground-floor turret room front left in the photo above, looking inwards, and if you enlarge, you’ll see areas where recent renovations uncovered some centuries-old paining, which they’ve tried to match a bit to show what the old colors would have been when fresh.
Looking south along a connecting canal for the Wester river, towards the ridge of hills the river goes through at Porta Westfallica…a thing one learns traveling by train while looking at a map…
July 5, 2025 in Minden, Germany. A train re-routing due to track problems allowed me half an hour to walk around this mid-sized city en route between Berlin and Amsterdam, thus having the chance to appreciate how many more cultural and free-time activities might be available in such a city than when, say, I myself first spent time in Germany back in 1980. A further joy that day: my arrival in Amsterdam was still on time; nay, one minute early.
A foot bridge along the Panke River in northern Berlin, as seen after a bit of a rainstorm (note the stranded scooter washed downstream) in July. More pedestrian infrastructure! 🙂
(so much world, so little time....) 