November 2019 - While my wife joined a workshop in Erfurt, me and my daughter visited a few sights in Thuringia on daytrips and enjoyed eating Thüringer Klöße. The weather was quite nice that day, so we jumped in the car, drove the few km from Erfurt to Eisenach, parked the car somewhere on the bottom of the hill to avoid parking cost and made our way uphill. After 30min hike with the baby on my chest, we entered the castle. We attended the next available tour and visited all rooms of the castle. The castle is quite a mixture of architectual styles, and not much can be really appointed to the middle ages. The Wartburg Castle is a symbol for German Nationalism, which back then might have had its good, democratic views, but nowadays is rather frightening. Nowadays Burschenschaften, that meet here regularly are being seen as antiquated, authority seeking, and antidemocratic. However we enjoyed the architecture, the wonderful view at the Thüringer Wald, although clouds arised, and the historic traces of Luther.

Definitely a special place to visit, the history, the neogothic rooms and mosaics are amazing, and the whole area is a good place to visit. We still drove to Hainich that day, but had to shorten our hike, due to upcoming dusk and rain.