The little palace in town turned out to be part of a complex which included another palace and a little church and a few other buildings. The little palace on the main street is the Leonhardische Palace which is still the residence of the Von Leonhardis. My aunt knows them and my cousin went to school with their son, so they’ve been inside as well. Envy.
The courtyard of the Leonhardische Palace has a renaissance well which has been renovated. It doesn’t draw water, being locked down, but the local cat loved it!
The other palace, the Degenfeld Palace, has been turned into community buildings and the equivalent of council housing.
The old stables and farm buildings of the Degenfeld Palace (though it’s reached through the courtyard of the Leonhardische Palace) are used by craftsmen making furniture and all sorts of things. There’s a little exhibition centre out the back too.
We went back home and had some coffee, ready for Daniel to pick me up for more sight-seeing and the purchase of a micro SIM from blau.de.
Buying the SIM was quite problematic. You could get prepaid top-ups easily enough, but nobody seemed to actually sell the SIMs themselves. Ah well… hopefully I’ll have better luck after Iceland.
Daniel thought he was taking me to see a great palace at Staden, but he had mixed it up with something else, so we didn’t see any great palace, but the little town was quaint and had a little tiny palace and some old half-timbered houses that are quite common in this area. It was a cute little town:
We stopped in at a Convent called Kloster Engelthal. Daniel had ridden by on his bike many a time and not gone to check it out, so we had a quick look. It wasn’t anything too exciting, but apparently it’s part of a pilgrimage trail:
Next stop was Daniel’s place for dinner downstairs at his daughter’s flat. A friend of theirs was cook for the evening. It was very nice, too. There were 6 of us for dinner and the stories about their weekend near Berlin where they took part in an apocalyptic RPG were very amusing.
Unfortunately, I was dead tired and had to get taken home about 11pm.
