A Visit to Schloss Styrum – TGC

We’ve been living in Germany for seven months. Can you believe that?

It’s been interesting. We’ve been adapting. There are still better days and worse days, but overall, we’re finding our feet. Jan is starting with German classes soon, and our landlady has undertaken to teach me too. Once he learns, I’m sure my own learning will accelerate. Honestly, I’ve been so caught up in my book, that I haven’t focussed on learning German like I used to. It’s my fault, I know. I just have divided priorities between my kid and hubs, my writing and keeping house. Being a work at home mom is difficult enough without adding learning a language to that. 😛 But as soon as the book is in for round two of edits, I’ll throw myself at learning German again.

OK. Obligatory update out of the way. (If you want a more detailed update, let me know.)

So spring in Germany. I mean, WOW.

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The thing about living in a summer rainfall district is it rains in summer. Shocker, right? In Johannesburg, it rarely rains in the winter and the winters tend to be cool and dry, with enough sun to be able to bake during the day.

In Germany, it’s quite the opposite. Wet, short days are followed by long, rainy nights. It’ll rain for two full weeks, stop for a day or two and then rain again for two weeks. We had sunlight from about 9 in the morning to 4 in the afternoon, usually through cloud cover.

But spring? My friends, sunlight in abundance. At this stage, the sun only starts setting at around 9 at night and it’s light in the mornings around 5 (thank goodness for thick blinds). We’ve also been exposed to the blessing that comes with winter rain – by the time spring comes, everything is already green and blooming.

The streets of Germany are spectacular at the moment. It’s trees in full bloom everywhere, with flower petals drifting on the wind. We got to see a lot of that when we walked up to Schloss Styrum the other day.

Now, schloss is the German word for anything from manor house to fort to castle. In this case, it’s closer to a manor house, though Wikipedia names it a castle. It’s still pretty though, and so tranquil. We loved walking around and just taking in the stunning flowers and sights.

The bonus is this amazing place is free to enter and about 900m from my house. So it’s an easy walk, with a nice play park across the street for Kayla. They even have an old water tower turned museum.

I’ll stop rambling now and show you the photos.