Day 8

Weather : 23'C

Today was all about Bergpark Wilhelmshohn an enormous park on the outskirts of Kassel. It's claim to fame is that it's apparently the largest hillside park in Germany and the second largest in the world - we can attest to the truth of this because we walked most of it and it felt pretty damn big.

It has three castles, a ballroom, monuments, an orangery, glasshouse, and multiple museums. The highlight of the park is the

water feature which starts by running down the formally landscapes hillside water feature. When I say water feature I mean an beautiful 17th century stone castle with an 8 meter high stature of Hercules on the top preceding another enormous oversize staircase that progresses down most of the hillside. The pressure builds created by the fast flow of water sets off multiple other waterfalls and water features within the park eventually ending in a large geyser at the bottom of the park. Unfortunately much of it was under construction so the waterworks were only running late afternoon and so we were unable to stay. It was still beautiful however and we walked a great deal of path and the stairs, the stairs.... how many there were of you!

Walking through the many paths surrounded by German forests I did have the urge to stand behind a tree, peek out from behind it and sing "cuckoo, cuckoo" but I refrained - much to Geoff's disappointment. It also felt like Robin Hood and his merry men were going to come waltzing out any minute (yes I know its the wrong country but the woods were very Robin Hood..ish).

Moved from there to Kruft (a tiny typical German village) outside Koblenz on the Rhine. We are staying the funniest bed and breakfast, each room in the upstairs apartment has a different colour scheme. We are sleeping in the purple bedroom, there is a blue bathroom, another green bedroom and a beige living room.

Absolutely everything is colour co-ordinated from the walls in multiple shades of the allotted colour to the toilet paper and the knick-knacks on the shelves. As Mark would say it's very German Kitsch.