Day 45: Burgruine Rauheneck

Desiree translation: Rauheneck castle ruins.

It was impossible to get the entire castle in a photo, but here are the girls on the wooden bridge that you must cross to enter the castle. According to the German wikipedia, which I let Google translate (so unreliable, hire professionals for your translations and pay them well!), that bridge has always been the way to enter the castle. Well, not that bridge. A bridge.
The castle was not as well preserved as Rauhenstein, which, fun!, we could see from the hike up:

The girls, by the way, are excellent hikers. Nina always asks "are we there yet" as soon as we get started, and Maggie always makes fun of her by asking "are we there yet?" as soon as we start back down (I know she's making fun of Nina, because when she asked the question and I said "No, not yet," she said, "I know, I'm just making fun of Nina. She always asks 'are we there yet,' at the beginning of the hike.") Those two are a riot!
Back to the castle: It was built in the 12th century by the Familie der Rauhenecker (who shortly thereafter started calling themselves the Tursens). Oh! Here's a picture of the ruins that we took from Rauhenstein a few weeks back:

So you can see that it's not as well preserved as Rauhenstein. Still, it was very cool. It's been in ruins since the Turks destroyed it in 1529, who am I to judge its condition. If my house was sacked 500 years ago, I'm sure there'd be nothing at all left today.
Here's a few pictures from the chapel, which was the best preserved room (next to the keep, of course, which is coming)

Can you see the crucifix well above Maggie's head there? I presume that was added recently.

I love seeing little details like parts of hinges still in the stone where doors were, remnants of chimneys, or the holes in the walls where wooden beams were fixed to make the second floor. I have a bunch more photos, which I'll put on Facebook.
The highlight of this castle was the keep which is, interestingly, shaped as an isosceles triangle. It's in fantastic shape, and sometime in the last 100 years someone built wooden stairs so you can get to the top (well, according to the feel of those stairs, I'd guess sometime in the last 200 years!). This keep was also partitioned into "floors," by which I mean a wooden floor was built every 20 feet or so, so that you don't have the terrifying experience of climbing rickety wooden stairs and being able to look 60 feet straight down. In exchange, you get the terrifying experience of climbing up 5 flights of stairs in near total darkness.

The unsuspecting family, about to enter the tower of terror!
But the view from the top... Wow is it worth it!