Some of the other program participants and I met up today with a German guy our program has hired to be our "tutor" for our time here in Berlin, and he was nice enough to show us around the city (by foot, of course, it's Europe) for a few hours. There is a ton to see here! I can't wait to get the photography started.
Speaking of photography, I have pictures from August 30, when I went with my friend Amy to the Schlösser Brühl - or Brühl palaces. Brühl is a city just a short train ride away from Cologne, and it has a really fantastic palace complex that we knew we had to see.
First up was Augustusburg Palace, which was the favorite residence of Cologne's elector and archbishop Clemens August of Bavaria (he had 19 others to choose from). It was built from 1728 to 1768 in a classic Rococo style.
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| The garden was created in 1728 by a student of the master gardeners at Versailles. The sharp designs and neat, orderly patterns were meant to demonstrate man's power over nature |
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| Apparently my Cologne host dad, who is a roofer/building materials seller, helped out with the construction of the windowsills on the ground floor there on this side of the palace. Go Paul! |
My day instantly got a lot worse when we realized there was no photography allowed inside the castle. Ugh! And of course it was the most splendid interior space that I've ever seen. That's the ornate Rococo style for you. I'll just point out some interesting facts we gleaned from our English audio guide, our German tour, and our own observations.
- August didn't want servants disturbing daily life, so servants had their own little secret passageways in the walls.
- The ideal waist size for women in that time was 14.5 inches, which was achieved with a corset so tight that it would cause migraines, which could only be lessened by a patch of leather soaked in perfume and stuck onto the woman’s face.
- August and his company enjoyed expensive, exotic, and extremely luxurious drinks called coffee, tea, and chocolate.
- All the surviving tableware is porcelain rather than gold, as porcelain was 'white gold' in those days and everything China was "in."
- All walls were covered with either fancy chintz fabric, gilded leather with imprinted patterns, hand-painted Dutch tiles, or intricate carved wood and plaster, all done by expert craftsmen.
- August ordered 40 bottles of Cologne (yes, from Cologne) every month, which obviously meant he used more than one bottle every day! Full baths in that time were rare unless doctor's orders called for one.
Cool! My own observation was that he was also extraordinarily stuck up, judging by...
- how his face appeared in many of the house's decorations
- how August would flaunt the fact that his brother was an emperor of some sort since that reflected well on August's own social standing
- how he'd eat alone at state dinners way in the front of the room, which meant he'd be lonely but the center of attention
- and how the main feature in his grand staircase room was a near life-size bust of the upper 1/3 of his body
But we weren't done - August was so obsessed with falcon hunting that he built a 2nd, smaller structure, a lodge of sorts, a 20 minute walk away from the main castle. The falcon lodge was directly on a migratory route of the falcons he was pursuing. It was small but just as splendid, with 10,500 hand-painted Dutch tiles in the stairwell. And interior photography was just as forbidden. Sigh.
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| Recall it was all built for Augustus Clemens, hence the CA initials |
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| Woods on the way to the lodge |
And that was the end of our visit to Brühl! Half of my weekend was over and I had already seen 2 castles. But the next day I was in for a real (photographic) treat - one of the coolest castles in Europea: Burg Eltz. More on that next time! Stay tuned.