“It’s just that they’re everywhere.” My jaded guide lamented as he 
spread egg salad on rye. “We used to go when we were kids but at a certain point you don’t get excited about them anymore.” He wasn’t exaggerating. That morning I had taken the train down the Rhine from Cologne to Worms and lost count of the towers, fortresses, medieval walls and palaces I’d photographed.
I thought back to my childhood castles -- Cinderella’s at Disney World and this fairytale themed amusement park in Connecticut complete with a two-story “Old Woman Who Lived in a Shoe” shoe. Swarmed with kids dripping with gooey treats and swarmed again with yellow jackets. It was a blast. Really. But here were the ancient structures they had modeled themselves on. The walls that had watched whole centuries turn. Here there were no lines or transactions to be made or instructions on how or where to climb. The stone steps were worn to a treacherous slant. Anything left standing was fair game and there were no guardrails between you and the valley far below. Anything that had crumbled was susceptible to nature, which rose to reclaim the massive old stones every chance it got.
Six hours and many castles later, I looked out the car window as the light drained out of the Neckar Valley. We rounded a bend and another one loomed above us on the hillside.
I drew back into my seat involuntarily. “I don’t think I can do it.”
“What do you mean?”
“I don’t think I can do another castle.” I heard myself say. The words felt blasphemous but my feet ached and I just wanted a beer.
My friend launched into a lecture that involved questioning my priorities and stamina, reminding me of the point of my trip and how far I’d come and commenting on how awesome this particular castle looked and plus it wasn’t even dark yet. “One more,” he said. I smiled weakly.
But this last castle proved difficult to reach. Each time we tried to take a road towards it, we were spit out farther away.
We parked on the side of a road but an old man shooed us off what was apparently his property – grumbling that the castle was closed anyway because a play was taking place there that evening. What he didn’t know was that he was speaking to a musician and a former aspiring musical theater actress and so only strengthened our convictions. Eventually, we parked at a pub and hiked up the back way.
The castle grounds were mid-metamorphosis. Fair-style booths were filling up with food and drink, tables and white cloths were unfolding, scaffolding was woven with fake flowers and mesh curtains were hung to mask the orchestra and backstage. We strode purposefully in through what was not quite the ticket booth yet and took seats in the bleacher-like stands.
In the girl’s bathroom, a stagehand was trying, rather unsuccessfully, to fill water balloons in the sink. It was Katherine’s first day on the job and she and the other company members were staying in the castle for the summer season. I offered to help and spent the next hour filling a bucket with the cold, heavy blobs. She mostly ripped holes in the colorful rubber, swore under her breath and filled them until they burst.
We settled into our seats as the grounds filled with ticket-baring citizens laden with cushions and blankets and sweaters and dinner. In tee shirts and shorts, we folded our arms against the quickly dropping temperature. Soon the stage lights went on and the courtyard was filled with sweeping orchestral sounds. ‘Die lustigen Weiber von Windsor’ (The Marry Wives of Windsor) opened with a soprano solo. Without a mic, her voice found every rock crevice and probably drifted far into the valley where the old man was complaining about something or other and the pub was warm and rowdy. The opera unfolded with exaggerated gestures and melody lines so that I got the story without knowing the words. The sky grew darker blue and the castle took on the colors of the theater lights. They warmed it in stage makeup – rouge, gold and emerald. The old building was reanimated. The old story filled with new breath.
During intermission we wandered the food tents. The silhouettes of people huddled against the night were backlit by lanterns. We got a tip on the chili and ate greedily, perched on a rock wall. The town twinkled below. It didn’t feel like 2011 or any specific time at all.
My travel partner didn’t put much stock in my number one rule of camping (set up your tent while it’s still light) so when we finally made our way down the hillside, the ground was black and we had to pick our steps carefully in the cellphone light. Back in the car, we decided to drive to one of those blue patches on his gps, banking on woods around a lake.
We took a trail until we saw yellow light and heard voices up ahead. Laughing and yelling and bottles clanging. I thought of Bilbo coming across that group of trolls around a campfire. At first we hesitated, but one of the teenagers braved his way over, explaining that the girls had sent him to check us out. When both parties were assured that the other was at least mostly harmless, we continued on. The site was picked when we hadn’t stumbled over a stump in a while and we were almost out of earshot from the revelers.
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