Once Upon a Time in Deutschland

There is the most amazing caves near our home. It is only about a 40 minute drive. Today we went to see them. They also happen to be in the most adorable town called Pottenstein.

This was such a neat thing to do. While in Germany we plan to see many things. Mostly, I am sure, we will be seeing older castles and such. However, this was a great way to also travel and see other things besides the typical tourist places you think of when thinking of travel and site seeing in Germany.

We arrived between tour times so we took the opportunity to walk around a bit on the outside of the cave entrance.

Once the tour started I had to turn off my flash. Being that it was very dark in most of the cave, I didn't get many great photos, but enough to really show how neat this cave is.

Here is the official website. There where 400 steps in this cave. And here is a breif description in english to read about what we saw today.

http://www.teufelshoehle.de/information

The imposant, 13m wide, 11m high and 80m deep portal in the walls of the Weiherbachtal (Weiherbach valley) is known for a very long time. It was calledTeufelsloch (Devils hole) by the locals. Only about 100m were accessible at this time. The discovery of new parts increased the cave length to 1,500m.

Image: the romantic cave exit.

The cave entrance is known for long, and numerous visitors from near and far visited the beautiful site. At the end of the 19th century the cave was completely damaged, no dripstones remained and the bones in the cave sediments were removed almost completely.

The show cave of today was discovered 1922 by Hans Brand behind the long known entrance. The new parts contained several huge halls with beautiful speleothems and numerous bones. Most of the bones were from cave bears (Ursus spelaeus).

The paleontologist Max Schlosser reconstructed the skeleton of a cave bear, which is now on display in the cave. Remains of human origin were not found.

After the discovery, Hans Brand developed the cave as a show cave, which meant an enormous work. The first hall of the tour shows a small display of mining machinery, which was used to develop the cave, among them lores and drills. The character of the cave is typical for the local dolomite karst: huge chambers and narrow connections. In order to connect the halls with paths of suitable size, numerous tunnels were driven into the rock. The result is the longest cave tour in Germany, about 1,500m long, with about half of the distance being artificial tunnels.

The bggest chamber is called Riesensaal (Giants chamber) with a length of 30m and a width of 16m. The most interesting stalagtes are the Barbarossa and the crucifixion, three larger stalagmites sourrounded by smaller once, symolizing the people.

But the biggest sight of the cave is outside and freely accessible. The portal of the cave, the cave cafe, numerous small caves and abris all around, and the cave exit itself. From the cave exit the path leads through a labyrinth of strange looking rocks back to the cave entrance.

The Fasching parades and festivals are sure a good time here in Germany. At the parades, the kids get candy and the adults get little shot glasses size liquor bottles as hand outs as the floats go by. Everyone, and I mean everyone dresses up. This is in order to scare old man winter away. The girls had a lot of fun learning about old man winter and the reasons why the traditions stand. Dress up scary, walk through the town and make loud noises to scare that old man winter away in order to let spring time in.

Being that this was our first year here, we chose to just go to a local parade on a smaller scale for our first go at it. It was a blast! The girls are learning that the Germans sure to love their holidays and festivals, as they have many of them throughout the year. The they love to drink at all occasions (haha) and that they really enjoy the sense of community that these little towns and villages share. This year we went to Vilseck's festivities!