Click the map to tour the Seven Kingdoms: Cochem, Marigold, Magenta, Indigo, Saffron, Rose, and Blackfly.
Feel like playing hide and seek? Take a mini-tour of Rheinfels castle in Germany. Extensive tunnels, ruins, and a gorgeous view. It’s the inspiration for the Saffron Kingdom in the #SevenKingdomsFairyTales.
If you want the feeling of flying over the Saffron Kingdom on a dragon–like Princess Saffy or Prince Magellan–here’s a professionally made video with twinkly music :). The first 3 minutes and the ending show close-ups of the castle and the part in the middle shows all the houses in the valley.
If you’re a fan of Rheinfels castle, you might enjoy the next book in the Seven Kingdoms Fairy Tales!
Book 3 [title still secret!!] stars the Saffron twins: Princess Saffy and Prince Magellan.
If you’ve read LOST WITH LEEKS or TROUBLE WITH PARSNIPS, you may remember the twins and their dragon.
If you want to know when Book 3 is ready, sign up for my Reader’s List.
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If you’d like to stay in touch, sign up for my Reader’s List. Once a month, I share a new book recommendation for readers ages 9 to 12, story-related freebies, and/or related blog posts. If it’s not your thing, you can unsubscribe at any time.
Koblenz is the next stop in our Tour of theSeven Kingdoms! This fairy tale world is inspired by real castles in the Rhine and Mosel River valleys in Germany.
When you take the train, you can look up and see the fortress as the train pulls into the station. The big, hulking rock towers way up above the city of Koblenz.
We took a “crooked elevator” [Schrägaufzug] up to the youth hostel in the fortress. *Entertaining but bring exact change*
Feeling cooped up? Take a mini-tour of Ehrenbreitstein Fortress in Germany. People have been defending this rock for 5,000 years. It’s the inspiration for Magenta Kingdom in the #SevenKingdomsFairyTales.
The flat top of the fortress means there’s plenty of room for marching bands. From the air, the paths in the huge green field draw a lovely star-shape.
The real fortress is big enough for five museums and lots of gardens.
Plus the youth hostel. If you stay overnight, you wake up inside the museum. It’s a good idea to get the map the night before. 🙂 Because the museum might not be open yet!
Just for fun! Marching bands and people dressed up for Prussian Day at the Ehrenbreitstein fortress. I especially like the part with the merry-go-round. (starts at 12:00)
It’s hard to sneak up on this fortress. Everyone is watching you.
You can see the Rhine River through this peephole.
The fortress’s flat top has plenty of room for gardens.
These basalt columns weren’t made by people. They are a natural formation.
Want to stay in a fortress with your family?
Extra-high walls feel like a labyrinth!
View of the city of Koblenz from the fortress.
Secret passageway to youth hostel.
This is the “German Corner”. The smaller river is the Mosel and the big brown one in front is the Rhine.
Want to get a good view or get away in a hurry? Strike out into the hills above the Rhine.
If you like Ehrenbreitstein fortress as much as I do, you might enjoy Prince Nero’s adventures at the Christmas Fair.
This short story is an appetizer for the full-length Seven Kingdoms Fairy Tales.
And a way to spend a little more time in the Magenta Kingdom.
If you’d like to stay in touch, sign up for my Reader’s List. Once a month, I share a new book recommendation for readers ages 9 to 12, story-related freebies, and/or related blog posts. If it’s not your thing, you can unsubscribe at any time.
Click the map to tour the Seven Kingdoms: Cochem, Marigold, Magenta, Indigo, Saffron, Rose, and Blackfly.
_______________
If you’d like to stay in touch, sign up for my Reader’s List. Once a month, I share a new book recommendation for readers ages 9 to 12, story-related freebies, and/or related blog posts. If it’s not your thing, you can unsubscribe at any time.
If you’d like to stay in touch, sign up for my Reader’s List. Once a month, I share a new book recommendation for readers ages 9 to 12, story-related freebies, and/or related blog posts. If it’s not your thing, you can unsubscribe at any time.
In earlier times, the rivers were the highways. Big and long rivers, like the Rhine River in Germany were important for delivering people and things.
[Is that why Amazon is named after a river in Brazil? I don’t know, do you?]
If you visit, you can stay at the nearby youth hostel or the YMCA hotel in another castle, high up in the village of Kaub. Down at the Rhine riverbank, you take a small ferry across to the island.
This castle is the perfect place for collecting tolls from ships bringing cargo up and down the Rhine River. If you’ve ever seen a modern tollbooth, you’ll agree that this is about the fanciest tollbooth ever!
Modern tollbooth for cars. Source: Shutterstock Royalty-free stock vector ID: 683431282
The first tolls were collected almost 800 years ago in 1257. The castle changed hands several times and new parts were added and reinforced. The Prussians finally stopped charging ships tolls here in 1866. Since 1946, the castle belongs to the state of Rhineland Pfalz in Germany.
Inside the Blackfly castle. The tall steps keep the castle dry when the Rhine River gets high from too much rain. The castle has lots of staircases, open walkways for croquet or chase scenes. Queen Ash’s office (the Kommandant used it first 🙂 gives her a good view of possible “customers”. She doesn’t want to miss a chance to collect a toll from a passing ship.
Tired of the view from your window? Take a mini-tour of an 800-year-old tollbooth. #SevenKingdomsFairyTales
Click the map to tour the Seven Kingdoms: Cochem, Marigold, Magenta, Indigo, Saffron, Rose, and Blackfly.
_______________
If you’d like to stay in touch, sign up for my Reader’s List. Once a month, I share a new book recommendation for readers ages 9 to 12, story-related freebies, and/or related blog posts. If it’s not your thing, you can unsubscribe at any time.
Would your family like to celebrate St. Nicholas’s Day this year? At our house, it’s always been a nice start to a busy month.
Making Stutenkerle or “Bread Guys” is a fun, easy, and reasonably healthy after-school activity on December 5th.
Afterwards, the kids can do what German kids are doing: clean their boots and put them out for St. Nicholas.
On December 6th, our kids’ boots were full of things to get their own presents organized.
Gift bows or
tags,
ribbon,
a roll of wrapping paper.
And a chocolate St. Nicholas.
And the Bread Guys!
Bread Guys make breakfast the next morning VERY cheerful.
In the Rhineland where I live, you can buy Weckmänner in the bakeries.The word sounds like “Men who wake you up.” I’m still waiting for someone to explain that to me. . . 🙂
What, no German bakeries?
The easy way to do this:
refrigerator biscuit dough from the grocery store* and
raisins,
sprinkles,
almonds,
red hots,
or whatever you have for decoration.
*Fun fact: “Knack und Back” is the German name for those refrigerator rolls that you smack (“Knack”) on the counter and they pop open. “Back” means to bake.
Stuck for ideas for those shiny clean boots? How about a copy of. . . . [you saw that one coming, didn’t you? 🙂]
LOST WITH LEEKS
A Seven Kingdoms Fairy Tale, Book 2
Argh!Crown Prince Nero is lost again. That’s what he gets for trying to fly a hot air balloon. Thanks to his fairy godfather’s gift, every map and compass goes kerflooey as soon as Nero touches it.
Even worse, his royal mom has just kidnapped St. Nicholas.
If Nero can’t find his true North in a hurry, he’ll never rescue him before St. Nicholas’s Day!
If you’d like to stay in touch, sign up for my Reader’s List. Once a month, I share a new book recommendation for readers ages 9 to 12, story-related freebies, and/or related blog posts. If it’s not your thing, you can unsubscribe at any time.
A week or so ago, I went into a small toy and stationery store to make a photocopy. There was a huge sign over the door “DRUCKEREI PAFFENHOLZ” and since “Druckerei” means printer, I thought I’d find a copy shop. (LOL!)
“The office is in the back,” the salesperson told me, so we went through a door and walked past a row of large printing machines.
This wasn’t a mere copy shop.
But when I asked about a small print job, Mr. Paffenholz offered us a tour of the whole place.
Yes, please! 🙂
Later, I found out this family business has been active for 50 years! That’s a lot of paper and ink.
More than a tiny copy shop–this is a printing press! They are sitting on the machine that looks like a train that does the four-color printing. Source: https://druckerei-paffenholz.de/
The first step in producing a printed book is a shoot-out: the pages are “ausgeschossen” which means literally “shooting the pages out”. It’s not the wild west, it means the pages are laid out for printing on larger sheets. Some pages are right side up and other pages are printed “standing on their heads” so that the pages will all be in the right order and orientation in the finished book.
For this, the printer uses a digital printing machine that uses the same technology as “print-on-demand” and handles very short print runs, like groups of 50 or 100. I think they also use this machine to check the incoming InDesign files and print-ready PDF files that come directly from customers or from their in-house graphic designers.
The next step was a machine that creates the metal plates for the four-color printing process (CMYK or Cyan, Magenta, Yellow or Key–short for Black). One aluminum plate is etched with the design for each color. Later, the metal plates are recycled.
Of course, I was trying to imagine how I could make a coffee table or something out of them, if I ever had a book printed on an off-set press! Authors are a little strange.
The next machine was shaking a stack of pages together to make them even. It’s like what you do when you bang a ream of paper on the counter to make it “square.” Every so often, the machine operator added a heavier piece of construction paper to the pile. I’m not sure if that was to separate each edition of the book being printed or if it was to weigh the other pages down.
Another machine cuts the pages to size once they’ve been shaken together.
Then we went back up to the room-sized machine that prints the CMYK colors using the metal plates created by the other machine. When the metal plates are wet, the etched design is the only thing that takes up ink. Each metal plate does one color.
The paper travels through four connected printing machines like a ticket collector going through the cars of a train. (See photo of company staff above.)
Dodging a small fork-lift, we looked at the control station where the printer adjusts the color settings until they get the effect they want.
“What do you think? A little more Cyan?”
The folding and stapling machines to make the finished brochures and booklets were last on the tour.
NOTE: I didn’t have a camera so I couldn’t take photos even though Mr. Paffenholz gave me permission. The photos here are all from the Druckerei Paffenholz website.
When I got home, I found this book, a perfect combination for a printing family that runs a toy and stationery store!
Hope you enjoyed the tour!
I wonder if this Paffenholz is in the same family of printers? Definitely a book I want to check out! The title means: Bookbinding for Children: from simple lightning book to spy notebook.
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If you’d like to stay in touch, sign up for my Reader’s List. Once a month, I share a new book recommendation for readers ages 9 to 12, story-related freebies, and/or related blog posts. If it’s not your thing, you can unsubscribe at any time.
Until December 3, 2018, use this link to sign up, so you get your free copy of TROUBLE WITH PARSNIPS. Thanks for your interest!
The Reading Wonder Giveaway for Middle Grade eBooks includes LOTS of middle grade authors, check it the whole giveaway here.
