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.
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.
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!
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
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!
Just for fun, here are the real castles that inspired the Blackfly and the Saffron Kingdoms. LOST WITH LEEKS stars the Blackfly Prince Nero and the Saffron royal twins: Prince Magellan and Princess Saffy!
Nero’s a trouble-magnet–for compasses, maps and magical creatures. Worse, his royal mom has kidnapped St. Nicholas. Nero’s got to map out a rescue right away!
The second Seven Kingdoms Fairy Tale is almost ready!
Argh! Twelve-year-old 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 compass and map 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!
Why read Seven Kingdoms Fairy Tales?
Everyone knows the leaders of tomorrow will need lots of skills. Whether it’s speaking up at a feast, or reading a map in a strange kingdom, these Tales are all about finding more magic in your life.
For ages 9 to 12. Click HERE for more about the book, including where to order. Thank you!
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.
This is a shoot out–pages laid out for printing. Source: https://druckerei-paffenholz.de/
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.
Then we toured the off-set printing process.
Here comes Y for yellow! Source: https://druckerei-paffenholz.de/
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.
One of the older specialty machines that can punch or emboss (or create braille??). Source: https://druckerei-paffenholz.de/
Older machines in the back of the hall could still handle embossing, punching, glue-ing. I’m not sure if they can do Braille, maybe not.
Wouldn’t you love to have a Braille edition of your book? Oh, look what Google found for me: http://www.braillebookstore.com/Braille-Printing Now I have a new ambition. 🙂
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.
Coils of wire for stapling. Source: https://druckerei-paffenholz.de/
Folding machine in action. Source: https://druckerei-paffenholz.de/
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.
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.
If you enjoy visiting Cochem castle as much as I do, you might like the story of this inventor princess.
It’s save-the-kingdom time. . .
Can she finally use the one tool that’s never worked. . .her quiet voice?
It’s a way to spend a little more time in the Seven Kingdoms.
Last week, our local library visited the German publisher Kiepenheuer & Witsch in Cologne. Their offices look right out on the Cologne Cathedral. Their location next to the main Cologne rail station make it easy for their internationally renowned authors to drop by for coffee.
They have a fascinating history. I never thought about German publishers being shut down after World War II. Kiepenheuer & Witsch was one of the first to receive permission to resume publishing (because the Nazis had shut them down earlier.)
We had a tour “in publishing order” from the front desk:
Book covers are designed here. We were allowed to take pictures of these final versions, but the concepts for the next catalog are top secret. They publish 100 new books a year with about a dozen editors. People work hard here!
This book, titled simply S, by Doug Dorst and J.J. Adams, is the designer’s ultimate formatting dream. *cough* There are guides about how to read this book with notes and accessories but there was no guide for putting it together.
This book might seem like the ultimate argument for a print book, but there are ebook versions. (My head hurts thinking about it!)
If the German translation is 10 to 35% longer than the English original, that must have made the hand-lettered notes challenging:
The subtitle sums it up: First Aid for German Problems. This book calls to me. For years, my relatives and friends have been using German in ways I never learned in class. This book promises to make everything clear–in a light-hearted way.
My city library lists an edition with over 700 pages. Yikes! That’s a lotta German grammar. But I’d really love to understand why my German relatives say things the way they do.
The title means: the dative case is the death of the genitive case. A grammar murder mystery? I know–it sounds deadly–oops!
[If you’re wondering: English sort of has these “cases” but we’re not as serious about them. Dativ is somewhat like what we call indirect objects: I gave it to him. Genitiv is somewhat like using apostrophes. The author’s book.]
Kiepenheuer & Witsch’s decisions shaped the kind of publisher they have become. The tour made me think about the role of a publisher in society.
What books do you publish?
What is a “book?”
What will make readers want your books?
How will you show authors you value them?
What public conversations will you start or take part in?
Who’s going to try and shut you down?
Hope you enjoyed the tour as much as I did!
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