You may recall that when we first moved to Tübingen, we lived in a vacation apartment up on a hill above town. From there we would occasionally catch a glimpse of what looked like a fairy tale castle off in the distance, but I wasn’t sure at the time exactly what it was.

But now I can report that in fact it really is a fairy tale castle.

OK, well, it’s a real castle, called Hohenzollern Castle, built by the Prussian royal family in the mid-1800s.  But it’s not a regular castle in the sense that anyone ever lived there. It was built because the family had money to construct a castle that incorporated every romanticized idea of a castle in a fairy tale. The royals had other castles where they lived day-to-day, but Hohenzollern was their show place. Literally.They did fancy, ceremonial things here, but they never actually lived here. It’s now a tourist attraction run by the formerly royal family (the kings were set aside after WWI, but the family still is treated as nobility.

BTW, Hohenzollern as an area used to be a little more important than it is now: back before the new province of Baden-Württemberg was created, Hohenzollern was given the same status as the original regions of Baden and Württemberg. However, Hohnzellern was always the smallest – it’s just the area that surrounds this castle, basically. So, in the final naming scheme for the new province, it doesn’t even get a mention. I talked about that back in my history of Baden-Württemberg post, which you can read here.

Anyway, we finally got a chance to visit Hohenzollern last May, when Stan and Judie were here, and we all trekked out to see it.  It actually was somewhat of an adventure to get there: for a major tourist attraction, there are no regular buses that run from the nearest train station up that hill in the middle of the day on Saturday. Note to the local tourist bureau: not every tourist will have their own car, so you might  make sure that a bus actually meets the recommended train on a Saturday afternoon as it is supposed to, if you want tourists to make it up to the castle to pay the entrance fee. We were not the only stranded would-be visitors that day at nearest train station to the castle. We wound up sharing a cab with another couple – it was a long, winding road up the hill to get to the castle’s parking lot, where you take a minibus up an even steeper winding road to get to the castle.

After visiting the castle, including going on the weekly guided tour in English, we actually took a regular bus back down the hill to the train station. The bus stop was near the parking lot, and we noted that a posted bus schedule said a bus was going to be coming soon.

Back when we’d arrived at the train station, we’d asked the driver of another bus route if he knew what the deal was with the buses to the castle. He’d denied all knowledge of there even being a bus to the castle, which had led to our decision to call a taxi to get to the castle in the first place.

Imagine our surprise when the bus back to the train station pulled up at the castle’s parking lot – driven by that same driver we’d talked to earlier. Hmm. I’d like to think that he looked a bit embarrassed when he recognized us as we boarded the bus … but I think I imagined that.

Anyway, I’ve been meaning to post these photos for months – I had originally intended to do a better job of sorting them and culling out duplicates, etc. It wasn’t possible to take photos inside the castle, so all I have to offer today is a series of photos of the outside of the castle.

But, it turns out that the best view of the castle is  around the other side from where we were. You can see that view in the castle’s Wikipedia entry.   I have actually seen that view, accidentally, when I was on a train going somewhere else last fall.  I happened to glance out of the window at exactly the right moment. A fairy tale castle if every there was one. I’m hoping when the weather gets nicer, I can take that same train journey and try to get a photo from that more photogenic side of the castle.

In the meantime, hope you enjoy today’s photos from our visit to Hohenzollern Castle in May 2012.