It stopped raining!

Although we had a very wet fall, the spring here has actually been quite lovely. Indeed, there probably hasn't been enough rain from the point of view of farmers nearby. But this has meant that we have had a chance to explore bike trails and canoe down rivers nearby. Recently we visited the Bergpark Wilhelmshöhe, which is a palace and parkland built in the late 18th century just outside of Kassel. The palace sits on an enormous parkland peppered with fake ruins and fantastical constructions.

This is the palace, which now houses Kassel's small, but impressive collection of antique and old master art that comprised Germany's first public art museum.

This is the view uphill from the palace, which culminates in a stone cascade, topped by an octagonal building, which is itself topped by a pyramid on which stands a huge Hercules sculpture. It is a silly idea, but what the heck.

The whole park comes alive once a day in a spectacular water show. All of a sudden, water gushes out at the top of a pyramid-shaped cascade and runs downhill through man-made gulleys, down waterfalls,

under bridges, and  and across an aquaduct before being shot up in the sky as a fifty meter water jet. The whole show lasts about an hour! We visited the park on a very hot day, and the appearance of water out of nowhere was quite magical and a real relief to all of us.

We finished the day by walking to the Löwenberg, a castle ruin that was built around 1800 when such things were thought Romantic. This was one of the settings that Goethe had in mind when he composed Faust.