Right now I’m on a business trip to Germany, and because there are no good hotels near the company I work in, I have access to a rental car. As soon as the weekend rolled around, me and my colleague made full use of this.

When we got up on Saturday the sky was grey and it was drizzling; not great for sightseeing but we set off anyway, hoping it would clear up during the day. We drove for about an hour and a half through sleepy little towns in the German countryside until we got to Hohentwiel fortress ruin in Singen. The ruin itself is on the top of a dormant volcano and it took is about ten minutes to hike up there from the parking lot. In my opinion the ruins are great, enough left standing to have something to explore but broken enough to feel adventurous. Since it was still raining slightly we were more or less alone and spent little more than an hour climbing around on the crumbling walls.

After some lunch in a nearby restaurant we headed north to the next castle, Castle Hohenzollern near Bisingen. This castle is much newer than the last one and there is still furniture in the rooms. It’s also much smaller than it seemed to be when I was checking up I information. If you want to see how the kings of old lived, this is a good place but I found it somewhat disappointing.

When we were done at Castle Hohenzollern, we headed back towards our hotel. On the way we spotted what looked lke a castle to the side of the road so we decided to check it out. It turned out to be the city castle of Sigmaringen. It also turned out to be closed so we only got a quick look. It might be worth going back if we stay another weekend. In the end I think 2.5 castles in one day is pretty good, now I’ve sort of had enough.