A Postcard A Day - Tuesday 16 May 2023 - T for fairytale castle, baptism and a mulberry bush

 Hello lovely ladies, how are you all today? Today features two postcards about a topic I have shared before, and a visit to the weekly T-Party hosted by Elizabeth and Bleubeard, as well as a few things that are going on in my life here in Spain.

But first I have not one but two postcards. The first one is a beautiful castle:

It is of course Schloss Neuschwanstein. The real one, not the Disney version of it. Yes, it really exists! 

Wikipedia writes:

Neuschwanstein Castle  is a 19th-century historicist palace on a rugged hill of the foothills of the Alps in the very south of Germany, just north of the Austrian border. It is located in the Swabia region of Bavaria.

Despite the main residence of the Bavarian monarchs at the time — the Munich Residenz — being one of the most extensive palace complexes in the world, King Ludwig II of Bavaria felt the need to escape from the constraints he saw himself exposed to in Munich, and commisssioned Neuschwanstein Palace on the remote northern edges of the Alps as a retreat.

That brings me to my second postcard:

This is king Ludwig II of Bavaria. He was born in August 1845 and drowned in the Sternberg Lake in 1886.

Ludwig chose to pay for the palace out of his personal fortune and by means of extensive borrowing, rather than Bavarian public funds. Construction began in 1869, but was never completed. The castle was intended to serve as a private residence for the king, but he died in 1886 and it was opened to the public shortly after his death. Since then more than 61 million people have visited Neuschwanstein Castle. More than 1.3 million people visit annually, with as many as 6,000 per day in the summer.

Although initially he financed the project with money inherited after the death of his father, but he kept expanding and embellishing the plans for the castle until in the end he had to borrow money and got into a lot of debt.

Wikipedia writes:

Even after his debts had reached 14 million marks, King Ludwig II insisted on continuation of his architectural projects; he threatened suicide if his creditors seized his palaces. In early 1886, Ludwig asked his cabinet for a credit of 6 million marks, which was denied. In April, he followed Bismarck's advice to apply for the money to his parliament. In June, the Bavarian government decided to depose the King who was living at Neuschwanstein at the time. On 9 June, he was incapacitated and on 10 June, he had the deposition commission arrested in the gatehouse. In expectation of the commission, he alerted the gendarmerie and fire brigades of surrounding places for his protection. A second commission headed by Bernhard von Gudden. (a well known psychiatrist and Ludwig's private physician)

arrived on the next day, and the King was forced to leave the palace that night. Ludwig was put under the supervision of von Gudden. On 13 June, both died under mysterious circumstances in the shallow shore water of Lake Starnberg:

Mmmm, I love a mystery. But this one was never solved.

Both stamps are pretty common German stamps. The one below (sorry very bad scan) is the Marienplatz underground station:

The real station looks like this:

Then there are the cute baby mountain goats:

I've had a quiet week as I promised myself I'd take it easy. I was getting very tired. I keep forgetting my age.

Lets find a drink to share for the T-Party:

I had lovely fresh cod from the fish monger on Friday. But where's my drink? Lets try again:

That's better. A cool glass of white wine to go with my fish and air-fryer chips.

Sunday was an exciting day as our friend Juan's youngest boy (10 years old) was baptised. In our church we baptise by immersion. In this case we went to a local hot spring, so the water was warm:

He is baptised by both his parents. (Juan is a pastor).

We sang worship songs 

Several ladies from Honduras live in our village (Including the girl that cleans for me, but she doesn't go to church).

Then we went for a picnic outside the old farm where they normally worship on a Sunday:

There was loads of food. I had made a large carrot cake but it was already half eaten by the time I remembered to take a photo of it:

And then someone took this shot of me:

The tree branch is in front of my face but you can still see its me.  (Oh yes, and another drink!)

On to something else. On Saturday I go to Intercambio, (a conversation group of English and Spanish). One lady brought these last Saturday, which she shared as they were lovely and sweet to eat:

Can you guess what they are? I had never seen them but they are mullberries. White mulberries. They grow on a mullberry tree (not bush):

In the US they are considered an invasive species. I'm not sure about Spain. Here is another picture of the berries from the Internet:

But I kept thinking of the nursery rhyme 'Here we go round the mullberry bush' and of course looked it up.

Why do they call it a mulberry bush?

The meaning of the song are much debated with one theory linking the origins of 'Here we go round the mulberry bush' to HMP Wakefield, where female prisoners exercised around a mulberry tree in the moonlight.

Another theory is it refers to Britain's attempts to produce silk in the 18th and 19th centuries. Mulberry trees are a key habitat for the cultivation of silkworms, however the trees proved totally unsuitable for the cold British winters.

I googled Wakefield prison to see if the tree was still there. 

This is what I found:The tree, considered by some to be the origin of the children’s rhyme Here We Go Round the Mulberry Bush, died in 2017 of a beetle infestation and canker, a year after it was shortlisted as a contender for Tree of the Year.

Prison officer Simon Richardson, who helped to cut down the dead tree in 2017 was a member of a team tasked with finding a replacement.

He said at the time: “It became a project because the mulberry is so important to Wakefield prison, it’s instrumental in the place and everything revolves around it.” An appeal tracked down a cutting taken by a member of staff from the original 30 years ago. He has since died but his widow heard of the appeal and was ‘more than happy to help’, the prison said. Several cuttings were taken from the 30-year-old tree and propagated by, among others,

Andrea Parker, the wife of a member of staff and a keen gardener who cared for them until they were ready to be replanted. A ceremony was held last week to replant two of the cuttings in their original place which is on the main route that prisoners take each day to go to the workshops.

That's it from me. I have had to re-write this blog because the original had something wrong with it. 

Hopefully you can all read it now.

Keep smiling,

Hugs,

Lisca