Willkommen to Deutschland!

As you might have guessed, we’ve landed in Germany and it’s wonderful. Right now we’re in Hachenburg, a town of 6,500 an hour or so north of Frankfurt. We’re staying in a castle. It was built in the 1600s for the local count in the area. Two generations later, he had no sons and the castle fell under the control of the German (Prussian, at the time) state. It changed hands a number of times until the 1980s when the German national bank (the Bundesbunk) bought it for the bargain price (or so I’m told) of 1.5 million Euros.




Now it’s a university run by the bank. Students from all over the country attend the university to get a Diploma in Central Banking—the equivalent of a Canadian Bachelor’s degree but a little higher. Graduates will go on to work for the national bank in a regulating capacity. Similar to the American Security and Exchange Commission or the Canadian Ontario Securities Commission these people look for irregularities in the stock market—future Enron’s (link), money laundering, insider trading, or even difficulties like lack of liquidity in the market—and fix them.

The castle is gorgeous. It’s not medieval, so there is no granite or grey brick or moats or anything that follows the traditional concept of a European castle. As a castle is understandably expensive to maintain, by the time a hotel company had bought the castle in the early 1970s, there was barely anything remaining of the original building. The company renovated it adding new paint and separating the castle into two sections: the upper castle which houses a small but modern cafeteria/restaurant, a small library, a computer room and an entertainment room (with a pool table and foosball table). There is also a small pub that serves beer for one euro but I’ve yet to avail myself of that particular benefit.

The lower castle is where the dorms are. One long building, there are two or three “gates” that separate the dorms. Each gate contains about 10 to 12 rooms on one wing and then classrooms and a TV room in the other.

The rooms are huge. Dorm-style but the best we've had so far.

Each has two desks, two beds, two wardrobes, a large bathroom with shower and toilet in the same room (not the case in Brussels, I’m afraid) and alarm clocks and laundry which I’ve yet to locate. And the views are beautiful.

All in all I’m quite impressed; except for the lack of internet in the rooms and the dial-up internet (that’s not a joke, that’s a reality) in the computer room.