city_with_the_drowned_castle epitome of incomprehensibility I'm living in the past, but so is Kassel when it exalts the 17th and 18th centuries. When Landgraf Karl, the lord of the realm, commissioned a grand statue of Hercules, an intricate water fountain flowing down from the statue and hill, a garden, a grove of orange trees, a pavilion filled with marble art. The larger building, a surviving part of the palace, is a yellow and white wonder. I don't remember if Karl I built it (or rather told people to). Was that a later ruler, flush with money from backing the American Revolution? Karl I hired out soldiers too, invested in the War of Spanish Succession. Blood to gold, white, marble. Wikipedia's page for him, Englishly called "Charles I, Landgrave of Hesse-Kassel," doesn't have as much detail on the text of the monuments I skimmed there, nearly two years ago. Summer of 2023, immer_immersion. ... But what about the drowned castle? It's more of a palace, as I said above, not a medieval fortress (being old but not European-old). In World War 2, Allied bombers targeted an uphill dam. The result? Water cascaded into the town, flooding the lowlands, drowning civilians, and knocking down part of the historic palace. Not much on Wikipedia about this either. It wasn't as big or devastating as the aerial attacks on London (from one side) or Dresden (from the other). But locally, a blow. The town's drowning still dampens the present, puts a damper on the part where I'm sitting at a meal with my German "guest parents" and telling them how my grandfather came to be a mechanical engineer. Not that they care, but there's a gap between "working on the family farm" and "going to university for engineering." That gap is the war, when Grandpa, an unspecialized private, made himself useful by fixing vehicles. I don't know why I'm the awkward one. He didn't bomb Kassel. Even if he did, would that be my fault? Turn things around: would I blame my "guest mother" Patricia for everything the Nazis did? (I exclude my "guest father" Arild, who has Norwegian parents). No, of course not. Well then. It's just that I don't want to come across as an enemy, a downer. A palace-downer, a town-drowner. 250506 ... e_o_i I went to look things up, and now it's so late, ugh. Anyway, I think I mixed up the history of the Wilhemshöhe Palace with the look of the Orangerie Palace. Still, I don't see anything about destruction by water, just by bombs and fire. But I remember water. People in Kassel mentioned water. Miriam mentioned water. I went with her, Julie, Alexia, and Grace on a weekend side-trip to Basel, Switzerland. We were gliding over water, the Rhine, smooth and calm on a Friday evening. Miriam, looking at the water, "Maybe I'm unfair, but when they talked about people drowning in Kassel, I thought, 'There are worse ways to die than drowning.'" "Well, you're right. For example, starving to death," I murmured. I shouldn't have said that specific thing. She might have thought that I was deflecting to something else that happened during the war. Then again, she might not have heard me. The water drowns out sounds. We can go on pretending we're on a luxurious cruise instead of an hour's boat tour. We can go to sleep and dream of sinking again, maybe. 250507 what's it to you? who go blather from