Stadt Kaiserslautern Tour

A group of my girl friends all decided to pitch in & pay for a tour of the main city where we go to church.  Kaiserslautern (Ktown for short) is a larger city & we all live in villages that surround the city.  It's about 25 minutes from my village & I couldn't wait to actually learn the history of Ktown since I spend so much time there.

I had no idea there used to be TWO CASTLES in Ktown.  I'm there all the time & had no idea.  I also didn't know that the Lautern river ran right through the middle of the city & was later BURIED so they could build up the city.  The River STILL FLOWS UNDERNEATH THE CITY.

What?!?!?

Like, how is that even possible?  But we saw it!  There is a tunnel system underneath the city & the river still flows there.

As for the castles, a few bricks still remain where they both once stood, but I would have never known they belonged to actual castles.

These are actual burial sites for rich nobles from hundreds of years ago & yes, they used to have skeleton remains in them.  There are SEVERAL of them surrounding the castle areas.

And the whole idea that there are tunnels under the city still makes me excited.  We got to go down & wander the tunnels.  It was AMAZING.

And yes, this is a human skeleton they found there.

After we came out of the tunnels, we walked around the actual city & learned more about it.

The gold cobblestones represented a Jewish home.  Unfortunately, these were up during Hitler's reign in Germany & in the end these marking helped Hitler do the terrible things he did to the Jewish people here.  It's such a sad part of Germany history.

Roman Baths found under the city.

We had about 20 friends on these tours.  We had about 10 in each tour group.  It was so much fun.

Our tour ended at the church in Ktown.  The church is beautiful.  I always love the stained glass windows in the churches in Europe, they are beautiful.

And as we finished up the tour, we noticed Ktown was setting up for their Christmas Market.  I LOVE Christmas markets.

It was a lot of fun to get to know the city we live near & do so much with.  I'm glad we decide to do a tour.