Lipinski's in Germany: Day trip to Steinau an der Strasse

Last weekend we visited the birth place of the Grimm Brothers but there wasn't a museum. My friend, Nilda, found that the Grimm brothers museum was in the town of Steinau an der Strasse. She said the brothers grew up in this town so we decided to visit it. We wanted to see fairy tale stories and books.

Steinau has a really old part of town. The oldest building we saw dated was 1584. The old houses in Germany are half-timbered houses. These buildings have large timbers showing on the outside, usually stained darker or painted for a nice look. I love seeing these old building. Some are painted so nice.

I have included a picture of a half timbered house that some of the plaster has fallen off and you can see the soot filling they used to fill in the spaces of the outer walls.

We walked around a lot. It was cold but the sun was shining. This is the sign to the museum.

This is the outside of the museum. We weren't allowed to take pictures of the inside. It was actually a really boring museum. The first floor was all drawings and paintings of the third brother, Ludwig. Boring. The upstairs was the Jacob and Wilhelm floor for the fairy tales. It was useless. There was hardly anything to look at. It was boring so you didn't miss anything. Lily was able to buy a really nice illustrated fairy tale book in English.

There was a museum across from this one that was kind of interesting. We don't have any pictures and it was in German, but the displays were interesting. It was about transportation along the medieval trade route between Frankfurt and Leipzig.

This is a section of road from the original medieval trade route that was found between Steinau and another town named Bad Soden-Salmunster. They moved it here to be near this museum.

Here are some pictures we took while walking around the town.

Sign

View of street in the old town.

There was a stream running directly through and under the town.

This is a picture of the Rathaus, or town hall.

This is my friend Nilda and her family. We ran into them at the castle. We all went to the Marionette theater. We watched, in German, the puppet show of the fairy tale, The Musicians of Bremen. The kids enjoyed it. I was a bit lost since I didn't know the story. Nilda filled me in on all of the details. We looked in Lily's book later that night and realized the story is in her book too!

Right in the middle of the town was a huge castle. The castle museum was closed and so was the tower. I read online that the castle dates back to before 1200, and most of the still standing fortification was constructed from 1528-1555. It used to be the home for various local rulers, it was once the residence of the Counts of Hanau and was spared the fate of many local castles, being destroyed by French invaders, because it was occupied by French troops in the early 19th century. The state of Hessen assumed responsibility for the castle’s upkeep in 1945 and it now serves as home to renters. We have never seen a castle subdivided into apartments like this one. It was unique. This castle was very large and spread out and had a huge wall all around it.