Third Birthday

This is one of the photos that have been fully dated and thus a useful reference point around which I can place other un-dated or wrongly dated ones.

I know exactly where it was taken - at the duck pond in the gardens of the Schlosspark in Weinheim.  (In case link updated by the tourist office, here another one that should work)At the time of posting this, the link takes one directly to a picture of the duck pond and you can clearly see the wall I am perched on is still standing to this day (Jan 2018).

I am with my Mum and together with my father we had been on the every other year leave from Trinidad, in Europe. Partly in the UK and partly in Germany, staying with my grandmother. I still have to do some research but I think it was an extended stay for my mother & I while my father returned after the normal 6-8 weeks.

The Schloss (Schloss=castle) is less of a castle and more a chateau type building which although it started around 1400 has continually been added to over the centuries and is set in a wonderful park full of very special trees. It is just above the centre of the town and as you may have seen on the link has a superb view to the hills of the Odenwald Forest and the two "proper" castles known as "Burg" s, the type where knights of olde etc. In fact, one is from around 1100 and is largely a ruin, the other was built between 1907 and 1928.

Weinheim itself has a wonderful inner city and a lovely market square. The town back then was relatively small around 25,000 inhabitants, now near 50,000. It lies on the so-called Weinstrasse (Wine Road), 18km north of Heidelberg and 15km to the northeast of Mannheim the capital city of this Rhein Neckar (rivers) area.

It's a place I can as good as call home as I spent much of my younger years there when I could only return home from UK boarding school in the summer holidays. It is still the home to a cousin, Katrin and her father and my reserve father, Jochen and his wife Gerda.

The Schlosspark was always a place we regularly visited throughout the years for a simple walk, a round of mini-golf, a play on the swings, a look at the small zoo, a coffee on the terrace and of course feeding the ducks.

Very fond memories