As done in the last years (see here for example) my company gave us again a Friday off this summer which we used for a grand outing. This year we went to see the Kartause Gaming also called Gaming Charter house. But of course before you can go sightseeing you need to some sustenance and this we did at a nearby coffee-house.
Thus in form we drove the last five minutes to the Kartause where we had a guided tour at 11am. Our guide was a local woman who had lots of inside knowledge about the ongoing repairs and the current owner. The charter house is currently a hotel and another part is used by the Franciscan University of Steubenville who sends its students for one semester to Austria. What they are doing in the middle of nowhere stands to question but this is not my problem.
The guided tour lasted for more than an hour and brought us full circle through the charter house. The restorations of the buildings which were mostly privately sponsored looked great. The former monks of the charter house were well-educated and applied themselves to scientific studies. Which was not enough for Joseph II. so during his reform the cloister was dissolved. I found it interesting that a charter house consisted usually of 12 monks and each of them had a little house instead of just a cell. All houses were connected by a corridor which lead to the communal buildings. Only the communal buildings can still be visited, the individual houses of the monks have long been converted to family homes.
Once the tour finished we sat down for lunch at the hotel restaurant and enjoyed some local culinary specialties. But since breakfast wasn’t that long ago my hunger was hiding and I only had a salad. Everything looked enticing though and what I tasted was great.
But a day outside the office cannot be complete without a little bit of sport. And this year we tried something new, we went summer tobogganing. Calling it a sport might be a little exaggerated but the first time I went down the hill I was definitely using the brake. After I heard though that you cannot fall out of the course (sounds daring to trust the operator), it was game on. I was not the fastest but also didn’t come in last. Yours, Pollybert
