‘Look for the thing that looks like a castle’

Last week we had a businessman call to arrange English lessons for this week, and I was told that I’d be teaching him. No problem, it’s my job. The secretary then told me that the lesson would be at his office in a castle (some are used as commercial space). Great, I thought.

The problem was getting there, since it was an incompany class. Not transportation – we have a few school owned cars that we use for occasions like this – it was finding out exactly where the castle was. We tried Mapquest and GoogleMaps, but neither could pinpoint the location (that turned out to be due to the fact that it ended with a ‘g’ it nobody actually knew how to spell it correctly due to the dialect here – z, sch or ch – nobody thought it ended with a ‘g’).

So the secretary said to me, ‘It’s small a village. Just go there and look for the thing that looks like a castle.’

‘Right,’ I thought. ‘That should be easy. I have a keen eye for castles because I love them.’

As I was driving there yesterday morning, I remembered the conversation I had had with the secretary about looking for ‘the thing that looks like a castle’.

‘There it is! On a hill across the river.’

‘Wait! It isn’t in the village and this one was supposed to be [according to the student].’

So, I got off the bridge and turned right and headed into the village (one of those small German ones with narrow, winding streets) in search of my destination). When I reached the end of the village (3 minutes later), I turned around and headed back into it determined to find ‘the thing that looks like a castle’ (I couldn’t call anyone because I didn’t have any money left on my prepaid cell phone).

There it was – a large complex with a castle and a few other structures, so I pulled in. Unfortunately, the name of the complex didn’t have the German word for castle on it, so I grew uncertain that it was the correct one.

Then I got lucky – I saw people! Most small German villages are completely deserted weekdays and these were the first signs of life I saw, so I walked over to them and asked if this was the castle I was looking for. Then they broke the bad news to me – they didn’t think it was but weren’t certain due to the fact that they weren’t from that area. Despite the county designation being the same as the one of the village, they were from the other end of the county.

I got back in the car and continued in the direction I had come from looking for another ‘thing that looks like a castle’.

Two minutes later, I found a third ‘thing that looks like a castle’, parked, got out and found a small sign verifying that indeed it was my destination.

Perhaps ‘look for the thing that looks like a castle’ works some places but not in my region.