During several recent local road trips, we found ourselves driving along the same autobahn where we kept seeing a sign for the town of Sayn, Germany. The sign is noticeable because it has a painting of a very colorful butterfly on it.
I finally researched Sayn and it turns out there’s a butterfly garden in town, so we decided to visit one Sunday when we had nothing else planned.
We bought a combination ticket that covered both the butterfly garden and the Schloss (palace) across the street.
Even though I knew in my head that butterflies are insects, the point was really driven home seeing so many of them up close. It occurred to me that I like butterflies only because they’re pretty and come in so many different patterns and colors and I grew up thinking butterflies are good. Slap some moth wings on an insect body, though, and suddenly you don’t want it anywhere near you even though moths are very similar to butterflies. Poor maligned moths.
One of the more interesting butterflies we saw was the Owl butterfly.
The Owl butterfly proves the point I just made. Because it’s a butterfly I thought “Wow, that’s very cool-looking!” If you had told me it was a moth instead I would have been totally creeped out.
Anyway, the Owl butterfly is so named because of the spots on its wings that resemble owl eyes. You can see one of the spots on that butterfly’s left wing (right side of the photo). Owl butterflies love to eat bananas.
You can also see in the photo that there is a sign that reads “Dieses Obst ist Nahrung für die Schmetterlinge”, which translates to “This fruit is food for the butterflies”.
Schmetterling is the German word for butterfly and Schmetterlinge is the plural form.
It’s one of my favorite German words, in part because it doesn’t sound like it’s referring to a pretty winged creature when you hear the word spoken. The English word “butterfly” sounds like a sweet, soft, thing that flies gently around and that you’re happy to have land on you. “Schmetterling”, on the other hand, sounds like something that you want to run away from.
Visiting the butterfly garden, I got to hear Schmetterling and Schmetterlinge a lot because most people there were German. If I didn’t know what the word meant, I might have been a little frightened. Even one of my German co-workers acknowledged that if someone told you a Schmetterling had landed on you, the appropriate reaction would be to scream “WHERE??!! Get if OFF me!!”
Moving on, most of the butterflies preferred flowers over bananas.
If you are at all squeamish about butterflies for some reason, this is not the place for you to visit because butterflies were just landing on people left and right.
That one hung out on Sean’s shoulder for a while.
We spotted a few other animals aside from butterflies in our stroll around the small garden.
There is a pond that has both Koi and turtles in it.
Sometimes a butterfly or two will come along for a bite to eat near the turtles.
There is a quail family in the garden as well.
There are various display cases in the garden too where you can see tarantulas, scorpions, and caterpillars as well as butterfly pupae. If you time it well in the morning, you may be able to see a butterfly unfold from its chrysalis. (Side note: When I was a teenager, Chrysalis was a well-known British record label associated with cool bands like Ultravox. Their logo had a butterfly on it and now it finally makes sense all these years later.)
You can also see moths like this Giant Atlas Moth.
See what I mean? If that thing landed on me I’d freak out. Those moths can have wingspans of up to 30 centimeters, which is just under one foot (12 inches). Thank goodness it was behind glass and not flying around with the Schmetterlinge.
Not being a talented photographer, it was difficult for me to get really good photos of the butterflies because the garden is so humid. It’s temperature-controlled and the daytime temperature is about 24 degrees Celsius, just over 75 degrees Fahrenheit. That’s not too bad, but the humidity is 60 to 70 percent which both makes it stuffy and fogs up your camera lens.
Here are a few photos that came out okay:
Just outside the garden is a play area. Luckily I didn’t have to fight off any small children to get my photo taken as a butterfly.
After we left the butterfly garden, we walked across the street to the Sayn Palace.
There was originally a medieval mansion at this site and from 1848 to 1850 it was converted into the palace you see today. The palace was damaged during World War II and was then abandoned and fell into further ruin. It was renovated in 1995 with funds from both the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate and the Princes of Sayn-Wittgenstein. The palace now belongs to Prince Alexander (a graduate of Harvard Business School) and his wife Princess Gabriela but a few of the rooms are open to the public. There is also a restaurant on-site. The butterfly garden that you just read about was created thanks to Princess Gabriela.
There is a small chapel in the palace that houses the reliquary you see in the middle circle here.
It contains the arm bone of Saint Elizabeth of Hungary, from whom the current Princes of Sayn-Wittgenstein are descended.
The main attraction in the palace appears to be the Ornamental Cast Iron Exhibition with works from the 19th century.
That giant eagle used to be located at the entrance to the iron foundry, which is near the palace. The foundry is now being renovated and is under consideration to become a UNESCO World Heritage site. It was supposedly the first building in the world to be made from glass and iron.
Other iron works displayed at the exhibition include garden furniture, a tiny fly about the size of a thumbnail and jewelry. During the Napoleonic Wars, women from the area turned in their jewelry to fund the German war effort and were in turn given iron copies of what they’d donated.
After leaving the palace, we took a short drive up to Burg Sayn, which was a 12th-century castle used by the Counts of Sayn.
If you’re energetic you can hike uphill to the castle from the palace but we weren’t feeling that energetic.
Inside this building is the foundation of a former chapel.
Unfortunately the building was locked the day we were there, but you can peer through the windows and see the foundation, which was discovered in 1984 during restoration.
The well you see here was excavated during that same restoration period.
Excavation was stopped after a depth of 25 meters, which is over 82 feet. At that point the bottom of the well was still not reached so they don’t know how deep it is. Apparently they were hoping to find some treasure down there but it never materialized.
The wall behind the well was part of the castle keep. A keep was a fortified tower. Just behind the wall is a courtyard. We were the only people up there when we first arrived, and there was a guy dressed up as a medieval knight in the courtyard. He was apparently there to give archery demonstrations and was very happy to see us because I imagine he had been quite bored before that. His joy was short-lived though because he didn’t speak English and we don’t speak enough German to understand technical archery terms. Soon after that, a couple with a child came along.
Is he adorable or what? No, little German boys don’t always dress up in Lederhosen (literally, leather pants) but when they do it’s very cute. It’s even cute when grown men do it.
Anyway, Archery Boy perked up again when the couple and the little boy arrived because they spoke German and apparently agreed to watch his demonstration.
Peeking through the bars of a locked gate, we could see what looked like a lovely restaurant.
I’m not sure why they wouldn’t be open on a Sunday. It certainly would have drawn a crowd and maybe then Archery Boy would have had a bigger audience. According to the sign they’re only open once a week for some kind of Spanish buffet, which we found a little odd.
On the way back down to the car we spotted a bunch of goats.
There was a sign near the goats that translated to “Dear Guests – We are always hungry!” It then went on to say that you could get food from Archery Boy and that the goats looked forward to being fed and petted by you. It was signed “Your Castle Goats”.
That was the end of our visit and it turned out to be a lovely day for some last-minute plans like that.
If you are a Lepidopterist (yes, I just learned that word while writing this post) or just a fan of butterflies and know what any of the ones pictured in this blog are called, let us know here or on our Facebook page!
