Russian girl lived for two years in an old castle

2024 Author: Seth Attwood | [email protected]. Last modified: 2023-12-16 15:55

During the Middle Ages, castles were usually fortified buildings designed to defend against enemy attacks. Today we are used to seeing them as museums. It is interesting to visit them, imagining how people lived in them many centuries ago, what art they liked, how they decorated the interior, what their everyday life looked like.

But even now there are people who own real castles and live in them or rent them out to others. Sometimes this is not the most pleasant experience.

Julia once lived in a 600 square meter castle in Germany, which was built in 1482. The girl shared her experience, telling what to expect for a person who also decides to take such a step - to settle in an old building.

She herself was born in Russia, but raised in Germany. She has many interests as she studied mechanical engineering, created her own fair trade market, and ran a wedding business prior to the outbreak of the pandemic.

Julia lived in the old castle for two years. She and her husband drove into it even before the start of the overhaul. There were things that remained the same as in the Middle Ages.

The castle has kept its state intact over the centuries because it has survived not only local conflicts, but also two world wars. One could really say about him: "My home is my fortress."

Glamorous in such a life is not enough

Julia confesses that the six cats they liked most about living in the castle. They considered themselves to be truly royalty, having humans as servants. Sometimes cats went hunting and could have a feast for themselves, because there was a forest nearby and a lot of prey.

This does not mean that they were not fed. Yulia, on the other hand, calls herself a "crazy cat fairy" and jokes that she spends more on cat food than on her own.

The first attempt to re-equip the castle to make it more comfortable to live in began with the kitchen, where they installed an oven and sink. The sink could not be used, but it was planned to put a pump in a well so that there could be running water.

In addition, the electric stove sometimes did not work, so Julia's eating habits, as she put it, were truly medieval.

The girl said that she had never set herself the goal of truly modernizing the castle.

In the two years that she and her husband lived there, they fixed small things such as windows, doors, a large balcony, repaired electricity, installed a telephone line (since they needed Wi-Fi for some projects), closed all openings where they could easy to penetrate rodents. The rest of the castle remained the same old and original.

Difficulties and joys of life in a castle

Julia knocked the kitchen cabinet out of the boards herself. Another great piece of furniture she made is the bed. It weighs 400 kg and is made of natural wood.

Yulia would like people not to think that only rich people live in castles. On the contrary, she claims that minimalistic thinking led her to live in it.

The winters in those places were rather cold, and the only source of heat was a large stove, near which Yulia and her cats spent their time. The temperature in the house could drop to + 8 ° C.

Every week 60 kg of ash was accumulated. In the summer, the situation was even worse, because the walls warmed up to + 40 ° C. Julia said that even after arriving from Russia, it was difficult to get used to such a temperature in the living room.

The castle had a toilet that looked like a wooden chair with an ashtray integrated into the handle. Under it is a sump. To flush the water in such a toilet, you had to collect a bucket of water and pour it inside by hand.

Another interesting part of the castle was the large glass balcony overlooking the forest. When asked which part of the castle she liked the most, Julia could not answer. She fell in love with the whole adventure, without dividing it into parts.