For our trip to Germany, we’d only planned our first day to Köln and Schloss Drachenburg. The remaining two days, we just wanted to relax and explore the area a bit. For our second day, we decided to go to a wildpark and visit one of the many castles the Eifel has to offer.

We set out for Hochwildpark Rheinland, a park in the middle of the forest, about twenty minutes from our hotel. I was driving and we were talking and we missed the exit. It was lucky we did, because when we took the next one, we accidentally came across this magnificent castle.

We knew Burg Satsvey was in the area, for we checked what sort of things were nearby. But honestly, we dind’t think the castle looked that impressive on the pictures we found online, so we decided to visit other castles instead. I’m happy we stumbled upon this though, because it really looked quite awesome.

We parked the car and walked around for a bit. There were some stores, foodcorners and activities for children, but continuing the trend we set the day before, they were all closed. Luckily, this castle did not have a fence so we could roam around freely, taking in the beautiful buildings while everything was quiet except for birds singing.

After our little detour, we set out for the wildpark again, which was about five minutes away from the castle. It was like a petting zoo, but bigger. There were all sorts of deer, a peacock, pigs and swines (and piglets!), donkeys, the most satanic looking goat and some sort of panda cow. The entry fee was 6 euros per person and for one euro you could buy some animal food. We accidentaly bought this, for our knowledge of the German language is far from perfect. We actually thought the lady at the counter asked if we wanted to go by foot, so we said yes, but she was talking about food for the animals. Ah well. I’m glad we did buy it, because it was really fun to let the animals eat out of our hands.

The park included a gigantic forest with all sorts of deer walking around in it. At first, we didn’t see any, but when we went up a platform that provided us a very nice view of a large part of the forest, we could see some deer in the distance. We shook our bag of food and they. came. running! I went down quickly with some food in my hands and then they came running at me. It was wonderful, but also quite scary. Imagine being surrounded by six very hungry deer. I’ve posted a video of this on my Instagram highlights of Germany, if you want to check it out.

If you’d ask me what my favourite animal is, it would be hard to pick just one. I really love cats, but I also like dogs and birds and donkeys! Imagine how happy I was that I could feed some donkeys in this wildpark as well! They were cute, though one of them bit me, because he wanted some food. You can see the fellow checking out my arm, this picture was taken just before he tried to nibble it…

Not many people have a story about being attacked by a boar. But I have. There was this part of the forest where the boars lived and they had little piglets which where the absolute cutest! They were huddled together because of the cold and it was too adorable not to try to take a picture…

Very slowly I walked closer, afraid to disturb them. I got real close and took some pictures, but then the mama boar decided her babies needed some milk, so she came towards us and fell on her side right in front of me, feeding her babies. Of course I didn’t want to disturb her, so I tried backing away quietly. That was when she saw me, and she came running towards me, trying to push me away with her snout. Luckily, she only gave me a bruise, which was not quite the souvenir I’d hoped for…