cinderella castle in moszna (schloss moschen), PL

at our way from the polish baltic sea back home to munich, we've visited the beautiful cinderella-like moszna castle (schloss moschen) close to opole (oppeln), upper silesia, poland, PL. it is a hotel today, was a sanatorium for mental diseases in the communist era and is a former castle of the german aristocratic family thiele-winkler (thiele-winckler). the castle was built in 1768 and then almost 200 years enhanced further. when it is true what the castle prospect says, they have 99 towers and 365 rooms out there => for every day a different one? well, at the end of WWII, the owners fled from the socialist regime and the castle was run-down during the socialist / communist era like many others in whole eastern europe (+ cuba + vietnam + etc), as nobody cared abt the 'all-people-collectively-owned' property. today is the castle owned by the regional district 'wojewodztwo opolskie' and survives as a hotel + restaurant + cafe + theatre castello + souvenirs shop + horse ranch + event location. at our 1st dinner, there was a company celebration, where the people in groups of 4 were forced to find some signs / codes / ways inside the castle (at least at 3 floors of it) in what i guess was some kind of an escape room or a hide-and-seek competition.

we have met friends which we knew in munich 35 years ago and together enjoyed the beautiful castle + its park which has no fence and thus is connected to neighboring forests and meadows ... we liked also the good food and the theatre performance which was for free + quite interesting + intended to say 'enjoy your life, it is nice and you never know when it its over', as one of the actresses told to the audience at the very end of the spectacle ... well, for an uncultured swine like myself it would definitely be helpful if she told that in the beginning 😅

for me as part of the german minority in slovakia, where all the remained germans after the lost WWII had almost no rights, no german schools, newpapers, it was even forbidden to speak german for many years ... it was interesting to see, that here in oppeln & surroundings like e.g. moschen (moszna) live still some germans and in few villages were the village names written in both languages, polish and german. as we have spent only 2 nights here, i had not enough opportunities to explore the german past out there, but maybe some other time ... those germans who stayed were most likely largely mixed polish-german marriages and the like, as i was told by friends. as far as i know, here were the germans an absolute majority and thus after WWII most of them were expelled out of the country and replaced by poles who lost their homes in today's lithuania, russia and especially in (bandera troops' controlled parts of western) ukraine. 

enjoy (many) pictures made by me + my wife + our friend tomek:

the fairy-tale moszna castle (schloss moschen), PL

castle's museum

castle's museum

restaurant

all 4 of us

the room which impressed me most ~ the beautiful cafe

astrophyllite / astrophyllit, nice 😍

many local and for me unknown nysa beers (zelazna dziewica = iron maiden)

pszepyszne! (aka pszeniczne) ... what a wordplay! 😇🍻🍀

the beautiful cafe

our room - huge, but not convenient. especially no real place to sit

 down + drink a coffee + play a game ... and no bath/WC as well

+ the one and only painting inside was ugly too, even for a person

with such a low sense for cultural beauty like me 👹

a smaller room, but with a bath inside

private party after the bar closed 😄

they also have a theatre inside ~ teatr castello

they offer events (PL 'oferty eventow'😉) as i've told ya above

some private history club's event at the weekend in the castle?

these folks sat at dinner + at breakfast next to our table ...

they bring you by car from an airport ...

castle's park

a photography of a poster ... 

during our stay was the small fountain lake frozen ☃

a fish pond or a lake for swimming in the summer time? who knows?

castle's horse ranch

moszna, outside the castle ...

factory / museum of metal robots

moszna, some modern church outside the castle.

ugly, but at least the clouds are nice, arent they?

view from our room

castle's tower which i've found behind the (open!) room door #426.

here i really expected to meet the sleeping beauty aka rosebud

 (dornröschen) or cinderella or both and found just the skeleton 💀

at least you see, how it was possible to count 99 towers

(+365 rooms) in this castle ...

castle's park

fields + meadows + forest next to the castle

castle's park

do this sculptures transform into a nice fountain in summer time?

castle's park

cemetery, graves of the former owners family, thiele-winkler

strange. probaly part of the events ~ escape room & Co.

the owners liked horses, you see?

of course, there was a chapel, too

mr. skeleton-kosciotrup 😊

the view from the highest tower 😄

good-bye, moszna aka moschen

industrial upper silesia

the nicest building in spa duszniky-zdroj, close to the PL-CZ border

even more pictures here.