[ May2016 ] The next place we went with the tour was Cerveny Kamen Castle, which is about 30km away from Bratislava. The name means ‘red rock castle’, but the colour of the castle was white. Apparently the name came from the red rock that this castle was built on. Here we had the special guide just for the castle who was a young man. First he declared “I cannot speak English well” and then explained things very enthusiastically. He looked like he was enjoying himself, which made us enjoy ourselves, too. He told us that in this room in one of the pictures on display, the floor was rough with the natural stone and women danced here barefoot. And the legend says that men were watching them through the narrow gap on the wall. Also, he pointed at the portraits of successive aristocrats and said “Look! They all have a big belly. That was the symbol of the aristocrats and people distinguish them by their belly”.
The huge underground warehouse of the castle was impressive. The castle’s history goes back to the 13th century, but this warehouse was made when the Fuggers, a wealthy German family, bought this castle and rebuilt it in the 16th century. Fuggers had a copper mine and they planned to keep the copper in this warehouse. But when the warehouse was ready, their copper mining company had already gone bust, so no copper was kept here. There was a very deep well there, too, which was amazing.
