Ever since I arrived in Germany, many historic places have been on my to-visit list. I was really excited to finally hike to a castle last weekend. It’s called Burgruine Königstein.

According to its official website, the oldest visible wall of this castle can be dated from the first half of the 12th century. It was built to secure a major imperial road between Frankfurt and Cologne. It has been repeatedly redesigned and expanded over the centuries and eventually destructed in a fire set by the French army in late 1700s.

Even ruined, the castle is stunning. The signage could be better designed though. At least make it multilingual so more people could read. I was only able to understand maybe half of the information signs using Google translate. In addition, QR codes linking to artifacts (what our group did for the first rapid challenge) related to the castle would nice. Since that area has several castles, a self-guided story walk connecting different sites would be even better. Interactive augmented reality bringing people back to history could work too. Just to name a few. I kept thinking of all the digital methods that could improve the experience during the visit. I guess this is what this fellowship has done to me.