This last weekend I went to Wilhelmshöheschloß in Kassel, a city in the northern part of Hessen, Germany. The view from the castle was absolutely gorgeous, but when one walks into the courtyard, a visual feast is layed out before the visitor. The Herkules standing at the other end of the park draws you up the mountainside. The sheer beauty alone makes time and the unnaturally warm April weather here in Germany irrelavent. After two hours of climbing up hundreds of steps reality set back in. We were 15 minutes too late to climb to the top of the Herkules statue.
Lesson: German bureaucracy always gets you in the end.