Wintry day in the Tower

I can only imagine what it must have been like to live in these stone buildings in the winter. This makes for an interesting image of a silhouette in the tower window. This window is built specifically for an archer. It has the narrow window for shooting through opening out into a wide standing area for the archer to peer from. He gets a full view of the outside, while those trying to storm the tower can only see a tiny slit with very little chance of getting an arrow inside and hitting the target. But he also gets the full blast of the weather coming in from the outside. What a hard life it must have been.

For three seasons it is great fun to imagine that time has stood still and there are knights and castles and dragons roaming the countryside. From the top of the tower it is not impossible to imagine all of those things looking out over the mountains. But today is Christmas Eve and it is mighty cold out. It is snowing soft, light flakes. I have managed to climb to the top of the tower once again which is quite a feat. During the times when this was an active tower there would have been people running up and down the stairs all day long. The passageways are very narrow and the stone steps are uneven and worn smooth and there are no lights even today. They would have been extremely dangerous if they were wet and you were in a hurry.

The sky is darkening as daytime draws to a close. I can imagine watchers of old peering out into valleys, looking for signs of marauders. The glint of a knight's armor would have sent the entire complex into a tizzy. A line of men with torches could easily be a dragon meandering through the forest. And there are certainly castles nestled all through the Romanian landscape. Looking out through the dusk, horses and carutes are wending their way home for Christmas dinner with family. It is not hard to imagine a time when these stone fortresses were active defenses.