Europe Part 10: Realy Neat Old German cities

The most important thing we got done this day was to get some utilitarian shopping done: toothpaste, contact lens solution and, most important of all, new notebooks. We were chewing through the ones we brought so we got some new notebooks so that we’d be able to take good notes. We ended up writing two each. Not bad work, really.

When we came downstairs for our, by now, traditional breakfast of meats and breads, the hotel owner/chef said he was ‘cooking eggs’ and asked if I wanted one. Well that sounded just nebulous enough to be interesting, so I said sure. Turns out he was making soft boiled eggs, and, it further turns out, I don’t know how to eat them correctly. So I made a bit of a mess with shells and yolk and whatnot, but it was pretty good, and it totally grossed Jessie out, which was entertaining as well. Then we wandered around the city while we waited for our train to show up, looking for kitties. Somehow cats and ancient German cities just seemed to fit together. We didn’t find any, but this was the last place where we didn’t find at least one cat for the rest of the trip, I think.

Our train travel was a little exciting, with the train stopping at one point, a track change announcement in German that we couldn’t understand, and a couple of very short transfers. We did, however, make it to Rothenburgh, medieval-style city that was preserved mostly, we eventually learned, by poverty. The city was to poor to restructure itself for so long that it eventually came back around as so old it’s quaint. These days it’s one of the biggest tourist destinations in Germany, with lots of shopping and other interesting stores and sights. I really liked this place.

We first stopped at our hotel to drop off the backpacks and then got some food. We’d done a good job of alternating our activities, going from big city to smaller, prettier cities and ruins, but now Jess wanted the outdoors: wandering through the woods. So when we stopped at the walls overlooking the cliff that Rothnburg was built near for defense, Jess got wanderlust. We did stay on our little guidebook-directed walking tour for a while, seeing the main square and (my favorite) the big long metal poles that used to define standard lengths back when ‘standard’ usually had something to do with measuring from one part of your king to another.


Let's call 'em a bit, a bit more, and a bunch.

We got to head inside the church, which was a little same-y but we got to get real up close and personal with a bunch of altar pieces, including a very impressive one carved all out of wood and enormous. Also, I continued my job of cataloging all the huge organs we saw all over the continent. A lot of relatively new ones, as it turns out. After that Jess spotted the wall again, and this time the lure was too much to bear. We found a hole in the wall (okay, it was a door, but I like the metaphor) and fled the city!


Holy...uh...just holy, I guess.

We ended up walking pretty far, down a long hill and into a nearby city along the Tauber river from Rothenburg. Mostly we just looked at green countryside and tree-lined paths, exactly what Jess was looking for. There were some llamas up on the hill, or maybe goats, it was hard to tell.

From Preecs Place: The family blog

Once again: this is what it's like to vacation with Jess. We're supposed to be over *there*.

The highlight was when we reached Detwang, near Rothenburg, and stopped on a bridge over the river to watch some baby geese and their parents. Evidently they were part of a flock of a bunch of birds being kept by a farmer who lived around there, but we just sat and watched the little family for a good fifteen minutes. Every once in a while the mom, or maybe dad, would decide some other goose was getting too close and would duck his head and charge. Then we watched the little babies following their parents around and eventually flopping down to sleep in a big fuzzy pile. Completely adorable.

Oh, and on the way back, those were definitely llamas, before.

From Preecs Place: The family blog

We didn't get this close: our camera just has a really good zoom.

Recharged with outdoor energy, we tromped back up the hill to Rothenburg and then resumed our ‘tour’. We walked through the garden where the old castle used to be, kissed at a picturesque overlook, and checked out an herb garden where they had marked the especially poisonous ones with crosses. After that, we walked part of the wall. That’s right, the old wall that had defended the city from bandits and the like for so long is still there, and you can stroll along it for some pretty impressive views of the city.


Now that's a nice view.

We got some dinner, which was really good, and then did the ‘night watchman’s tour’ which is just a tour guide who shows you around the neat city (in english) and talks about it’s history. And not the boring parts, either. The awesome parts. Like chamber pots, and bandits, and keeping a years worth of food on store in every house in the city so that they could survive any siege. And, of course, the time that the city was eventually defeated when some genius took a torch into the gunpowder room during a siege. The best story was how the city was almost destroyed in the last, scary days of WWII, when a Nazi force took to hiding in the city and was told not to surrender. The Americans nearly had to level the whole place by air, but a german commander with romantic memories of the city actually *called* the American commander and negotiated a surrender. History is amazing!

And then sleep.

-N

P.S. Oh, I almost forgot. You know my dual-layer coat? The one I have had for roughly a brazillion years? Well I lost the outer layer on a train somewhere between St. Goar and Rothenburg. End of an era! We’ll come back to this later, too, so don’t forget it.