Medieval towns and annoying tourists

I have been quite busy lately so bare with me. First off, last Saturday night I went out for Cocktails and Tapas with Stefan, a guy I meet a few weeks ago from the English speaking group’s BBQ. The building was called the ‘Heiliggeist’ which I think translates into the Holy Ghost and turned out to be a 16th Century hospital.

It was pretty cool inside, but the toilets were really random with weird bird noises coming from the speakers, and doors you could see through. The next day I had to get up nice and early, and drive for three hours to a medieval town with Stefan. After swearing black and blue, that I was in fact cursed when it came to cars, and crossing three states of Germany, we finally found the small town. Of course by then I was famished and we stopped at the first restaurant we could find that wasn’t in a 70’s time warp and got Schnitzel!! And damn it was good. I never even attempted to make it back home, but it is soo good, they don’t use the same type of breadcrumbs we do.

A section of the Alt Stadt's defence wall, with Klingen Tower in the background.

Rothenburg ob der Tauber is quite a touristy little town, and we were in hysterics throughout the English tour of the Alt Stadt (Old town) listening to all the crazy questions they were asking the tour guide. Although we could have done the tour ourselves, I think it’s usually nicer to go with a guide, because usually they’re locals and have random stories that you could never get from the brochures i.e. you get to find out the real reason the castle was destroyed and not by an Earthquake, as mentioned in the brochures – and if the tour is boring, at least the others in the tour provide some entertainment. The old town was pretty well preserved, even after numerous attacks and being bombed in WWII. The town is surrounded by high walls and all the streets are narrow and cobbled. All the shops have iron signs; even McDs has to have an iron cast sign. It was pretty impressive thinking how the hell did these people live back then, as there would have been animals everywhere, and sewage just thrown out on to the streets. The people had to store food for up to two years, at all times in case there was a siege. So you would have to be fairly creative as to avoid rats. We even got to see a cage used to torture bakers if they made their loaves of bread to small or to big, something to do with ripping people off and affecting the competition.

We went to (from what I gather) Germanys biggest open year-round Christmas store. I am sure they even put spices in the air conditioner to make you feel festive. Of course I couldn’t be considered a true tourist unless I purchased a little ornament or two. I definitely didn’t go crazy like the couple in front of us. The old dear brought €350 of goodies which works out to be $NZ700, and from what I saw they only walked out with a small box. Stefan told me that most Germans buy new decorations each year, which must work out to be enormously expensive. And Christmas usually goes for three days, and is much more of a traditional holiday than our good old NZ variety.

Of course no town is complete without its terrifically expensive church. St Jakobs Church (Lutheran) is a little quirky as its unique architectural feature is that it is built over a lane, so you can actually drive right through the church so to speak. I won’t bore you with the details, churches are one of those things that interest a lot of people, but they all merge in to each other for me. However, I must note most of them have been pretty impressive so far.

Driving on the Autobahn is not that exciting really, yes we went over 200 km/h but I didn’t even notice until I was told. It doesn’t feel unsafe, and as the people in the slow lane were probably going 160 anyway, we didn’t feel like we were jetting past. There roads aren’t even that good really, when I am driving I keep thinking I have a flat tyre because the car is juddering so much, but it’s just the condition of the roads. So a lot of the time you can’t even go fast on the autobahn because there are roadworks.

Look out for the next instalment… my quick trip to Bavaria.

P.s. The real reason the castle was destroyed is because the villagers started to steal all of the stones for their own houses, and had to tell the Emperor something. Hence the excuse of the ‘earthquake’ - just seems a little strange when nothing else in the town was destroyed ;o)