Blogs from Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Bavaria, Germany, Europe - page 8

My friend Meg came into town for a few days so Matt and I decided to show her (and ourselves) Rothenburg ob der Tauber. This is an intact medieval walled city and was really incredible! I met Meg last summer when Ali and I spent our two weeks in Scotland. Meg and Ali went to high school together and have been friends for ages and Meg and I hit it off immediately. When I found out that she was going to be backpacking through Europe at the same time that Matt and I would be getting here I invited her to come visit and the timing worked out great. I showed her Heidelberg (I won't bore you with more pictures of the same) and we did Rothenburg, which I think was even better than Heidelberg. ... read more

Pedi-Cabs, Walking and Crowds After breakfast in our hotel this morning we went in search of our new hotel. Due to the touristy nature of Rothenberg neither hotel we are staying in could offer us two nights, thus we had to move today - leaving our great room and nice dogs behind. After walking for about 20 minutes we found the new hotel and then got our car to park it closer to the new hotel. By time we moved to the new hotel, the town had gotten crazy busy. Busses upon busses of tourists arrived by about 10am. There were tons of US military families in town along with our favorite: Japanese tour groups. After checking out and checking in again, we started the day with a trip to the crime and punishment museum. ... read more

I don't think I mentioned this place in any of my emails, probably because my brain was fried. Anyway, its a pretty cool little place some of the buildings date back to around 960 a.c. The place was rather prosperous due to it being a free imperial city but there was a war that nearly destroyed the town but was stopped when ex-mayor Georg Nusch drank 3.25Lt of wine in a single scull. Now that's an awesome way to stop a war, if only they could all be stopped by such means, I'll drink the booze...... read more

Day 22, 22nd June. Jagsthausen - Schrozberg - Rothenburg - Röshof We arose early, packed, and left without paying the €2.50 requested on the sign - there was no-one there to take it to anyway. It was 7 when we carried on along the Jagstal cycle path. We stopped for breakfast at a Backerei and watered up before the climb at the end of the valley which was pretty hard. Scott’s legs were paining him again so we slowed down. The thing with following the rivers is that we do only about half the distance as the crow flies - Scott finds this out on his GPS. We notice a big difference being only three, we are much quicker on the move and making decisions. So, after leaving the rivers we were on the plateau with ... read more

Day 23 (Wednesday, July 24) Yesterday, I gave myself with a civics lesson in “Understanding Germans and Germanic culture”. As I consider myself an educated tourist, I endeavour to learn as much as possible about the people and places I visit. I don’t just want to buy the brochure, I want to touch and feel the real things. My second day in Munich was extremely educational. I started by wandering around a camp that was created by Germans to torture and kills Jews, Gypsies, POWs, probably anything that once had a pulse. Following that inspirational stroll through Hun-story, I treated myself to an opportunity that accentuated the gaping difference between my obscenely insignificant wealth and a bunch of delicate prissy Bavarian aristocrats. My afternoon ended by allocating a few torturous hours getting myself cultured? The prognosis ... read more