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Published: September 29th 2014
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Day 12: Rothenburg ob der Tauber to Frankfurt
September 26
th 2014
Rothenburg ob der Tauber is a medieval walled township that is still largely intact. First records show settlement in 960 and it grew to become one of the largest cities with over 6000 inhabitants in its heyday of 1400. Over its lifetime it has been occupied 1648 times. Again, as in so much of Germany, it was bombed in 1945 and the eastern part of the village was destroyed and 40%!o(MISSING)f what remained was destroyed by fire. How is it that these places (more or less) survive centuries and then in the blink of an eye in (more or less) my lifetime we recklessly destroy so much?
A wall that dates back to the middle ages surrounds the town and within those walls are a number of gothic churches that contain relics from as far back as 1274. We wandered through the streets and into the churches and the atmosphere of being surrounded by such history permeates me to the core. Every part of my being is open to the history and the stories. Every day I get closer to
thinking maybe I should have been an historian or an anthropologist. Is it too late?
We climbed up the tower of the Rathaus or town hall. They only allow 20 people at a time up there as the ascent is by ancient narrow wooden steps and once you get to the top you have about one shoe width wide to stand on. Again, what was I thinking? It wasn’t as bad as the gondola but my fear factor was 7/10.
Our next stop was at the Mittelalterliches Kriminalmuseum. This museum was dedicated to the collection and display of implements of torture used in the middle ages. Let me tell you as a species we have created the cruelest ways to inflict pain one another, generally in the name of justice. If you were accused of a crime and you denied it then you could be tortured to elicit a confession and once you confessed you were of course pronounced guilty and subsequently sentenced. I mean its lose lose. But it wasn’t just for serious crimes. You could be sentenced for any number of crimes - quarreling women, poor musicianship, gossiping, not having your bread
rise properly not to mention serious crimes of witchcraft, theft, murder, treason ect. My particular favorite was a witch catcher – the implement is too hard to describe but needless to say once the witch was snared by this implement and it stabbed you numerous time in the neck and you couldn’t escape then that was proof enough that you were a witch. Another one was when you had a metal band placed around the top of your head and then had a bolt drilled into it. And then there were your well known implements of torture – hanging, drawing and quartering, dislocating of bones on the rack and so on.
For the rest of the morning we walked around the town and then around lunch time we left to go to Frankfurt. Frank and I had booked a 4 night 3 day cruise down the Rhine river which departed from Frankfurt and Mandy and Louis were going to do their own thing for a couple of days. Of all the driving to date this was by far the most stressful for Mandy. As Frankfurt is a big city the traffic was horrible (fast and aggressive) and
the instructions given by the cruise company told us to go to a particular car park. Now I don’t know if I am being particularly precious or not but I would think that any car park should enable a continuous flow of traffic but no at one point we reached a dead end and Mandy had to back back in order to get out. It was so stressful for everyone. Anyway she eventually managed to get into a narrow parking spot and we were able to make our way to the river and our boat.
Mandy and Louis had booked accommodation elsewhere and so we parted company at that point.
We boarded the boat at 6 pm as instructed and this is where it all started to go horribly wrong. This cruise was to be a highlight of our trip. It was titled ‘Romantic Rhine River Cruise’ and I guess in fairness it is. When we inquired about a cruise all of them that would fit our schedule were booked out. Still I made inquiries and we were wait listed for a few of them. This cruise company contacted us and advised us that
there had been a cancellation and so we happily booked and paid a bomb for the cruise and for 3 excursions to be included. All communication was made in English. However what the cruise company failed to inform us of was that the cruise was completely booked out to a French tour group and was an exclusively French speaking cruise. Frank and I were the only English speaking passengers on the cruise. And this is the second time I have cried. I was so disappointed, frustrated and angry that I didn’t know what else to do. I mean really at what point did the company feel it necessary to inform us that we were paying good money for a cruise where we would not understand a single word??? Clearly at no time! The purser (a pretentious French woman with a bouffant hairdo) was as surprised as we were that we had not been informed that it was a tour for French speaking people.
They didn’t know what to do with us. All the other passengers were grouped together for meals but Frank and I were relegated to a table at the back and we sat on our
own. To add insult to injury the food and wine was all French. (Not that that was necessarily a bad thing as the food was great and the wines OK but if I want to eat French food and drink French wine I’ll go to France not Germany. And while I’m at it as far as I’m concerned if you go to another country why would you eat your native food and not the food of the country you are visiting??? – but as I have come to know that is just the French.) As well as being French the majority of the passengers would have to be 80+. I’m not sure what I expected but there is enough titanium in those hips to build a boat of our own. And this is my last rant and it is 100% racist. These people are the rudest most arrogant, pushy, inconsiderate and uncompromising people I have ever had the misfortune to meet. There is no stereotyping – all the negatives about the French (on this cruise anyway) are true.
For those of you who know Frank we have had a steady run of Tallegada Nights and Monty Python
and the Holy Grail quotes which have kept us laughing. He is my Ricky Bobby and we are staying away from towers as we will spit in their general direction …. They are obscure references and you kind of have to know what I’m talking about to get it ….
Now I can go on and on about the negatives but that serves no purpose and so I will only try and talk about the positive things that have happened. Needless to say I have communicated with the Cruise company outlining my complete and utter disappointment in the cruise and advising them that they have breached their contact with us in regards to their failure to fully disclose critical information which would enable us to make an informed decision and as such we expect them to refund some of our money. I am waiting their reply……
As a way to appease us the purser allocated a young woman who is part of the crew and who spoke pretty good English to basically baby sit us and translate as needed. Her name is Guilia and she has been our saving grace and has
worked really hard to make our trip as good as it can be under the circumstances. We had dinner, had a few drinks and then retired to our room. Prior to going to bed the purser told us (excitedly) that everything would be better tomorrow because another English speaking couple would be boarding tomorrow. Hmmm so far I have no confidence in anything that she says.
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