Our Trip to Germany - First Stop - Rothenburg

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Jan. 22/23, 2010

I flew in to Frankfurt Saturday morning from London where I had been working for Reebok. It was a quick easy flight - only 1.5 hours. The excitement was building - I would be meeting my mom to begin our adventure to see my birthplace.

Mom flew in to Frankfurt, leaving Friday night from Chicago to meet up with me on Saturday morning. It was an 8.5 hour flight with only about 1/3 full of passengers. It had been 31 years since she'd been on flight to or from Germany.

We met up at the Hertz rental center to pick up our semi-automatic car. Let’s explain - it is not manual, however, to switch gear you have to use a hand held clutch. Being the car experts that we are there have been lot of giggles as we put-put between gears, forget about the parking break, and every time we back up it sounds like we are collecting garbage (beep, beep, beep). Oh - and we opted to not get the GPS (sorry Jeff), which has resulted in some interesting conversations (or rather charades) with the locals.

So with our hilarious car, we headed off for Rothenburg ob de Tauber. About an hour in we stopped at Wurzburg to grab a bite to eat. We parked the car and successfully figured out the parking meters (similar to the ones in Chicago but all in German of course). We saw the Marienberg Fortress and a baroque palace called Residenz. After asking around and stopping at a couple of restaurants that had closed already (apparently 2:30 PM is when most places stop serving lunch), we had sandwiches, tea and coffee at a small bakery. It was a good find though since we also found a couple to direct us out of town; the woman knew the directions and the man knew the English. Before leaving I grabbed a pretzel stick for the road (basically a baked pretzel in the form of a baguette - Sean, you would be in heaven with all the delicious bakery treats!).

About an hour later we reached the walled in city of Rothenburg above the Tauber River. After circling the area twice we found our way in to the city, and parked our car at our gasthaus, Kreuzerhof Hotel Garni (very similar to an American bed & breakfast). Walter met us at the door and showed us our room, up two flights of very steep stairs. The room was large with two couches, 2 wardrobes, 1 king size bed with down comforters, and a gigantic bathroom. We quickly dropped our stuff off and headed into town before all the shops closed. We made it to Kathy Wohlfahrt’s Christkindlmarkt where they have all the authentic German Christmas gifts - smokers, Nutcrackers, candled pyramids, steins, ornaments, and all kinds of carved items.

Shopping was followed by an adventure to HELL. Just kidding - Walter had suggested a restaurant called Zur Holl (http://www.romanticroad.com/hoell/index.html) which means Hell in German. We were the only ones in the place (it was 5:30 PM and we were starving!) which was actually really nice. We had a seat right by the fireplace and had the most delicious food - shish-kebab with salad and potatoes and lamb cutlets with vegetables and bread. If you ever get to Rothenburg this is quite a wonderful find.

After dinner it was really dark and we were both fatigued from jet lag and lots of good food. We headed to bed, so we could get up early to explore the city before heading to Heidelburg.

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Photos

Leaving Frankfurt Airport
Here's our crazy car . . . leaving Frankfurt Airport and setting off on our adventure!

Palace in Wurtzburg
Stopping Wurtzburg. This is the Palace Residenz.

carving shop in Rothenburg
Carving Shop in Rothenburg . . . owner at work.

center of Rothenburg
In the center of Rothenburg at Market Square.

Rothenburg
In the center of Rothenburg at Market Square.

Rothenburg
In the center of Rothenburg at Market Square.

Zur Holl
Fantastic dinner at Zur Holl!