Rothenburg ob der Tauber (over the Tauber River), Germany
We get there by the A7 Autobahn because we didn't tell the GPS in the car to take us on the "Romantic Road," Bavaria's medieval heartland, which runs from Würzburg to Füssen. Oh well...we got there faster and we're here! And, it's also the weekend of their annual Reichsstadt festival which celebrate's the city's 900+ year history. In the Middle Ages, Rothenburg was a free imperial city where the king/bishop only had to answer to the Holy Roman Emperor, so it had its own laws, taxes, courts, etc. It's a very well preserved walled, cobbled Medieval city, thanks to a couple of German and American generals in WWII who allowed the city to escape more bombing due to their acts near the end of the war. After the war, there was a publicity effort to get people back into these picturesque towns that hadn't been totally destroyed and generate some income through tourism, so the "Romantic Road" was born. It worked!
Two-thirds of the population are employed in the tourism industry, and it really was the friendliest and most accomodating place we've visited so far. 2.5 million people visit a year, but only about 500,000 spend the night, so it was even better and less crowded after all the people in the tour buses vacated the town.
Here's a link to Rick Steves' take and one of the reasons we wanted to come visit:
 |
| In the stocks outside the Medieval Crime and Punishment Museum, one of the first big buildings we saw after desperately seeking and finding a public WC (water closet/toilet). We had to park outside the city wall because we missed the morning window of opportunity to drive our car inside the wall to find our hotel. But, it was a short walk, and the walled part of the city is not that big. We bought tickets to go in but.. |
 |
Colin delayed plans...he was running through the cobbled entrance and tripped. So we had to deal with a few scrapes and boo-boo's. We postpone museum for later. He refused to wear bandaids. We get him settled down, watching Kung Fu Panda on Scott's phone, and we decide look to find the Market Square and do Rick Steves' self-guided walking tour. Scott in the main street of Rothenburg with Colin in the stroller with his soft blanky covering up his boo-boo's.
And we've learned if Rick Steves' says it's a one-hour tour, when you're traveling with a preschooler, it's gonna be more like 3-4 hours... |
 |
| Everywhere we looked was clean, beautifully maintained and manicured, and definitely OLD! |
 |
A shop with locally made handpainted pottery. I could have spent a fortune...I love dishes and pottery!
The patterns and colors were so pretty. |
 |
| Here come some people in Medieval costume. And you can see the arched gate of the city wall down the street. |
 |
| Most all the hotels, shops, and restaurants have very ornate and symbolic signs like they did before most of the population could read. |
 |
Local artists painting en plein air...
The clothes on the line down the street were displaying sale items from a textile and linen shop, not drying laundry... |
 |
| Rothenburg ob der Trauber |
 |
| Cafes, hotels, retail shops, bakeries, restraurants line the streets |
 |
| Buy your baked goods here |
 |
| And wine here |
 |
| and a sword or weapon here |
 |
Um...
"Oh, I miss Jack!"~Audrey from European Vacation when they eat dinner and she looks at the plate of sausages at the relative's house that's not really their relatives.
I've been waiting for the perfect time to inject some of my favorite European Vacation quotes, so I hope you get it! |
 |
| A vegetarian or vegan nightmare... |
 |
| Cured meats and sausages |
 |
| hotel sign |
 |
THE. BIGGEST. CUCKOO. CLOCK. I'VE EVER SEEN!
It had a price tag on it and actually was way less than I would have thought, 8,000 Euro.
Just go on ahead and order one for that wall/room in your house you need to fill up! |
 |
| Colin couldn't stop screaming about the big Gummi bear though! Colin is just over three feet tall, so that gives you some idea on the clock... |
 |
| Market Square, Rothenburg ob der Trauber, Germany |
 |
| Women dressed in Medieval costume...some even have dirt rubbed on their face for effect! |
 |
| Town Hall, Rothenburg ob der Trauber, Germany |
 |
Councilor's Tavern
It was where the rich guys who ran the town government hung out and drank their bier.
Note the four small flags hanging from the windows with the town coat of arms, the red castle, for roten Burg |
 |
| Herngasse, named for the Herren, the richest patrons and merchants have lived since medieval times |
 |
| a parade through the Market Square with people dressed in armor, chain mail, medieval and renaissance costume |
 |
St. George's Fountain (circa 17th century) with a happy boy sitting on it.
See the gutter coming out of it? This routed water into the villagers' buckets to help fight any fire that may have started and also for drinking and daily needs. This was part of Rothenburg's ingenious water system: the town was built on a rock and the founders plumbed the one source of water above the town to fill a series of fountains from high to low through the town. Also, the fountains were stocked with fish on market days and times of seige... It makes me very happy that I don't have to worry about water or food supplies or seiges.... |
 |
| Not sure what era these dancers are dressed to represent, but it's not far off from today's German trachten (lederhosen for men and dirndl for women) |
 |
| As we walk down the Herrngasse, there are people literally camping in the middle of the street, cooking, crafting, eating and drinking as they would have in the Middle Ages |
 |
| I know, what are we thinking, right? I consented to buying him a sword but was shopping in a Christmas store while this purchase was made. |
 |
| Scott told him this was the only way he could carry his new weapon. |
 |
| Time for a bier brake while we watch the scene around us |
 |
| We listen to the town band playing traditional German tunes |
 |
| Selling bier |
 |
| Then back up the street comes another band parading |
 |
| Spielmannszug...not a clue...spiel means game or play, zug is a train, spielmann may mean minstrel, so maybe something to do with a travelling minstrel? |
 |
| Renaissance feasting...playing their tiny flutes |
 |
| The main altar of St. Jakobskirche |
 |
| another altar in the church |
 |
| This is why we came to the church. It's the Altar of the Holy Blood, a 35-foot high, 500-year-old wood carving of the scene of the Last Supper, carved 1499-1504, by Tilman Riemenschneider, the Michaelangelo of German woodcarvers. |
 |
| It really was awe inspiring to see it up close with all the details and imagining carving it day after day for 5 years. We said a little quiet family prayer. It's the most precious thing to see a child pray, and then when it's your own child and they are actually sincere and reverent (even if just for a moment), it's really the best feeling! |
 |
They were gettin' jiggy...
And the old man on the left--his outfit and whole get-up probably cost him 3,000 Euros+ with the vest, pants, shoes, hat, and the silver coin chain. |
 |
| This was the very happening Altfränkische Weinstube am Klosterhof pub that had spilled out onto the shady street with people in costumes from long ago. Do you see the guy with a head bandage and looks like blood from a fresh head injury? We could NOT figure out if he was in costume or not! |
 |
| Spinning yarn and knitting, wearing some traditional local clothing (era?) |
 |
| Big entry with lots of patina on these doors...can you imagine having the keys for those locks on your key ring? |
 |
| We walk down the street and find the Klingentor, a cliff tower that was the city's water reserve. There was a copper tank high in the tower that held enough clean spring waterfor the privileged few from 1595 until as recently as 1910. |
 |
| We are at the city wall and walk up along the wall for a bit... |
 |
| Colin is protecting and guarding me with his sword. |
 |
| It's made for short medieval Europeans.... |
 |
| Once moat around the wall... |
 |
| another church that we didn't stop into...one church per day is about all Colin can handle...and it's not on the self-guided tour, which has taken at least 3 hours at this point and we're about halfway through the high points. |
 |
| I admire from the outside... |
 |
| The shell motif, symbol of St. James, is around town on many buildings because pilgrims commemorated their visit to Santiago de Compostela with a shell and usually means that the building is associated with the church somehow. |
 |
| A really cool coat of arms...if you can know Latin, then you know what it says, smarty pants! |
 |
| We skip building that was a former Kloster (convent), now the Reichsstadt Museum, because we didn't see somewhere it should have been on this walk? I can't imagine how we get distracted?!? *sarcasm* We stroll around to the Convent Garden where the nuns grew herbs for their concoctions that they were responsible for dispensing before medicine as we know it developed. Look carefully below the plant markers. One has two little crosses on it and the one at the bottom of the picture has three crosses. These crosses were a system of denoting how poisonous/deadly the herb was. Hmmm |
 |
| We haven't eaten and there's a booth in the garden for flammkuchen. SCORE! It's like the thinnest crust pizza with fresh creamy cheese, lardons (bacon), onion, and maybe some more cheese cooked over usually a wood burning fire. We share one. Also got an Orangina...it was not cold... Man, I miss ice. And it was pretty hot outside too. I could use some ice in my life. And A/C, but that's not gonna happen until we back in the USA. OK, back to Rothenburg. |
 |
| We are right outside the Convent Garden near the town wall, and there are all these people camped out in tents, in costumes, living for the weekend as they would have in the Middle Ages or Renaissance. It's crazy cool! |
 |
| Colin was not interested in a horse ride....and was not phased by anything going on around him. |
 |
| This was a beautiful hotel right on the town wall. Hey that reminds us, when are we going to go back and find our hotel and get our bags and check in? OK, maybe later... |
 |
| Walking through the town wall--yes, it was as thick as I'm walking through in parts, but some very thin because the city was situated on a cliff to naturally fortify themselves. |
 |
| A pretty passageway |
 |
| The town coat of arms, the roten Burg, or red castle. |
 |
| The gorgeous day, the red tile roofs, and the medieval walled city reminded me a lot of Sienna, Italy, another well preserved, medieval walled city we've had the pleasure of visiting. |
 |
| A nice American lady volunteered to take our picture. |
 |
| We played at the Burggarten (Castle Garden). |
 |
Colin got some good play time in, and we need to check into our hotel.
Thank goodness for Google Maps and roaming on Scott's iPhone to find our hotel because we couldn't find it on the town maps in any of the shops, in our guidebook... |
 |
| Gummi Bears on the pillows! Colin squeals with joy and delight! Then he goes and gets ours off our pillows too! Did you know Haribo and Gummi Bears are from Germany? Gotta love Germany! |
 |
He loves his bed that is just for him, and the Gummi Bears just push it over the edge for this 3 year old!
But wait! I saw something on the way in the hotel that is going to make it hard for us to get back out again... |
 |
| A decked out kid's play area in the hotel! |
 |
He gets right to work and found train stuff in one of the toy boxes.
We do eventually get him out of the hotel again after we all clean up (i.e. febreeze my clothes and put them back on after I take a whore's bath) and get ready to find dinner.
Febreeze/Gain fabric refresher is one of the best things ever and one of the smartest products I packed from the USA. And, well, if you don't know what a whore's bath is, the name is self explanatory. |
 |
| Another pretty building catches my eye as we head back toward the main square. |
 |
| And this bäckerei catches my eye too... Those big balls you see are called schneeballen and they are pie crusts crumpled into a ball and rolled in powdered sugar or frosting glaze. Some are coated in chocolate or cinnamon sugar, which sound better to me, but I take Rick Steves' word for it and save my money and appetite and DO NOT try them. Can you imagine? They just don't sound that great, and the other pastries and goodies look even better. |
 |
| Sausage-a-palooza |
 |
| How adorable are those little girls in their medieval dresses in that wagon? |
 |
We find a guide-book recommended restaurant, Eisenhut Restaurant across from the Hotel Eisenhut (in the above picture) and get some refreshment. I have an Aperol Spritz and Scott has an Erdinger weissbier. Colin has own delicious Capri Sun, ham that I had cold from said previously frozen Capri Sun, apple and two Oreos I packed.
We get the "festival special" that is beef goulash with a large potato dumpling with dark gravy and a salad for 12 Euro...yummy, filling, a decent price, hit the spot!
Now we are off to... |
 |
| This guy is CLEANING. UP. Each night Easter through December at 8:00 pm, he meets in front of the Town Hall in Market Square to take THRONGS of English-speaking tourists on a tour of his city told from the point of view of the medieval night watchman, the third lowest man on the totem pole (up from the executioner and grave digger). When he walked up and asked who was there for the tour, literally about 100+ people who were milling about and lounging on the steps of the Town Hall, pounced toward this guy. He offered to take pictures with anyone who wanted, then he rounded everyone up and off we went. It was interesting, a few things not in the guidebook, and his delivery was a LITTLE Seinfeld-esque. 7 Euro per person, kids under 10 are free. On the honor system, pay at the end of the tour. We passed by later that night at 10:00 pm and he did another tour in German. SMART! He is CLEANING UP, I tell you! |
 |
| The Night Watchman in action...maybe closer to 150 people, he probably picks up more as he goes. |
 |
| Colin was watching Kung Fu Panda on Scott's iPhone...and the rest of us were enjoying our tour! |
 |
| It was still hot and there were fireworks coming soon, so we got some ice cream at an Eis Cafe. Colin has ein kugel schoko eis (one scoop of chocolate ice cream). |
 |
| Scott has a banana split... |
 |
My treat is a ball of half chocolate half walnut ice cream with walnut liqueur and caramel in the center, rolled in chocolate and hazelnuts, drizzled with kirsche syrup and topped with whipped cream and a cherry! It was kind of like an ice cream version of a Ferrero Roche. I write this I really want another one. Really really badly.
We watch fireworks, and they are really good ones! And, there are four big firetrucks that Colin gets to watch too. It's been a long but great day and night.
We get a HOT night's sleep in our hotel room, no A/C, windows open, not much breeze. Breakfast the next morning in the hotel and we're out after breakfast. Wished I'd taken a picture of the breakfast spread (meats, cheeses, pickly things, yogurt, cereal, apples, juice, coffee, tea) and the cool restaurant dining room it was in. We head out to go to the Medieval Crime and Punishment Museum that we didn't get to go to yesterday and already bought a ticket. |
 |
| The Bavarian King's seal from 1818 |
 |
| A dungeon room in the Medieval Crime and Punishment Museum...that chair has spikes all over it. And that is a rack next to it. Just looking at any of it would make me talk. |
 |
| There are lots of displays describing the legal procedure for torture, trial, and punishment. |
 |
| Colin really doesn't know what things are and we don't tell him anything unless he asks...I don't want to scare the kid to death! |
 |
| Torture and punishment devices...yowza |
 |
| Stroller was a no-go with the stairs, so Colin rode in the backpack carrier...at least for a little while. |
 |
| Drawings of torture and punishments being given out, devices, books with the first recordings of torture in drawings... |
 |
| Documents explaining what punishments were to be given out for certain "crimes." |
 |
| These were funny to me. They are shame masks, and it was punishment (usually just women) to wear one if they were a tattle-tell/blabbermouth or quarrelsome (see the one on the right with the tonque sticking out?) The one on the left has bells on the top so everyone in town would hear you coming and walking anywhere you went. And at the bottom of the picture were shoes with bells on them too. |
 |
| Document and seals which signified agreement and acknowledgement of the law |
 |
OK, very interesting things (to me) pictured here.
The big wooden thing is a neck violin for two women who were quarrelsome--the big holes were for your neck and the two smaller ones for your wrists. HAHAHA You and your quarrel partner had to wear this until you worked it all out and changed your attitudes. Imagine if Jerry Springer or all the fake "judges" on daytime TV had these for guests on their shows!?!
And, the big scissors were for public hair cutting....if a woman did something disgraceful or was caught commiting adultery or something along those lines, her hair was cut. Everyone knew what you had done and you were usually scorned or run out of town.
OK, this one I love--see pieces of 2 X 2 with a notch in them? Early form of German credit card! A tavern or stüberl owner would make a notch in the wood for each bier the customer drank, then he paid the entire amount once the stick was completely full. And Germany doesn't "do" credit cards--ha! |
 |
| More neck violins and shame masks for "punishments of honor" |
 |
| This is also funny to me (because it's not me). Another form of punishment was this cage which was hung by a chain in a public place and could be spun around...and you know it was by anyone and everyone who walked by, and kids who wanted their giggles probably did it all day long. |
 |
Top row are chastity belts. Two outer ones are metal--I cannot even imagine....
The explanation said that husbands would make their wives wear them if they were gone for a long trip or away from home for an extended time. OK, OUCH! And, EWWW, how in the world would you use the bathroom? Disgusting and unbearably uncomfortable!
Ok, look at the thing on the bottom left that looks sort of like a musical instrument. The circle part was enlarged to fit around the neck of a musician who played badly, and there were finger clamps that held your fingers in position but it was not an instrument, just looked like one. WOW, that would make you do your instrument practice if you were a kid, huh?!? |
 |
| The traditional hat for unmarried women in the Black Forest region. |
 |
And the traditional hat for married women in the Black Forest region.
No, these were not punishment... |
 |
| This barrel is a Drunk Tank...I never knew there actually was one, and this is where the term comes from! The town drunk was made to put his head in this hole of the barrel and walk around with it on. And, if he was really bad, weights could be added to the sides of the barrel. |
 |
This is an Iron Maiden. Again, I never knew where the term came from or what it actually was.
A women might be made to walk around with this on if she had done something really dishonorable. |
 |
| Iron crest of a noble |
 |
| Another crazy cool crest |
 |
| Look at that sweet, fake, kid smile...he had just gotten in trouble for running around. |
 |
A rosary they made people wear around all week if they were not in church on Sunday.
The citizens of Rothenburg were required by law to attend church every Sunday.
I'm not making this stuff up! Just think if priests and preachers did that these days... |
 |
| That lasted about 2.5 seconds.... |
 |
| Crown jewels of Rothenburg |
 |
| Medieval seal |
 |
| Box with coat of arms where some rich merchant or patron kept his personal seal |
 |
| Another cage that could be spun around. Also, we learned that some women put in the cages had a metal gag if they were a "nag". Wow... So happy I'm a 21st century gal! |
 |
| Hanging out...ready to roll out of here! |
 |
| Just an amazing old looking barn/house on the way out of the town, just before the wall. |
 |
Auf Wiedersehen, Rothenburg ob der Tauber!
It's been medieval! |
No comments:
Post a Comment