We were up at 6:00. But only because I miss set my alarm. Penny sat hers for 6:30. You need every minute of sleep when your mission for the day is to conquer 15th century Germany.
On the train we sat in a compartment with a very nice man who is a history PhD. He said he works at a museum. I got most of what he was saying about the museum but am not certain if it a mining museum or whether it is just located in an abandoned mine. He did talk about other mines in other places.
He was on holiday to Eastern Europe. He was traveling by bus, train, and bicycle. He had his bicycle with him, folded up to a hanging bag sized bag that tripped all the suitcase rolling tourists getting on the train. His bike was sitting in the hall outside our compartment.
Our trip to Rothenburg required two train changes. Each change was to a smaller regional train. Do not think that more local people were riding these smaller trains. They were filled with tourists. This small town of 3000 or so has 2.5 million tourists each year. Not all of them were there on Friday.
Rothenburg is a medieval walled city, well mostly walled. One side presently does not have a wall but it does have a very steep drop on that side of the city. That should discourage any marauding bands of Japanese tourists from storming the city from that side of town.
Most of the buildings in the old part of town were built by 1400. It was a lovely town. It was fairly quiet on Friday. This was possible due to the end of the summer season but also because of the rainy, cloudy day.
We had a hard time finding the tourist information center. The large blue “I” in Rothenburg is a small brown “I”. We were told that there was an English tour of the town at 2:00 but at that time it was raining so we opted to let Rick Steves be our tour guide.
The market square was square-ish but the one stand with wet vegetables and souvenirs hardly qualified it as a market.
We went to St. Jakob’s Church which was built in the 14th century and has been a Lutheran Church since 1544. The stained glass windows behind the altar are the originals from 1330’s.
The altar at the front of the church is from 1546. The paintings on the altar are unusual. Peter is depicted reading a Bible (a book) and using spectacles.
Also at the front is a second alter that is even older and has a statue representing the trinity. The Holy Spirit is represented by a dove bridging God and Jesus. Jesus is standing on a skull, showing that Jesus has overcome death.
In the back of the church is a glorious 35 foot high wood carving by Tilman Riemenschneider carved from 1499 to 1504. It takes time to do great art. It was originally built to hold a rock-crystal capsule that held a scrap of table cloth that was miraculously stained in the shape of a cross by a drop of communion wine. The attention to detail in the carving is impressive.
Outside the church was an apple tree with fruit laying on the ground most of which had been smashed. A father and his 2 year old son walked by and the kid seeing the fallen apples turns to his Dad and asks "Das ist kaputt?
We ate lunch in a Rick Steves recommended restaurant. He was dead on. Burgerkeller is a small cellar one flight down from the main street. Harry Terian is the owner and was a delight. We arrived and there was one other couple was eating lunch. While we were there two men came in and had a coke and a beer. Business was slow today. According to Harry, the weather was to blame. He was hoping for good weather next week which is a holiday weekend and perhaps there will be big crowds.
The dining area is a half barrel shaped room with dim lights and wonderfully decorated tables. The walls had medieval paintings on them.
Harry spent most of the time talking with the German couple or to us. He had “oldies” music playing. I told him I liked his music and he stopped for a second to listen and said, “Ah, The Mammas and Pappas, jah?”
I ordered a beef and noodle soup and sausage, mushrooms, boiled potatoes all in a cream sauce. It was delicious. The mushrooms were wonderful and a variety that I had not seen before. The sauce was sinfully rich. Penny had fried pork with homemade noodles in a sauce with a green salad.
The meals were the best we had in Germany. But the pièce de résistance were the WCs (restrooms) which were upstairs in the back. They were immaculate and looked like something from a current magazine layout. When traveling you learn to appreciate good restrooms.
Our next stop was the Medieval Crime and Punishment Museum. Housed in two large buildings, it contains all kinds of items dealing with the legal system. Torture was evidently not thought of as a human rights issue. It was part of the court system. They had books that described the proper use of thumb screws for example. Rather than trying to describe this let me show you a few pictures.
This is a Medieval chair designed for torture but could be used as a recliner to discourage too much TV watching.
This is a mouth pear. Evidently you stuck it in someones mouth and when you tightened the end the bottom spead out and stretched the mouth. To what purpose? You obviously are not going to get a confession from someone with that in their mouth.
After the Crime and Punishment Museum we went into a Christmas store. We were trying to find a Christmas museum but failed. The store was huge and crowded with merchandise. They were very proud of their Christmas items. Small China made wooden tree decorations (the kind you would see at Michaels or Walmart for 99 cents) were selling (but not to me) for 4 and 5 Euros ($5.50 to $7.00). Some of the fancier wooden candle twirlly spinny things were marked at 500 Euros. We did not buy anything.
After the Christmas Stores we climbed up and took a walk on the top of the city wall which is covered and thus a good thing to do in the rain. There were just a few people also walking in the opposite direction that required our squeezing by each other.
The inside of the covered walk is open to the city center and allowed peering down on everyone’s back yards. The outside rock wall has viewing holes periodically that allow photography by the people living in 1540 (okay, maybe it was for shooting arrows). Today they have stone plaques all along the wall with the names of people that provided money for the restoration and upkeep of the wall. They gave a €1000 per meter of wall. Some had 1 meter some had 5 or 10 meters. The names were from all over the world including the US but most were from Germany.
After the wall it was still raining and we decided to catch an earlier train to start back to Frankfurt. That would allow us to get off in Wurzburg and have about 2 hours to see some of the city immediately around the train station and find something to eat. The street across from the station looked promising but it was full of nice shops but not many places to eat. A trip down a side street brought us to a pub kind of place. The menu on the door looked like good prices and the sign saying “we speak English” sealed the deal.
We walked in to a small room with a dozen tables and room for maybe 50 people if every chair was filled. In the corner was a long table with a family of 8 or so adults and kids who were laughing and playing “Rook.” We sat down at a table, the English speaking waitress came and offered us English menus. Penny asked for hot chocolate and she grabbed a table card and began to describe the 15 different kinds of hot chocolate they served. She brought us our chocolate and we sat and sipped after ordering our food. As we sat there the place began to fill up. The family reunion added another 5 or 6 people and as they came in there were hugs all around (including the waitress). Other couples came in and everyone seemed to know everyone. We had stumbled into the German Cheers! It was fun.
Part of the fun was watching the kitchen staff of 3 preparing the meals through a slide up window where they passed orders and meals. It was like watching a cooking show on TV with pots flying, flip-stirring the content and pouring in some flammable liquid and then sloshing a bit over the side to flame the sauce and watching the flames leap high in the air nearly setting fire to the chef’s hat.
As they began to serve the meals to the family (one at a time) timing became a worry. We had reservations on a train and had a 15 minute walk or a 10 minute dash back to the station.
The food arrived and we paid at that point. We ate rather quickly. That was a bit of a shame because the meal was again very good. We dashed the 4 or six blocks to the train station and had six minutes to spare.
It was a good day and food, restaurants and people were a highlight.
Ray
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