Day 18 – Wednesday 8 June 2016

A late start of 8.15am after yet another great breakfast. The traffic in Munich wasn’t too bad as we departed, but we were not on the road for long before it started to rain fairly heavily. The German Autobahn is pretty good & we made good time in the rain, passing through lots of grassy lush farms & lots of solar panel installations. There were also a few very large wind turbines dotted around the landscape. We turned off the Autobahn & followed the “Romantik Road” to today’s destination, Rothenburg. The countryside became increasingly rural as we drove further & further towards Rothenburg, green fields, forests & surprisingly, cows inside huge barns, we hardly saw any in the fields. We did pass over the Danube River, a swollen stream only as we crossed it not that far from it’s source in the German Black Forest.

Rothenburg is an ancient medieval walled town captured & frozen in time. The walled town is full of buildings dating from the 14^th & 15^th century, our hotel, the Tilman Riemenschneider was built in 1559 & our room sports a four poster bed with a solid canopy. The first time either of us have slept in a 4 poster bed. We can now cross the 4 poster bed off our bucket list, not that it had ever been on it. King Ludwick II slept in a 4 poster bed so we will be like royalty after tonight. We made good time from Munich & had a couple of hours free time to have lunch & wander around town by ourselves, so we walked the short distance over the cobblestones to the town square & sat in the sunshine & ate our lunch. We then wandered around, looking at the old church, completed in 1528 (paid by the good citizens of Rothenburg & it took 140 years to build) & noted an organ recital was on at 5pm. Rothenburg is noted for its Christmas decorations shops so we had a wander through a couple of those as well.   We weren’t allowed to photograph, very beautiful, it is like a fairy land.

We were back at our hotel by 1.45pm to start our guided walking tour with Daniel, a knowledgeable local man. Just as we were due to depart a storm came crashing & thundering around, bucketing with rain, so we stayed in the hotel a while longer whilst Daniel regaled us with interesting snippets of history about Rothenburg. The rain had abated slightly by the time we started our walk so we were well kitted out in our coats & poncho, with headset in ear as we walked & listened to Daniel explain more of the town history. He had a great sense of humour (who said Germans have no humor?) & was always making jokes (spoke English exceptionally well) as we walked along. Rothenburg is an absolutely beautiful town, its main source of income is tourists & has been for a long time, apparently 2.2 million tourists descend on Rothenburg every year (the place is a time capsule). There are a fair few tourists wandering around today, not too many to be a real nuisance though (it is raining). We walked down cobblestone streets & alleyways, then out under the city wall. An interesting feature was where boiling oil was poured onto attackers from above the main city gates through a mask carved into the stone wall with open eyes & mouth. We finished Daniel’s guided walking tour in the town square, in front of the large Town Hall. We then did a little more exploring on our own, discovering more beautiful & interesting buildings around every corner. It is easy to see why the whole town is Heritage Listed.

The cobblestones are pretty tough to walk on so we ventured back to the hotel & Tereza put her feet up while Ron looked for the steps to clamber up the city wall. After Ron’s little adventure we headed back down to the church for the organ recital. The man playing was exceptional, the tunes were not church hymns nor any composer I was familiar with, but we were enraptured by half an hour of wonderful music. There were around 100 people in the church enjoying the organ music with us. The rain stopped & it was a lovely afternoon so we wandered around the town a little more, venturing further afield & exploring a little more before heading back to the motel to change for dinner.

Dinner was a very short 100 metre walk from our hotel at 7pm. The food was simply delicious, starting with white asparagus soup. We had a nice chat with some of our tour group over dinner, a couple of drinks & to complete the meal a nice whipped cream mousse with ice cream & strawberries for dessert. We had 3 members of our tour party celebrating birthdays today so a birthday cake was carried out with candles to be blown out. Even more to eat, cake, we were so full our short walk back to our hotel wasn’t enough to exercise off. Another great day was had by all.

Overall Germany has been very good, streets are clean, people are friendly, rooms are good, scenery is great, only criticism is that in the hotels we have stayed in the internet service has been very poor.