The Romantische Strasse - This is the name given to the way that links about 30 towns lined up from North to South, from Wurzburg to Fussen. This is an ancient trade route, from the Main River to the base of the Alps. It continues (and so will we, a bit) along the Via Claudia Augusta, into Italy and to Rome. The name "Romantische Strasse" - Romantic Road, is a good fit in the sense of a romantic place - like in "romance", but no doubt it's German meaning is more like the Romans used it or it leads to Rome.
Rothenburg - In the sense of "romantic", it must be hard to beat Rothenburg. Here is a pretty much complete medieval city, enclosed in a massive wall, with six gates and numerous towers. In this, it is much like Carcassonne, but we found Rothenburg much more "real", both in still having real people living inside it, and somehow not feeling like it is wall to wall souvenir shops. Yes, for some reason it feels like a living treasure.
We learned some of how this came to be from one of the last things we did here - follow the Night Watchman tour. This was a one hour walk around a bit of the town lead by one who styles himself the last of the medieval night watchmen. More than a simple guided tour, there was a theatrical element to the presentation that made it come alive. It also made Rothenburg come alive. One of the areas that got illuminated for us was how this place came to be preserved.
The story as told by the Night Watchman was that the city became very rich, being at the intersection of north/south (Scandinavia to Rome) and east/west (Paris to Prague - hey, the Pan Europa!) trade routes. The city had about 150 sqare miles of surrounding rich land, and was famous for textile (wool) products. In 1274 it attained the status of a Free Imperial City, giving it the status of literally a state within the Holy Roman Empire.
The city was full of grand houses, many still standing today, and surrounded by a cliff on one side and a big wall otherwise. The wall is abut 4 km long. Bad news came in the form of the Thirty Years War, which started in 1618. In 1631 the city was besieged, fell, and was plundered. This was followed in 1634 by the Black Plague. After this, there was no further development in the city for 250 years. However, the town had never been burned, so the place still stood.
Tourists began to discover the sleeping treasure at the end of the nineteenth century. Laws were put into place to stop changes to the buildings, and so everything was preserved. Then there was one more stroke of "luck". At the end of WWII German troops from Nurnberg came here, and the order was given to defend the town to the last man. The Americans bombed it, but due to poor visibility only destroyed about 40 percent. The order was then given to complete the destruction by artillery. But the American deputy Secretary of State was familiar with the place, because his mother had been here as a tourist. He offered the German troops a way out. A brave German major, recognizing that the cause was hopeless, surrendered - despite that being technically treason. So these two men saved Rothenburg.
Our own Rothenburg story began at the guesthouse recommended by the Aussies yesterday. It is a little old place run by a little old but very lovely man. Our photo of the breakfast we got there makes it clear why we are finding these guethouses so seductive. I mean, white asparagus and ham omelette! We had to shift over to a hotel up the street, to have a place for one more night here. This, the Goldener Hirsch (Golden Stag) is more of a grand old place. In fact on each door is the name of a famous person who slept there, and when. Ours list a minor Belgian royal person, but next door was Willy Brandt and beside that an emperor Wilhelm of some description.
Our little guesthouse came up with a great breakfast, including asparagus omelette!
The streets here are filled with tourists, and as always the cutest and most apparently numerous are from China. They take photos of absolutely everything, even us. Another good category are other cycle tourists. We see them here usually in a configuration we know all too well - one guarding the bikes while the other goes in somewhere for a look. We felt pretty smug this time - with our bikes in a cosy locked garage.
Of course the knockout feature of the place is the wonderful individual buildings and the way they are arranged into a town. Wherever you aim your camera you have an almost automatic eyecatching composition. Below you will see some of the over 150 shots we took!
Even though Rothenburg did not turn us off with shops, the way Carcassonne did, it is of course stuffed with shops. Inside, and also in the window displays are those quintessential, iconic, German things: little wooden and clay figures, dolls in dirndls, real dirndls, cuckoo clocks, bakery and delicatessen things, fancy beer steins. Some categories have many stores , each specializing in the one thing: There are the schneeballe places. Schneeballs (snowballs) are balled up bits of a shortbread type dough, with various sugary coverings. Each store claims to be the original, based on an old old family recipe. We tried them last year somewhere - pretty bland. Then there are the all year Christmas places. It's a category now also seen in North America, but here they probably invented it. The biggest is called Kathe Wolfarhrt - there are two branches in this old town and branches in other cities. It's huge! - and expensive. Little wooden stick figures go for almost 20 euros. That is not to say we did not find some things for the grandkids there. There should be a photo below showing the one single penny I had left when I got out. Oh well, a euro penny is actually worth about $.015 - so not quite so bad!
By the way, the German for grandchildren is "enkel kinder" .
Teddy bears are another special category, and the leader is Teddy Land. In cuckoo clocks, there is no clear leader here, but many many shops are selling made in Germany cuckoo clocks. For some reason they prohibit photos, meaningI only got a few! Talking tot he staff and going through the displays, I tried to isolate the individual price impact of the various feaures - like 1 week movement, music, moving parts like water wheels and wood choppers, overall size, etc. It was hard devising a set of questions for a basically German speaking sales person, so as to isolate these things. I do have a secret weapon, though - the search wizard of cuckooclock.de By the time we hit the Black Forest I should be an educated consumer!
Rothenburg naturally has a number of interesting churches, but we only visited one - the church of St. Jakob. St. Jakob is St James, and the Jakobsweg is the famous pilgrimage route(s) to Santiago Compostella in Spain. So in front of the church is a statue of St. Jakob, holding the famous cockle shell in his hand. Inside, you can buy Jakobweg stuff - like even shell shaped soap! The church did contain some neat stuff other than soap (which I liked, too). The high altar, from 1466, has wood carvings by master carvers, including carvings of six saints - one of which is St. James. But the big draw is the Altar of the Holy Blood, a carving masterpiece by the famous Wurzburg sculptor Tilman Riemenschneider. It took six years to do and was completed in 1505. High in the centre is a crystal capsule containing a drop of Holy Blood. We had visited the Basilica of the Holy Blood last year, in Brugge. There was no crystal there, but only a box.
Because we had set aside enough time, we also got to visit two museum like things - rare for us. The first was the historical vaults and imperial city dungeon, and the second, a house that had been occupied by a succession of craftsmen, since 1270, and that had been preserved virtually unchanged. In recent times (not sure quite when) a "hermit" had occupied the place and changed nothing - including not putting in electricity or running water. There will be photos from these two fascinating unchanged places below, when I get a chance to select and upload them.
A giant tour bus pulled up to our hotel an hour ago, and unloaded a huge gaggle of tourists. The hotel staff has warned us they these folks will swarm the breakfast buffet, and they recommended that we hide out until after this tidal wave has passed. We, however, have the idea of beating them to the punch. So we are going to go to bed now (early) and be up early. It means no photo uploading for a bit... but it should happen early tomorrow (our time). Watch for it ...Rothenburg is highly photogenic!
Photos from Rothenburg
Here is what we saw. To make it easier, the shots are grouped according to subject. You should be able to figure out what the subject is all about from the story above. In some cases there are also captions that further explain a given photo.
Bakery Stuff
Erdbeer Schnitte continues rather poor. Sandra says we will have to wait until we get more South to see if they improve.
On the left is Sacher Torte - blatantly written on top with the name of the Austrian Sacher Hotel. This one, as often is the case, was a bit dry. It also tasted something like lebkuchen - wrong for this kind of cake. On the right is a great mohn kuchen. We had the lady say MOHN to me 5 times, but still I'm not onto it. MOAN is as close as I come!
This open hearth kitchen was the only source of heat for the house, The beams above are all black with smoke. We learned from the Night Watchman that fire was the main threat to the town, and one of the watchman's main duties was to sound the fire alarm. Enemies would use fire as a main weapon to destroy a town, but of course not if they wanted to grab its stores and supplies.
There is a story of the mayor in 1641 when the town fell to Tilly, that got some leniency by drinking 3 1/4 liters of wine at one shot on a dare by the conquerors. This scene depicts that event.
After the 40 percent destruction in 1945, the city appealed for international help to rebuild. Contributors symbolically bought so many meters of wall, and got their names inscribed on the wall. Though it is not obvious from the wording, this inscription was one of those.
The Night Watchman - was part city tour and part theatre - because of a mildly humourous presentation. The man has been doing this for 20 years. We also bought the DVD!Actually, there was just enough information presented to make it understandable and enjoyable, not overwhelming. As many others have told us, this is the highlight of a visit here.
Every night a large crowd joins the Watchman tour. You can see from the umbrellas that it is not yet great camping weather for us, so we feel less guilty in our feather beds!
