Moderately Lost
Trip Start
Aug 02, 2007
1
28
73
Trip End
Jan 06, 2009
Hofheim in unterfranken, Germany
Monday, December 24, 2007
The quote of the day from Dad.
This is commenting on the trip to Lauscha. The five members of my family went on an expedition without me, as I had other plans. It was a good excersize in them figuring out how to navigate around, as I've been directing alot of the time. As you can see from the above quote, there were some difficulties, but they did make it home without me having to send out a search party. The draw of Lauscha specifically was that it is located in the heart of the glass blowing specialty Touringen shops, and there are all kinds of cool glass baubles there. Or, in deutsch...weinachtsgeshmuck. ("Christmas decoration"). There are also glass blowing museums, and in a few of the shops you can watch the glass blowers at work
Pretty glass things
. It's a pretty cool place, I had been there for the Christmas market a few weekends before. It is quite a scenic drive, getting up into the hills. Dad accused me of not telling him they were headed into the mountains...I still consider The Rockies as mountains, and anything else not...Maybe I'll consider the Alps, too, once I see them...But, and enjoyable drive nonetheless.Sunday was a big plan day. We headed out to Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a town that Kevin and Mark had gone to and recommended that I go to in January, which I did. Mom and Dad and Alex were excited to see the place the rest of us talked about. It is a very touristy town, albeit very cool...I just don't tell my co-workers I take people there, because they kind of roll their eyes at it....But, that said, it's a very cool town. Medieval walls still intact surround the city, large tower gates at every entrance.
First stop was the Crime and Torture museum. It's full of instruments used in the old method of extracting confessions from people, as well as other interesting artifacts from the judicial system throughout the years. There are decrees and laws, which provide an interesting look into the thoughts of people back then. I found one law which outlawed the drinking of coffee, and one person had the job of "snifing out" those who disobeyed
Lauscha
. Another relic is the bakers chair, which is essentially a cage to put a baker in who baked his bread too small, and then dunk the accused in water. What I found interesting is that this punishment was for theives, prostitutes, and these unscrupulous bakers. If I were a baker, I'd carefully measure out my ingredients...We explored the Christmas market which was spread over the town square, and did a bit of shopping (among the hoardes of people...). Mark led the charge to walk a part of the city wall. There are stops (most by the tower gates) which have stairs leading up to the top of the wall where one can then proceed along the wall...pretending to be a guard searching for potential invaders...
We lingered over dinner ( a fabulous italian place) while waiting for the night watchman tour to begin. This is a tour which has a fabulously funny guide, and he explains the role of a night watchman back in the day, as well as give one a bit of a history lesson. The tour was a little over an hour, and I didn't even notice the cold as I was engrossed in the storytelling. The walk through town in the dark was beautiful, with it all lit up for Christmas.
It's now Christmas eve
Rothenburg
. The morning was spent shopping, as the stores here closed this afternoon and will not re-open until the morning of the 27th. We had to be sure we had enough food to survive until then! An afternoon of relaxing, cooking (dad experimented with making a German pot roast for lunch!) and then we headed to the local evangelish church for a Christmas eve service. Now we're back in my apartment, with plans to try and connect up with a few family members late tonight. So, a frohelich weinachten to you all (Happy Christmas)!!
Love,
Beth
