Tour day five
Trip Start
Aug 28, 2008
1
15
40
Trip End
Sep 24, 2008
Bacharach,
Rhineland-Palatinate,
Germany
Sunday, September 7, 2008
... ohhh... the suffering.
The day started with another hearty breakfast at the Inn in Bacharach. Then on the bus at 8:30 for the ride to Rottenburg. - already told you about that ride a couple of posts ago. It's overcast with just a little bit of light rain that clears off nicely as we roll in to town. Nice and cool. Partly sunny the rest of the day.
Ws got to Rottenburg in the late morning. Another of those charming little (read small) rooms,but at least you could turn around in the bathroom without busting your shin on the WC. We walked to the town center on more cobblestone streets lined with souvenier shops, bakeries and the everpresent Biergartens. It makes me think. At home we have Bars and Club, the occasional Pub.
The best euphamism I can think of is 'watering hole'. In Germany they have Biergartens. The mere phrase conjuring visions of that Fraulein on the St. Pauli.girl bottle carrying more liters of beer in each hand than seems possible for a woman of her stature.
Rottenburg is one of the best preserved medieval cities in Germany. It grew to promience because of it's location at the intersection of two major European trade routes. It is a 'walled city' fortified all around by 5 feet thick 15 to 20 feet high stone walls. All reports were that you could walk around the entire town on the top of the wall. We stopped at a local 'meat and bread' shop for a togo bite that we could eat as we walked. I ordered the 'fire sausage' which was about 1 inch diameter by about 18 inchers long. The bun was a 2 inch crusty loaf of similar length. Perfect for nibbling and walking. - asked the proprietor if it was hot. She nodded her head emphatically and answered "Yah, hot!". I remember that we are in Germany, home of blandness, and take my chances. It was tasty and maybe a little peppery, but not what I would call hot. I'm sure that if I were insane ernough to order something called fire sausage in India, my teeth would have melted. We find an access stair to the wall and begin our circuit. It was supposed to take an hour to complete, but after about 20 minutes the wall ended and we never did find the way back up. We did find a wondeful grassy garden with a spetacular view of a peaceful glade complete with small dwellings and a modest church.
We gave up on trying to find the wall again and ventured to the Crime and punishment museum. Quite an interesting look in to the many devices that folks can cook up to humiliate, debase and torture their fellow humans. It was almost chilling the way that everything was presented so factually - there was nothing really dark or macabre about any of the exhibits. One showed an array of swords that were used for beheadingsn which made Heidi wonder aloud "how come they have no points?". I reply "slicing only". There was some other stuff in the museum for the less gruesome mindedn diplaying the usage of various wax seals over the ages and some legal documents and decrees - yawn. I resume inspecting the halberds for any unwashed bits of medieval human gore.
After the museum we stop in to the big church in town (I'll clean this up with names at some point). There are 3 incredibly ornate, wood carved alters in the church. I find that - have much more inclination to sit and admire fine woodcarving for extended periods than I do for other art forms. After the church, the women folk decided they need to do some shopping. I put my foot down, followed closely by my posterior at the nearest biergarten. I have a bonding moment over a pint of heffeweissen with my 'tour buddy' Doug. I may bore you at some point with comments about my tour mates, not sure.
Dinner at 6:30. More schweine schnitzel. Zer gut! After dinner we took the "Night Watchman's" tour around Rottenburg. It was pretty fun - a dude in period garb and a very dry, Monty-Python-Holy-Grail delivery walked us around the town for an hour. Pretty cool local lore about the rags to riches to aging amd pundering back to riches history of the town. Including a story about how the town was surrendered to the allies at the end of the war in part to save the historic relics frombeing bombed. My guess is that there was some concern about saving their skins too. The funny part was that the major who surrendered the town did so against direct orders from the Fuhrer when the local General just happened to be out of town for a couple of days.
Off to bed for the night.
