Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Well, we have finally come to our final Germany posting. We spent our last day in Rothenburg ob der Tauber, the best preserved medieval town in Germany. Among other things, Rothenburg was the inspiration for the village in the Pinocchio movie, and it also appears in the newest Harry Potter movie. The town has many buildings and structures dating from the 1100's onward. The bed and breakfast we stayed dates from the 1360's:


The downstairs restaurant portion of the B&B was even more rustic and charming.

Unfortunately it rained much of the day (unlike most of our trip where we had unusually mild, sunny weather), and we made up for the weather by visiting two museums and doing some souvenir shopping. Snoopy was allowed in all the stores and museums we went to :-). During our entire vacation, we frequently found stores for Käthe Wohlfahrt. This is a very cute Christmas store and Rothenburg is its home base. Käthe seemed to have a near monopoly on all things Christmas in Germany, so after searching through several of her stores we finally decided on a Christmas pyramid, which have been typical in Germany for centuries. There are some pictures of examples here, though ours is very simple in comparison:


Basically, the pyramid is a carousel whose spinning motion is achieved with the help of candles whose rising heat spins a propeller above. Ours is a nativity advent pyramid, so for each Sunday in Advent, we'll light a candle (4 candles total), and the propeller above and nativity scene will spin around. A picture of a car decoration outside the store where we got the pyramid (apparently in Germany, Santa doesn't come deliver gifts as this duty falls to Käthe Wohlfahrt) :-):


We also went to a Christmas museum, located on the 2nd floor of the main Christmas store. It was kind of interesting to learn the history of Christmas trees, ornaments, Santa, etc.

Next up was a visit to the Crime and Punishment Museum. They had lots of relics from the Middle Ages on display of how suspected criminals were tortured and punished. They had everything from masks of shame to torture chairs and beyond. Just outside the museum, they had a special cage where they would put bakers who sold undersized loaves of bread (bread was required to be a certain weight, and some bakers tried to cheat their customers):


If caught, the bakers were places in the cage and lowered and immersed in the river for a certain amount of time. This discouraged bakers from cheating... The museum was full of interesting tidbits like that.

We also walked on the old city wall that used to protect the town from invaders years ago:


And we enjoyed doing a walking tour of the town with its half-timbered houses and other old buildings.




The next picture is of city hall's glockenspiel which reenacts Rothenburg's famous Thirty Years' War story, where the mayor saved the town in 1631. As the legend goes, the Swedes had invaded and were going to plunder the town and destroy everything. The mayor made a bet with the leader of the Swedish army that the mayor would down 3.5 liters of the town's wine in a single gulp without taking a breath if the Swedes would spare the town. The Swedes agreed to this, and the mayor managed to keep his end of the deal.


In the evening we went on a guided tour with a 'night watchman.' It was entertaining. Here is our guide, in full costume:


The next morning we stopped briefly in Frankfurt and walked around the city for a little bit, and then we were off on the plane back to Maryland. Nate still hasn't adjusted to the time change, and continues to wake up at 3 in the morning...