Yeterday Kyle and I got back from our final little trip this summer. We went to Rothenburg, an incredibly cute and well-preserved medieval village. It was so cute that we were sitting there asking ourselves the whole time, "does this place really exist? Are we sure that we aren't in disneyworld germany or something?" The medieval city walls and ramparts are still intact, and you can walk on top of them and sort of circumambulate the city, which we did. I really enjoyed this, seeing the old guards' towers (you can actually climb one of these towers) and walking the same 'rounds' that the guards walked hundreds of years ago to look for enemies approaching. There used to be a moat outside the walls as well, and in some of the towers you can see slits where the chains from the drawbridge were reeled in to raise it. After world war two, about 40% of Rothenburg was damaged or destroyed (luckily, however, none of the historical center was touched) and to raise money for reconstruction, the city officials wrote an article to the world at large asking for money to help restore this historical city, and offering in return for a donation a certain length of the wall with your name on it. they sent this notice to newspapers all over the world, and now when you walk along the wall there are stones with the name, city, and country of donors, and it is incredible how many people from how many places responded. There were people from Tokyo and Montana and england, etc. Very interesting. The city itself is gorgeous, and is usually packed with tourists. Luckily, there is a festival next weekend, so this weekend was sort of slow because people were holding out for the festival (this is what we think; we really don't know). regardless, we didn't feel at all crowded or rushed, and we could really enjoy how nice it was, all half-timbered houses, cobblestone streets, little shops and restaurants. A local food specialty is the "schneeball," which is basically a ball of piecrust-tasting dough that is baked and then rolled in chocolate or sugar or butter... We got a kick out of it because there were schneeball stands EVERYWHERE. Probably my favorite thing that we did was the rick steves-recommended night watchman's tour of the city. It was both hysterical and really informative. The english-language tour starts at 8:00pm in the town square, and so there is a group of us standing around looking for the tour guide when, all of a sudden from the other side of the square appears this guy with long curly hair and a black cape and hat, carrying a lit lantern and one of those axes on a long handle (I guess what medieval night watchmen carried) walking towards us. The first thing he says is, "I am ten minutes early. If anyone would like to get their picture made standing beside me, I would appreciate it." Of course everyone did. He has this german accent and a really dry sense of humor. It was great. He proceeded to guide us along the streets, telling us about the buildings and history as we went, and also about the job of the nightwatchmen in medieval times, guarding the city against fire and enemy, etc. It was a lot of fun. The next day we walked around the city, and also poked around in some of the little shops. Rothenburg has a really big christmas market in december, and several of the christmas stores are open year-round. We left at about 4:30 yesterday, because we wanted to stop and walk around Nuremburg on the way home, as we had to make a train connection there anyway.
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