June 23: Today we were doing the Romantic Road and Bavaria and TIrol. We drove to Fussen and saw the Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau Castles from a far. We didn’t want to spend all day there and Denese and Eric had already been there. Then we stopped by the Wies Kirche (Church in Wies), where it is said a statue of Jesus once wept in 1738. Therefore the church was build after this miracle.
Then we hopped on the Autobahn and headed for Rothenburg ob der Tauber for the evening. We stayed in a house that was 600 years old. It was raining so we decided to take the covered walk around the wall that surrounds the whole city. This city is the finest medieval walled town around and it does Christmas right! There are many Christmas Stores year round selling ornaments, candle pyramids, and nutcrackers. Unfortunately there is one lady that has practically bought out the whole town and charges about 10-30 Euros for an ornament. We bought Schneeballen (these are fried dough balls covered with the topping of your choice! They are native to Rothenburg so we tried one with powders sugar and one with chocolate nugget and nuts. We found a Kartoffeln Stube (Potato Stub) for dinner. I had potato soup and a salad, Eric had potato lasagna and soup, and Denese had fried potato balls in tomato sauce. We were stuffed with potatoes after dinner and walked around the wall to get back to our hotel room to play some cards.
June 24: Denese and I did a little shopping this morning before we left. We bought a few ornaments from a store that was not run by Kathe Wohlfahrt. She is the one that seems to have bought out all of Rothenburg. Anyway we left Rothenburg and headed for Wutha (our home) in the afternoon. With Eric behind the wheel we were home in a flash!
June 25: Today we spent resting. In the evening the neighbors invited us over for a little beer drinking and visiting on their back porch. The neighbors wanted to meet Denese before she had to leave. We all had a lot of fun talking, but of course Randy was our translator for much of the evening. Then Heini went into the house and got some liquor for us all to drink. I can’t remember the name of it, but we had never had it before (or heard of it). It was a gift from Heini’s daughter from Africa (she bought it on her vacation). It was some powerful stuff! Heini continued to poor shots for everyone, and it is hard to say “no” when there is that language barrier. We proceeded to get a little drunk with the neighbors Heini, Monika, Claus, Angelica! We learned that the German’s really start having fun and loosening up after about 2 beers or glasses of champagne and 2 shots of African liquor. Lets just say that we all slept very well once we walked back to our house!
June 26: Today Eric and I slept in till late (it couldn’t have been all the alcohol that we drank last night). Anyway Randy and Denese went to a home store (like the Home Depot) with a friend of Randy’s, Jorge, so that Randy could pick out some roof shingles. He needs to put a new roof on the house soon. Randy called Eric and told us to meet him in Seebach for pizza!
After pizza Jorge took us to the city where Eric and I had to go to get our temporary residence! We needed a residence pass for our passports so that we could stay here for 6 months. US residence can only stay here for 3 months per 6-month period. Thanks to Randy’s connections, Gerd (the neighbor) was able to help us get this pass. These people are so great here! There is no way that they would normally give this pass to a bunch of Americans. It is who you know here in Deutchland, and we are lucky to know Randy and his connections! After we got our pass we had to go to Wutha to register there as residence too. It was very relieving to have our temp residence here in Germany.
June 27: Today Randy, Dense, Eric and I went to Dresden for a little trip! Dresden is a very cool city with a lot of history (like many cities in Europe). We went to the Frauen Church first. This church was just rebuilt (in 2005) after gathering donations for many years. The church was destroyed when Allied troops bombed the city in 1945. All the stones laid there as a monument of memory against war until it was rebuilt. The church was rebuilt with many of the remaining stones. The architects used a database to find the correct location for each usable stone found in the rubble.
We also saw the Zwinger, which now is home to many museums. Randy bought us all beer after we had Bratwurst. We saw the porcelain mural depicting the chronological royal history of Dresden. It was a very windy day, but we made the best of it. There were pictures by some of the post card stands that showed mounds of dead bodies after the bombing occurred. These pictures describe things that words just can’t.
We found a little pension along the Elbe River, close to Festung Koenigstein (a castle we were visiting tomorrow). We had dinner at a nearby bar then went to bed.
June 28: Today we hiked up to the castle named Festung Koenigstein. We took an audio tour and walked the castle grounds for about 3-4 hours. It was built into and on top of the stones at the very top of the mountain. Some of the buildings were used to hold prisoners of war during WWII. It is so high up that there are many lighting strikes. There were 3 visitors (tourist) killed by lighting not so long ago. Luckily for us there were no storms, but many clouds kept my attention ☺
After visiting the castle we went to a place called Bastei Bridge. Many years ago there was a settlement located here at the top of these rock-covered mountains. These rocks were very steep but the civilization of this village built a bridge here high among these mountains. It was very scary to walk around up here (see the pictures). Dense is so scared of heights, but we got here out on the bridge for a little while. Then Eric and I paid a couple of Euros to tour the other areas of the village. These areas were connected with only steal walkways. It was exhilarating, once we were done ☺ When we were done we drove back to the house in Wutha.
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