Existence of Chris: European Easter Part 4- The Romantic Road

The Romantic Road (Romantische Strasse in German) is a stretch of road through southern Germany which passes through many little traditional German towns. There is nothing particularly special about the road itself, other than that it runs mainly parallel to the main highways so is a nice relaxing drive through the country side.

Our first main stop was an overnight stay in Donauworth. To be honest, there was not a lot here. It was nice to walk along the main street in town, which was covered in Easter decorations and had a church with some interesting bells, but not much else.

Our next stop was at Schloss Harburg (Harburg Castle) which was definitely worth a visit. It wasn't a massive castle, and there was not much information or any tour available, but it was very cool to walk up the steep street, under the portcullis and into the castle courtyard. There was many of the original fittings in place, such as the archery view ports in the wall, and the oil-stained murder holes above the entrance.

Lunch was had at a little cafe in Nordlingen, where we had a view of the beautiful gothic St Georg's church, with its classic tall steeple. We spent some time at the nearby town of Dinkelsbuhl which also had a beautiful old church (the similarly named St George's church). Both of these towns deserved extra time for exploring but with the limited time we had, we decided to spend more at Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and we were not disappointed.

St Georg's Church, Nordlingen

St George's Church, Dinkelsbuhl

Along with Nordlingenand and Dinkelsbuhl, Rothenburg ob der Tauber is one of the three remaining German towns to still have completely intact city walls. This is the first thing you notice as you have to drive through the narrow archway to enter the town. Inside it was like a fairytale, and we had a great 2 days and 2 nights here. There was plenty to do- we went for an early morning walk around a large portion of the town, explored the walls including the many areas where you can actually walk along the top of the walls where the sentries would have been posted, we went to the medieval torture museum which had not only instruments of torture but many other interesting historical exhibits, plenty of souvenir shopping and eating at the many cosy little restaurants and cafes.

One of the highlights was the Night Watchman tour, which is run every night by a guy in the character of a medieval night watchman. As we walked around the town at dusk, he tells of the town's history from it's beginnings in the 1300's, its rise to economic fame, its downfall due to war and disease in the 1600's, its hibernation and it's eventual rediscovery in the 1800's. The tour is full of serious historical information, as well as some interesting anecdotes and is very entertaining.

Our hotel was very cool, it was set up like an old manor, complete with a suit of armour and deer antlers on the wall. It was very big and luxurious, and we were sad when we had to leave the hotel as well as the beautiful old town of RodT.

Other random photos from our time in Germany.

Nordlingen

St Georg's Church Church, Nordlingen

Decoration one one of the altars in St George's church, Dinkelsbuhl

Entrance through the RodT town wall that we had to drive through

Old Gothic church across from our hotel in RodT

Inside one of the many German Christmas stores in RobT (called Kathe Wohlfahrt)

Various torture devices at the Medieval Torture Museum

"Shame Mask"
In medieval times, immoral people (liars, gossips, drunkards etc.) were made to wear these masks for a period of time as punishment, so everyone around them would know that they were bad