Wurzburg to Stuttgart

Leaving Wurzburg

“Just drop off the key, Lee, and set yourself free”

Sigh.

We leave the baby Boxster where we found it. It will be put on a train to the harbor in Emden, then on a boat to San Diego and then trucked to Spokane. We won’t see it again for six to ten weeks.

 

Removing European Plates

Unpacking

Auf Wiedersehen little car.

Porsche cabs us to the airport. As we’re leaving they say, “See you next time.” We smile.

Final Tally:

Kilometers Driven: 1658

Miles Per Gallon: 22

Top Speed: 116 mph

Rothenburg to Wurzburg

Leaving Rothenburg

Still Leaving

Another intriguing Old Town, more fountains, a palace, a fortress, churches. We are on historical overload. We choose to look, not learn. So, gawking and admiring we conduct our own walking tour of Wurzburg, letting spires and domes and splashing water draw us this way and that.

Fishy Fountain

Another Palace

Another Church

Another Fortress

Pretty and placid in the daylight, this place buzzes after dark. In one square, under white-tented canopies, table after table of animated individuals cram around wooden folding tables, sit on stools, and sip glasses of wine; their chatter suffuses the darkness. On the Main bridge, over the Main River, people stand and stroll with glass wine goblets in hand. There’s a window in a booth on the bridge where a long line of imbibers wait to purchase refills. The fortress is illuminated on the hillside, street musicians fill the air with melodies, and the river flows silently beneath.

 

Take-Away Wine Bar

The Main Bridge

We have dinner on the two-story deck of a restaurant whose entrance intersects the bridge railing. An open metal railing marks a boundary between deck and river. The structure was once a mill and the water wheel continues to splish-splash below us. With umbrellas and night sky above we “Prost” to adventure, escapades, curiosity and …home.

"Prost"

We are in bed by 10, but 1000’s of others are still out there, enjoying the distinctive ambience of Wurzburg.

Illumination

Can You See The Water Wheel Below the Restaurant?

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

There are several Rothenburgs scattered around Germany, but only one ob der Tauber or above the Tauber (River). This one is a tourist destination and rightfully so.

Wonderfully wrapped within a 13^th century fortification of stone this medieval city has been beautifully preserved.  

We can’t wait to walk the wall. We go early while it’s still cool. There are stairs at each watchtower and once up, it’s 1.5 miles of covered stone catwalks with views in all directions. Who once walked here? Watched through the stone apertures? Safeguarded this city? Their presence is felt through the soles of my shoes.

Watch Tower

Walking the Wall

Wooden Dowel Construction

Back in the main square, the Marktplatz, Jim sits on some shaded steps while I explore. Inside the town hall is a circular staircase, set against a wall, and not much else. The stairs lead to a big empty room with a turnstile at one end. The turnstile has a green light glowing, so I walk through, (I find out later that if the light is red you must wait because they limit the number of people at the top. Foolish oblivion on my part.) More stairs, still circular and becoming narrower with each flight. They turn from stone to wood. I’m climbing a tower. At the top of the increasingly rustic staircase are a small circular room and a woman sitting on a stool beside a desk. Beside her is a ladder leading to daylight. It will cost me 2 euros to climb that ladder. After getting this far how many people say “no thanks” and head back down? I’m going up that ladder. After hoisting myself onto a metal platform I can see that I am at the 164-foot pinnacle of Rothenburg. There’s a bell in this tower and I hope not to be here when it rings. The view is magnificent looking down on the rooftops, to the wall, and out beyond to the emerald green countryside. Definitely worth the climb.

On The Way Up

Tower Stairs

Final Ladder

Made It

Big Old Bell

My Tower

In the Marktplatz is a man selling apple cider in glass mugs. He’s actually pressing the apples right there and doing a brisk business. It’s cold and full of flavor.

 

Apple Cider Anyone?

Apple Peels

Jakobskirche, (Church of St James), is a stop on the route of the Santiago de Compostella pilgrimage to St James Church in Spain, (where the apostle Saint James is buried). It’s the first Lutheran church we’ve visited. Bavaria is predominantly Catholic. A sculpture of James stands outside the church holding the symbol of the pilgrimage, a scallop shell, and pointing somewhere…to Spain? His finger is worn and shiny from the stroking of many hands.

Jakobskirche

Inside the church is the masterpiece of Tilman Riemenschneider. Carved in the 1500’s it is a depiction of the Last Supper. Evidently Judas is removable and they take him away during Easter.

Scallop Shell

Our hotel is delightful. Tucked on a cobbled side street the stuccoed walls of this 600-year-old building are covered with vines and flowers. There are only 6 guest rooms, each one with a small paned window that opens out above a flower box. Inside are open-beamed ceilings, breakfasts lit by candlelight and a classic German pub. On Wednesday nights the English Conversation Club meets in the pub for dinner, sitting at a long table with an ECC placard in the center. The table is full when we arrive for dinner, but we sit adjacent and Rupert, an 80 year old who drove a panzer in WWII, introduces himself. It looks like fun with lots of stories to be heard and told, but we have a date with the Night Watchman.

Hotel Altfrankische Weinstube 

A night watchman, in medieval times, walked the city, testing doors to see that they were locked, lighting lamps and keeping an eye out for the evil that most people believed lurked in darkness in that superstitious period. Fire was the most feared occurrence and he was always ready to alert the town, if necessary. The watchman was a lowly station with only the executioner and the coroner with less prestige. He did important work, but got little respect.

Our night watchman is dressed in black robes and carries a long combination hatchet/spear, (for defense), a lantern, and a horn, (to sound the alarm). We follow him, (along with at least 150 others), on his rounds through the dark city. In a unique excursion that lasts an hour he stops several times to recount pieces of Rothenburg history and to point out significant structures. He is hilarious. The hour slips by too fast, but we’re left with a feel for what it must have been like to live in Rothenburg so long ago and warm memories of this inventive and entertaining guy.

New Friend

My favorite story? At a certain hour a warning bell was sounded that gave any townsperson who was outside the walls one hour to get back into the fortified city before the huge gate was closed for the night. If a person arrived after “curfew” they had to pay a fine and a small (really tiny, actually) door was opened to allow them and only them to stoop through it and come inside. The minute door, called a manhole, made it possible for those inside to protect themselves from being overrun by invaders who knocked at the gate and asked pretty please can we come in? The fine kept people from becoming careless about returning on time.

We fall asleep to a lullaby of German being spoken on the hotel’s cobble-paved courtyard drifting through our open window.

Just Because

Cruising Rothenburg

Horse Trough 1

Horse Trough 2

Munich to Rothenburg

It’s a BOY!

Lesley’s ultrasound reveals that we will have bookends; Sean on one end, baby boy Culley on the other with 4 beautiful girls in-between. Grandparent bliss.

Even with such lovely news we have a somber day.

Not far from Munich is Dachau Concentration Camp. It’s a large complex, kept now as a memorial site for remembrance. It is free and open to visitors year round.

You enter the compound the way the prisoners did, through an iron gate set into an archway beneath a guardhouse. The dictum, “Arbeit Macht Frei” is welded into the open metalwork. Translated: “Work Makes (you) Free”. The prisoners became slave labor and were worked to the point of exhaustion and even death. Ironic freedom.

Guard House Entry

Work Sets You Free

You walk out onto the parade grounds where 40-50,000 prisoners stood at attention twice a day in all weather; standing motionless for an hour while they were counted, punishments were carried out and public executions were witnessed. “You are without rights, dishonorable, and defenseless” is a quote attributed to an SS officer in the museum housed in the former maintenance building. All property, rights and human dignity were forfeited when prisoners entered.

I won’t describe in detail all of the horrific conditions or treatment that occurred here, there are just too many dreadful aspects to recount. We’re all acquainted with this gruesome piece of history.

I will tell you about what we saw at the camp.

To one side of the parade ground a memorial designed by a camp survivor has been erected. It depicts human bodies woven into a design of barbed wire meant to depict the people who threw themselves into the electrified fence to end their suffering. Adjacent is a stone wall with “Never Again” inscribed in 5 languages.

 

Memorial Sculpture by Nandor Glid

Never Again

Memorial Depicting Colored Triangles Prisoners Wore. Different Colors Stood for Different "Crimes". 

Seven guard towers impose themselves along the camp wall. Guards with machine guns manned each tower. The walls are topped with barbed wire, fronted by a deep trench and separated from the camp by a wide swath called the death zone. If anyone stepped into it, they were shot.

 

Guard Tower

Most of the barracks have been destroyed; they are now represented by graveled rectangles. A reconstructed barrack allows a glimpse of the wooden bunks that reached from floor to ceiling and the “living quarters” consisting of rows of wooden benches where 400 men were housed in space meant for 50.

The crematorium remains intact. The ovens used to incinerate the dead stand cold and sinister on this blue-sky day as we contemplate the unthinkable. When the camp was liberated, bodies were stacked in these rooms like firewood awaiting disposal. Behind this building where ashes were discarded is a memorial tombstone for all of the anonymous people who died here.

Crematorium Ovens

Mass Grave

I recently read a piece of historical fiction, Code Name Verity by Elizabeth Wein. She tells the story of two female British officers who parachuted into Germany to aid the resistance. Near the crematorium is an execution wall and it is here that the real-life British women parachutists who were captured were killed. A plaque stands in commemoration. Wein’s novelization has chillingly come to life.

There are 4 religious monuments on the site: Russian Orthodox (an estimated 7000 Soviet POWs were executed here), Protestant, Roman Catholic, and Jewish. Beyond one wall the tips of white rooftops are visible. This is a Carmelite convent initiated in 1964 by an auxiliary bishop of Munich, (he was also a camp survivor), where the nuns dutifully pray for atonement. The Madonna of Dachau resides in their chapel. She once stood in the priests’ barracks. Symbolic entry to the convent has been cut through one of the guard towers.

 

Jewish Monument

Carmelite Rooftops

The camp existed for 12 years and was liberated on May 1, 1945. On that day 30,000 were freed from a camp built to house 6,000. One survivor described this day as his second birth.

In this unsettling place where inhumanity is its synonym there are also stories of solidarity and brotherly love, which allowed the survival of some.

Hope midst the despair and survivors to tell the story.

Amen.

We lighten things up with a stop in the walled medieval city of Dinkelsbuhl, (yeah, that's how you spell it). A delightful stroll through bright and intricately painted, high peaked houses and shops. There’s an organ grinder in the platz. His monkey is stuffed and looking a little bored with the whole spectacle.

Drive through this tower to enter....

Grand Entrance

We’ll spend the night behind the walls of Rothenburg, a slightly grander feudal city.