Rothenburg is what I would imagine The North Pole looks like, with it’s sloping old town square and perfect gingerbread style houses lining the streets. Even the shop signs and lampposts are beautifully adorned with intricate detail.
They say that Rothenburg is the perfect town for your entire souvenir shopping needs with its Kathe Wohlfahrt Christmas Shop, countless teddy bear boutiques brimming with cuteness as well as the typical gift shops, so we hit the ground running with a scan through all of these delights.
As we entered the main square we joined locals and tourists alike congregating around the school music band setting up to perform. Chairs had been arranged around the makeshift stage and we sat down to listen to the Music Ambassadors from Florida who had been touring around Europe, perform a few pieces, a nice surprise.
After a while we moved on to Saint Jacob’s Lutheran Church, special because it houses the famous Altar of the Holy Blood, carved in wood by Tilman Riemenschneider, Germany’s own Michelangelo. After admiring this piece for a while we moved on the find another piece of Riemenschneider’s work in the nearby town of Detwang.
A short walk down one of the steepest hills we’ve come across to Detwang was broken only to eat the Schneeballen we’d purchased along the way. Snowballs in English, these doughy delights were originally created by bakers to use up all the leftover dough they had created making other things. Offcuts of dough all rolled together into a ball originally coming in one flavor, sugar, although now there are many different variations to choose from. Quite nice though super sweet and very hard to eat, we didn’t race back to the shop for more.
In Detwang we found the small chapel where we saw a second piece of Riemenschneider’s work, altered to fit into the small space it now occupies and made our way back up the hill to Rothenburg.
Walking through town at the end of the day we were eventually attracted to a small quiet shop showcasing glasswork for sale. The lady in the shop explained in as best she could in hand gestures that her husband was the glassblower who created the work. The glass was exquisite and we could have bought the whole shop if we had been able to get it home! Glass of various colours, sizes and shapes turned into lamps where what caught our eye first.
The glass was just gorgeous once the light was inside and still lovely and very different when turned off. Sadly we could not risk buying the huge lamps as travel back to Australia would be quite impossible but we did manage to shop for many gifts and a few little treasures for ourselves. The lady was laughing at us trying to make our decisions but as we gave her quite a bundle to wrap up she gave us all a gift, such a lovely shop and lovely lady.
We spent another hour exploring the Kathe Wohlfahrt Christmas shop, a special wonderland of all things you could possible imagine for adorning the home at Christmas. Once again we had to restrain ourselves as sending things home would be difficult. Just window-shopping and exploring all the nooks and crannies here was great fun.
We reluctantly left this absolutely gorgeous town and headed off toward the Black Forrest. We found a little parking spot and then, quite unexpectedly, a new adventure began. We were all ready for bed about 8 pm and just eating dinner when a very large tractor and plough pulled up beside us.
A man approached the car and was surprised to find three females only, where is the man? He proceeded to tell us that we should come back to his farm to stay the night, much safer and very interesting, as he was an organic farmer. We said we would be fine and he said he was still working but would be finished in about an hour.
Sure enough a little over an hour passed and Daniel was knocking on the door again and would not take no for an answer. We followed him back to his farm, went on a guided tour of his high tech barn and met his dairy cows all the while dressed in our PJ’s and jackets. Then up to the house, along the way meeting the goats, chickens, pigs and calves, cute.
We sat around the kitchen table while he ate his dinner and we helped him drink a beer or two and wine, whilst discussing numerous different topics from religion to politics and especially his organic farming and his family. At about 2am we settled back into Vincent and slept “late”, until 7am.
We rose early to see his wife finish milking the cows and then picked berries before going in to breakfast. Here we met their son, Jonas, 2 and Anna, 6 months, gorgeous little kids. Mum managed to make great friends with Anna much to the surprise of her parents and I think Jonas thought we were from Mars, as we could only talk to him in a strange language.
After taking them up on their offer of a shower we moved on about 11am towards The Black Forest having thoroughly enjoyed our farming experience with Daniel and his family. We were so touched by their generosity and kindness and hope we can keep in touch with such lovely people.
Photos can be found on our Facebook page in the album GERMANY.