Where in the World is Lindsay: Germany Edition

Although my motto is “because it’s better to travel than to arrive,” I must admit that it would be nice to arrive sometime. Especially after sitting for 6 hours in a plane that should have arrived in 2 ½, but alas was delayed due to snow/sleet in Frankfurt. As I pen these thoughts, I am sprawled out in the Madrid airport, wondering if I will ever get back to Sevilla, if the taxis there are still on strike, and if I’ll have to spend the night in the airport waiting for a bus. Fun.

But on to better times! The last two days I was in Germany, we ventured away from Mannheim on day trips. Wednesday we headed off to Rothenburg, in the state of Bavaria. It takes 1.5-3 hours to drive there, depending on traffic. (Yes, we did drive on the autobahns and yes, there are sections that don’t have speed limits…) Rothenburg is a walled/fortified city that is very old but still has stores and people living inside of it. You can still stroll along up on the walkways in the wall. It was beautiful looking down on the traditional wooden houses with snow falling on them, albeit a little chilly. We found a typical German restaurant for a delicious lunch of noodles before walking around town and gazing at the countryside from outside the walls.

Snow falling on the wall, the walkway in the wall, and towers.

The most interesting story we learned about the town took place centuries ago during the 3o Years War, when it was besieged by the Catholics. The town was facing attack and certain death, but the general of the Catholic army granted one way of escape: if one man could drink so much wine at once, he would spare the town. The mayor of the town rushed forward, downing over 3 liters of wine and saving his people before sleeping for 3 days. To commemorate the occasion, they have a clock tower with the figure of a man who comes out on the hour, drinks wine, and goes back in. We waited on the hour to see it, but he didn’t come out, maybe because of the bad weather. So we bought snowballs, balls of dough like pie crust coated in powdered sugar, cinnamon, or chocolate, and pretzels to hold us over til dinner.

The city inside the walls

Thursday we visited Speyer, a town closer to Mannheim. It is home to 3 famous churches, one of which was the largest Romanesque cathedral for many years, and another which is a Protestant church that honors the Reformation, where there are statues of Martin Luther and princes who supported the Reformation, as well as stained glass depicting scenes from the Reformation, martyrs, and missions.

We strolled and ate our way around that town too, enjoying gastronomic delights such as pork steak with fried potatoes, brats with sauerkraut, schnitzel, salad, and Italian ice cream (no, one person did not eat all of that). All the towns in Germany are so beautiful. I love the style of all the old houses. And the flowers are starting to bloom, so even though the weather was not so great and we couldn’t do some things because of it, everything was gorgeous and great fun to explore. Plus it was great to spend a week with Leslie, her family, and the other girls and have a warm house to come back to at night. Now if I could only get back to warm Sevilla…
*Edit* I did eventually make it home at 2:00am after finding a taxi that could take me most the way home before all the roads were cut off. But since there were tons of people in the street coming back from pasos, it was actually a good time to have to walk alone in the middle of the night. I slept in pretty good on Saturday… it’s really nice to be back in Spain!

[Since I have Internet now, I put up photos in my last post too :^]