Our Last Trip

Today is the last day in Germany for Devyn and Me. We leave tommorow at one, but we got one last trip in. We spent the last few days in towns somewhat nearby. We started by touring the Hiedleberg caslte, which was a very large sandstone castle/ruin. It was destroyed three times, once by a priest who though the dude ruling there was too powerful, in the thirty years war (explained later), and once burned down by lightning. Now most of the walls were never repaired, or have been burned into a jagged wall that used to be taller, and now has scorchmarks everywhere. One of the kings who lived there got so fat he could not support his own weight, and he chair could only fit through the biggest doors. After that we stayed in a nice military hotel on base for the night. We spent the first part of that day going through town. We found some realy cool brandy stuff in a liquer shop (for Dad and Suz).



At about noon we left to go to another town called Rothenburg (pronounced like Rotenberg). This is the coolest place ever. It is the most well preserved mideval town in the entirety of Europe. The highlight of the town, the night watchman tour, explained why. The night watchman was this really funny guy dressed up like a mideval guy with the job of watching the city streets at night, and made about 500 dollars a day for two, one hour tours. In the begining Rothenburg was a very rich town. The conditions were as good as they could get, they were granted free rights, they only paid taxes dirctly to the king, and the poorest all had food for a year and a house. There were several reasons they were so rich. One, they had the largest textile bussiness for miles around. Two, because they paid taxes to the the king, there 200 square miles of fertil land produced enough supplies for ten thousand people, and the town had only 6000, giving them enough supplies for taxes and export. And finally, they were the crossroads between two major trade routes between Paris and Prague for east to west and somewhere to somewhere for North to South. The city was fully walled and defensible, holding up against tons of sieges, many lasting almost a year. Then during the thirty years war, a bloody European war between the Catholics and Protistans, a large enemy army of 40,000 was marching by, when they got stuck in a rainstorm. They demanded to be let into the city, but Rothenburg denied, even though they were outnumbered 4 to 1. After three day's the battle was going great for Rothenberg, having had no casualaties, and killing almost 300 enemy troops. Their only probem was running low on gunpowder. They only had enough for about five more days, which might nnot be enough to drive of the enemy. Then somebody did something very stipid. The guard to the room with there fifteen barrels of remaining gun powder to decided to check on it. With a torch. BOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOOM. There was a very very very very very very very very very very very very big explosion, killing two people and leaving a big hole on the wall. Rothenburg surrendered. When the army finally left the city was so poor it could do absolutely nothing but go on with life as a peasant town. With no money to modernize or even contact the rest of the world, the city practicly went to sleep for two hundred years. Now it is a tourist town because most of its building are 500 to 700 years old. In World war two forty percent of the town was bombed, but the rest was saved because the commanding officer in America heard about it and realized this was the town his mom had brought him his favorite painting of whe he was a kid.
At the end of the tour we made some new friend because they had the same guide book (Rick Steeves) with whom we had desert and wine in a 1000 year old celler, in Hell (Hell is the name of the restruant, don't ask me why). The next day we visited the town cathedral. Inside there was a very cool alter, a 1800 pipe organ, and another alter containing a relic of Jesus's blood. After doing some shoping we walked arouns the entire city wall, sometimes in it, sometimes on it, sometimes by it, and sometimes trying to find it again.


To finish off our trip we went to the Rhinefeld castle. Rhinefeld means Rhine Boulder, or Rock of the Rhine in German. This castle was even larger than the one in Hiedleburg, and that was just the remaining part. It used to be five times bigger. The rest was destroyed by Napoleon Blownapart (Blownapart is our nickname for him, because most of the castles on the Rhine are rebuilds of something he blew apart).
ME