Our 2013 European Adventure: Bretten and the Romantic Road

Monday morning already. The weekends sure do speed by. This last weekend we decided to take it a bit easy and see some things that were closer, not requiring an overnight stay. The forecast for the weekend was rainy so that limited our choices - no fun hiking in the Black Forest when you're wet and cold. So we settled on checking out some more medieval towns on the Romantic Road, a stretch of road that links several medieval towns and then a drive to the tiny principality of Leichtenstein.
But first, on Friday evening, one of Andrew's colleagues had told him about a festival going on in Bretten, little town nearby, where they were celebrating their annual Peter und Paul Festival. This is a festival that has been going on since the 4th century (not sure if Bretten has been celebrating it that long or not) and commemorates the traditional anniversary of the deaths of the apostles Peter and Paul. A medieval festival in a medieval town! Sounds like great fun! We drove over to Bretten (only about 20 minutes from Bruchsal), found a parking spot, and followed the people dressed in medieval costumes to the middle of town where the party was happening. There we paid for admission, were given a timetable of events, and started wandering. (Our timetable was completely in German so it was no help at all. There was a map on the back but since we didn't know where we were supposed to be going, we didn't need to know how to get there.) We passed stalls selling toy weapons, jewelry, costumes, leather pouches, and other handmade crafts. We found the main square where many people were gathered watching a band play and people twirling flags. We were pretty far back so we couldn't see much but we hung around for a while figuring that this must be the place to be - everyone else was here. Then some important people started making some speaches - unfortunately it was all in German so we got very little out of it. But we clapped with everyone else when they'd finished. They did have a demonstration of a military gun salute. It was interesting to watch them fire their weapons and then have to go through quite a process to reload in order to fire again. You would really want to be sure you hit the enemy the first time - you might not have a second chance!

In Market square - cool old fountain in background

Taran looks fierce enough to join the soldiers!

We left the square and started just walking up and down the streets. They became more and more crowded as the evening went on. Taran practiced his archery at one stall. There was also the cutest little medieval ferris wheel! We didn't try that one - once you've been on the Texas Star ferris wheel, all others can't compare. = ) We found a stall selling Apfel Kringles. What's that, you ask? Turns out it is round slices of apple battered and fried and sprinkled with cinnamon and sugar. Very yummy.

He hit the target every time!

Medieval ferris wheel

Our Apfel Kringle

We continued to wind our way through the crowd. We saw a stall with all sorts of pretty things made of wood - cute little tops, wooden block stamps, toy daggers, spoons, knives, forks in different sizes and a porcupine for storing colored pencils - the pencils go in holes along the porcupines back creating the porcupine quills. Cute! There was a stall with pottery and one with the neatest looking wooden beer steins. My favorite was one that was shaped like a wooden barrel with a handle and lid. So cool! But it was 58 euros which was a little over my souvenir budget. sigh We bought some cinnamon sugar sunflower seeds at another stall and then stumbled upon a juggling show! The leader of the troupe was very energetic and vocal. He introduced the rest of the troupe and told us how great they were - well, I'm assuming that's what he was saying. It was, of course, in German. So we just smiled and clapped when everyone else did. They were pretty good jugglers - Andrew even said they were better than him - but not by much. = )

This stall had all sorts of bells in all sizes.

They even had gongs!

A blacksmith's stall

Sheep!

Quite the busy place

Jugglers!

By that time it was getting pretty late - even though it was still very light out - so we found our way out of the festival area and back to our car. The drive home was a bit exciting - they were doing some road work on the B35, the road we'd taken to Bretten, that shut down the road so we had to make a detour but it wasn't well marked and Gertrude (the GPS) kept wanting us to turn around and go back to the closed road. Eventually we made it back onto the B35 (that made Gertrude happy) and got home.
We had planned originally to go to Leichtenstein on Saturday and explore the Romantic Road on Sunday but there was a 90% chance of rain in Leichtenstein on Saturday that dropped to a 20% chance on Sunday. Researching Leichtenstein we found that most of the things to do there were outdoors things so we decided to switch it to Sunday and do the Romantic Road on Saturday. So after breakfast we jumped in the car and headed off to Wurzburg, the most northernly town on the Romantic Road.
An hour and a half later we found ourselves in the charming town of Wurzburg. Wurzburg has been around since the 4th century but was heavily bombed during World War II. They spent the next 20 years carefully replicating the historical buildings. There was a magnificent old bridge with stone statues along both sides. One of them had the name Pipinus inscribed under it. Another one of them had a pigeon building a nest under his arm. = ) There was an old church with merchant stalls built into the sides of it (just like in Heidelberg) and a little farmers market going on in the square. We picked up a snack at a bakery stall (pretzel for Taran and a schinkenstange for Piper-that's a ham & cheese croissant) and bought a litre of apfelsaft (apple juice) at another stall. Then we set off for the next town.

Fountain in Wurzburg

Castle on the hill

On the old bridge over the Tauber River

Piper with Pipinus

There was a great view from the bridge

Here's what she's looking at.

A pigeon (sitting on the statue's left shoulder) was making a nest under the statue's right arm.

Looking back over the bridge toward market square

They are making the same hand sign as the child statue - three fingers up
Most statues of child Jesus seem to have his hand like that.

Piper eats her schinkenstange by the church -
see the stalls built into the side?

We planned on getting some lunch at the next town on the road, Tauberbischofsheim, but when we got there it was pretty dead. Some cool old buildings but not much going on.

Tauberbischofsheim

Fountain in the square - I think every town must have one in the town square

Part of the old castle in Tauberbischofsheim

Cool old bridge

We made a short stop for some see-saw action.

So we pressed onto the next town, Lauda. We didn't find much there either.

Jesus praying at Gethsemane - outside old church in Lauda

Church tower

And another fountain.

The next town, Bad Mergentheim, was different. We found the town square and, as luck would have it, they were having their own festival. Not sure if it was a Peter und Paul festival or not but there was a big stage set up in the square and a band playing very German sounding music. We went to a stall selling brautwurst mit brot (brauts in a bun) and jagersteak mit zweibel und champignon mit brot (a grilled pork steak with onions and mushrooms in a bun). So we got two of each (can you guess which ones the kids ate?) and sat in the square listening to the music. We drank our apfelsaft with our meal - it was more like cider than juice. We all enjoyed it very much.

Our lunch

Old mill outside of Bad Mergentheim

The next town was Creglingen. It seemed pretty dead too so we continued to Rothenburg. Yes, that's the same town we visited on our first weekend here but there were a few things that we ran out of time to see, so we took this chance to visit again. The first was a little souvenir shop that was recommended by the author of our handy travel guide. When we mentioned that we were here on his recommendation, the shopkeeper gave us a free hand drawn map of Rothenburg that her mother had made and told us we'd get 10% off anything in the store. Fabulous! We spent a while looking at the many neat things packed into this little shop. The cuckoo clocks were amazing. If I ever have several hundred euros that I don't know what to do with, I'm going back for a clock. There were nutcrackers of different sizes and costumes. They also had a very impressive selection of beer steins. I had my eye on a beautiful pewter one with the Neuschwanstein castle on it, but since my beverage of choice is hot tea, not cold beer, putting it in a pewter cup wouldn't be wise. But Andrew found some great ceramic ones with pewter lids. And one of them had the castle on it! In the end, our purchases were a wooden Christmas ornament, a piper nutcracker (Piper's souvenir), and my tea stein! (It is a limited addition - numbered and everything!)

My tea stein

Then we went to Kathe Wohlfahrt Christmas store and museum. The place was incredible. It made the Christmas store in Leavenworth look like a closet. It went on and on. I wasn't allowed to take pictures but I found this one online and it looked just like this - only more crowded. There were several more rooms like this one with different trees in the center and the houses around the edges held all kinds of Christmas ornaments.

Kathe Wohlfahrt in Rothenburg

I did take a couple shots before Andrew informed be that I was breaking the rules. We found some Santa Christmas ornaments in the clearance section (everything was very expensive) and got them for the kids' yearly Christmas ornament.