At Home in Germany

After our brush with Royal German Architecture in Füssen, Christine and I decided to check out some more german architecture, but of the more medieval, commonfolk kind. We left our cozy modern hostel in Augsburg and headed north to Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a town that due to economic circumstances in the past was never modernized and therefore has a perfectly preserved `altstadt' (old town) that looks like it comes straight out of a medieval movie set! As soon as you pass through the gate of the brick wall that encircles the entire altstadt it's like you've been transported through time to old Germany. Of course Christine and I were not able to enjoy this first encounter as much as we would have liked because we once again were searching for our hostel and it took us awhile but we finally found it. The hostel building we stayed in was located in the altstadt and was really cool. It was about 500 years old and had really cool windows peeking out from under the roof. At one point it had been a mill of some kind. After we got settled in there we did some exploring (this time without our heavy bags on our backs!) and found many interesting nooks and crannies in the town. There were bakeries galore which is soooooo dangerous for us Derksen girls with the sweet tooths! We of course had to taste some authentic german baking! After satisfying our need for sugar we made our way over to the Criminal Museum to check out the history of medieval crime and punishment. Quite an interesting place! The museum explained that back in the middle ages laws regarding crimes were pretty basic and the punishments for crime were pretty cut and dried too. If you're arguing loudly with your neighbor in public, you both get strapped into an attached neck brace until you can get along. If snooping around in other people's business and blabbing it all over town is your game, you get to wear a metal shame mask that has a ridiculous face on it reflecting your indiscretion so the townspeople can mock you accordingly or if you found church to be a little too boring and fall asleep or even decide not to show up, you're sentenced to wear a huge and heavy rosary bead around your neck while locked up in the town pillory. My favourite one was if you were caught being drunk and disorderly, you get to walk around town wearing a 'drunk tank' (a big barrel) so that you'll be shamed out of doing it again! A lot of the punishments back then were of that nature, public humiliation was the main tool to keeping the peace in medieval times. A lot of what we saw was kind of funny, but they also took some forms of punishment to the extreme. The more grotesque punishments were for the criminals that were into major crimes like murder, rape, etc and I probably don't need to get into it here but just imagine a lot of spikes, stretching and bone crushing wheel throws. So after that fun filled afternoon at the museum Christine and I had a little Chinese dinner (very german I know!) and considered seeing a german puppet theatre show but decided the 8 Euro entrance fee was not worth it. We took a walk to the town garden instead and good some nice shots of the town as the sun was setting. The next day we went to a german Christmas store and surrounded ourselves in the Christmas spirit for a little while. I've always wanted to come to Germany during the Christmas season because I love their traditions at that time of year so I guess visiting the store is the closest I'm going to get for now! We left Rothenburg that afternoon and headed to Frankfurt to visit my second cousin Olga who I haven't seen in 5 years since she came to Winnipeg in 2002. We had some troubles getting ahold of her when we arrived though, a phone number mixup, so we didn't actually meet with her the first evening and ended up staying at a hostel near the Railway station. But Olga tracked us down and called us at the hostel so that the next day we finally did get together! It's been very nice visiting with her. She's got her own apartment just outside Frankfurt and it's been nice to be at a 'home' at not at a hostel! She showed us around Frankfurt we walked along the Main River, went to a film history museum and had some amazing ice cream! She also took us to her Bible study group last night which was nice because we haven't been to church at all since we left home. Today Christine and just chilled at her apartment while she was at work and are making a home cooked meal...it's been awhile! Then tomorrow we are taking a train up the Rhine Valley to Paderborn to visit some more relatives on the weekend. Should be good!