Hey, We Weren't Born Yesterday - Well, Yes America ... You Were

 

History goes back a long ways.   Our travels continue in Europe - Germany to be more precise - Historic Rothenburg

Travel gets in your blood.  Seeing unusual things far away can be very enriching.  You can never get enough, or at least we can't.

So after we finished our trip to Kazakhstan, we had engineered a brief spell in Germany into the return trip home.  Sort of a readjustment.  That's where we found ourselves the last couple days. 

Upon our return, we rented a car at the airport in Frankfurt and headed out of town - jet lagged and all.  Driving in Germany was a culture shock, there was no transition from Kazakhstan.  We were immediately on the Autobahn, with insane Germans driving at speeds of 100 MPH, I kid you not.

After poking around on bad roads in the outback of K-stan, we were thrust back into the modern world, and these Germans have to be some of the most aggressive and extreme drivers in the world.  

There is a reason that the speedometers of Mercedes and BMW's show numbers up to 200 Kilometers per hour - because they expect to drive at those speeds.  It's crazy.  If you're going a mere 80 miles per hour, you will get run off the road.  

Rothenburg - One of a Kind

This was a destination that we had marked on our calendar.  A medieval town preserved at it's best ...

This trip has really been noteworthy in terms of historical perspective.  We have seen a lot of ancient stuff, going back a thousand years or more. Kazakhstan has a very old history, and so does Germany.  

These historical sites and buildings date from the middle ages, or years with only three digits, like 800 AD.   As Americans, we don't have that kind of perspective of life.  Everything in our country is relatively new.  

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The views in Rothenburg are stunning, and I took a lot of pictures.  Too many really to post in a blog. So I will just hit a few highlights....

We started out the day on a long walk, this time outside the city walls, around the countryside.  It is very lush and green here, with gentle rolling hills.

Imagine our surprise when coming around a corner and finding a huge production stage going up in the middle of the woods.  What? They're gonna have a concert here?  Turns out there is not only a concert that night, but a music festival in the next week.

I asked a guy working if it was gonna be rock music, and he said "A bit of everything ... except classical."

Some of the views were amazing.  It's an old city, the kind where they had a wall around it to keep out invaders and enemies.  They made a darn good wall that will stand for a long time.  You can walk around the inside.

There is an evening tour by a "night watchman" who leads a walking tour around different sights and tells stories.  We found out this guy is like a rock star, a big time celebrity.

We thought there might be like twenty history aficionados show up, but no - there were like two hundred.  They guy was good and very entertaining. 

With my business oriented mind, I started doing the math.  If two hundred people pay eight Euros apiece, and he has two tours a night (English and German) this guy is raking in big money.  As much as $2,000 a night during peak tourist season! Good for him. 

These citizens of Rothenburg know they have a good thing, and they do a great job preserving the quaint and scenic attributes.  Fiona described it as "terminally cute!"

Our Hotel went back five hundred years.

And other buildings were intriguing to look at and admire the style in which they were built.   This building below looks like something out of the Hobbit.

And this street view below shows the towers in the town.  There were many towers, where guards could shoot arrows down on invaders to keep the town safe, or pour boiling oil down on their heads.  

Of course that was in the old days.  Eventually mankind invented rifles and cannons.  Towers are no defense against cannons. 
  

One last point of time perspective.  On our long walk through the countryside, we came across this little church.  They used to bury people in the churchyard.  One of the gravestones said "Here lies Hans, he died in 1537."  

So America, we have a long way to go in terms of history.  It's not about comparing countries, and a nation can't help it if it's young.  Hopefully we can learn from the past.  But it helps to know that with all that goes on, the human race is pretty resilient.