Yes, I know, getting out of order again; bear with me. It's going to take more time and energy than I have at the moment to describe the rest of our Bosnian adventure, so I'm going to skip to our flight back to Munich yesterday afternoon. I'll sum up Bosnia by saying it was fantastic and everyone should visit. More on that later.
After arriving in Munich (again) we picked up our rental car. When we began to discuss this trip one of our first mutual thoughts was ensuring somehow that we got a German car to drive on the autobahns. As you probably know, there's no way to reserve a particular car with any rental company (although I did hours of research trying to circumvent the system). In the end we got a good deal with Hertz for a car with navigation, which had VW Golf built into the group name (no "or similar" in sight). My theory was that with Hertz they generally try to make you happy and if we paid for a car with bells and whistles like navigation we'd have room to negotiate. My theory proved correct. They tried to give us a Kia, which made me frown less than a Ford would have, but still; I drive a Hyundai, so Kia isn't exactly exciting. I made my pitch for doing without navigation in order to please, please, please have a German car. They took pity on us and shuffled things around until she handed us the keys to an Audi A3, which happens to be the car I'd like very much to own. I did a happy dance, which amused them almost as much as our willingness to forgo with navigation in order to escape the Kia did.
After cooing over our temporary new baby, I pulled out the binder and offered Drew the three scenarios I'd prepared for our afternoon's drive to Rothenburg: (1) visit Nurnburg; (2) stop at towns along the Romantic Road; or (3) visit Regensburg. Since we'd just spent a lot of time in cities, smaller towns appealed, so we set out for the Romantic Road.
The autobahn was initially unexciting since most of the roads we've encountered thus far seem to be under construction. However, later in the evening we found a nice stretch without construction or tractor trailers, and Drew got to let loose for a bit after being passed by a Jag and BMW going at least 150 km/h. Since most of the Romantic Road isn't autobahn, he'll have to wait until tomorrow to drive even faster.
It rained off and on all day, which put a bit of a damper on our first stop, Donauworth, which was further complicated by being rush hour, albeit a tiny one. We wandered for only an hour between showers and grabbed some snacks, then kept going.
We stopped again in Dinkelsbuhl, which had it not been for Rothenburg today I would have said was the cutest place in the universe. We parked on one side of the river with ducks floating, crossed a quaint wooden bridge, and then strolled through the city walls onto the cobblestone-paved streets. The town looks like my mental image of Germany, adorable multistory, gabled houses, brightly painted, crowded together as though they're cuddling. It was after 7:00 p.m. when we arrived and all the shops closed at 6:00, so we were a couple of the handful of people on the streets. It was a little eerie, because it's clearly a tourist stop that had emptied out. Drew called it a "gingerbread zombie movie."
We wandered through the main square, through empty streets and around the city walls, finding the moat and several cool towers. We decided it was past time for dinner, having hardly eaten all day, and found to our amusement that most of the open restaurants were Italian, chockfull of locals. The restaurant we chose was run by a Tuscan family and after it became clear that the only two language options were German and Italian, Drew got us our table in German (using two of ten or so words, "zwei" and "bitte") and I did the rest in Italian. Whatever works.
It was after 10:00 p.m. when we arrived in Rothenburg, which didn't worry me because our hotel reservation said that they were open until 11:00. We found the hotel amazingly easily, considering that Rothenburg is a walled town with mazelike streets and few gates that allow cars through. Fortunately, our choice of a place on the south side when we were coming from the south worked to our advantage. Unfortunately, the innkeeper seemed to not be aware of their own policy of being open until 11:00, because he gave me a very hard time for being so late. My "we had a long trip from Bosnia today" did a bit to quell him; just mention Bosnia to Germans and their eyes get big, even bigger than to most Americans, since they were far more aware of the war than we were. He showed Drew where to park the car nearby and we clambered up to our room on the fourth floor, in the attic. It's really lovely, except for the 6"x12" giant photo of a beach somwhere tropical on one fo the slanted walls, which you can't help but stare at from the bed on the other side. Very disconcerting to try to fall asleep to that when you're in the heart of medieval Germany.
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