Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Germany

I mentioned in my post on Colmar, France, that if you have been on Pinterest, you have probably seen pictures of the cute town.

The same goes for Rothenburg (more precisely known as Rothenburg ob der Tauber…there are a lot of Rothenburg’s in Germany, apparently, and it isn’t uncommon to end up in a different Rothenburg than the one you were intending, which is probably this one if you are a tourist!)

I did a day trip here from Munich (about 3 hours by train) using the Bayern ticket, with which I have become so well acquainted.

I really should have gotten myself the Bahn25 card, which gives you a 25% reduction on all tickets, because I would be close to having paid it off by now! (or at least the shorter 3 month one! I just had no idea that I would end up using trains this often.)

If you can manage spending the night here, I would definitely recommend it. Most people do come on day-trips from Munich or Nuremberg, meaning that you can probably get better photos in the late evening/early morning before the floods of tour groups come and litter up all of your photos.

Also, I was interested in doing the Night Watchman’s Tour because the reviews of it are spectacular. However, because it started at 8, I wouldn’t have been able to leave until after 10 (due to train schedules) and get to Munich after 1. Considering that it required 3 trains with 3-4 minute train changes and me knowing that delays are not uncommon for the Deutsch Bahn, it wasn’t something I was going to risk.

Not on a cold night and alone, that is.

So, on with what I did do…

The first thing that I did upon getting to the town’s center was to climb up a tower and walk the city walls.

Actually, Rothenburg has some of the best Medieval city walls out there.

They seemed to do their job because it’s the best-preserved walled town in Germany!

(It was actually the beauty of the town that saved it in WWII, but the walls did take a beating. As you walk the walls, you can see the plaques with the names of all of the people who donated to help restore the walls after their partial destruction in the war.)

Rothenburg and Lugo, Spain, take the cake when it comes to the best city walls that I’ve seen, mainly because you can literally walk around the entire [old] town on the walls, and I just think that’s neat!

After spending some time up on the walls, getting great views into and over town into the countryside, I headed into it all.

Rick Steves likens Rothenburg to a Medieval theme park, and although I can definitely see where he’s coming from there, I don’t think that you should write it off just because it is so touristy (and generally overpriced). I almost exclusively find that places are touristy for a reason!!

And this town is just too precious to pass up!

As I came during Christmas time, I saw a lot of Christmas shops, but apparently they have some Christmas stores open all year. That’s my kind of town!

This one store – Käthe Wohlfahrt – was almost like a Christmas museum (which Rothenburg actually has!). They charged a euro admission (it went to the Red Cross) and they didn’t “allow pictures,” but it was seriously one of the coolest things to see. Rooms upon rooms upon rooms of Christmas decorations. From the traditional German decor (nutcrackers, smokers, pyramids, schwiboggen, cuckoo clocks, wood-shavings ornaments, matchbox scenes) to the types of decorations found everywhere (ornaments, Santa, snowmen, snow globes, etc.), you can find it all here!

Seriously.

There were numerous other shops I went through, but that was the most impressive, especially considering that it took over an hour to get through. (I think they purposefully make the exit difficult to find in the hopes that you will get distracted by more things to buy while you try to find it.)

After finally finding the exit, I get out and it is dark, which means…

time for the Christmas market!

I had been trying to avoid it during the day because I think it’s just more authentic at night for some reason.

So, I walk around the market a bit, find myself a bit of glühwein, wurst, and candied almonds and enjoy seeing what all the vendors are selling.

One food item that I was sure to try during my time in Rothenburg was the schneeball (“snowball”). It’s a crumpled-up dough ball that’s fried and typically dusted in powder sugar, although also commonly covered in cinnamon, chocolate, or nuts.

My thoughts?

Meh.

I got both powder sugar and chocolate-covered mini ones. It almost reminded me of a cannoli shell but thicker dough and not as crisp. And considering that the shell is my least favorite part of the cannoli, you can see why I’m not in love with the schneeball.

I ended my night with a trip up to the top of the Rathaus’ tower, getting to see a bit of the town lit up at night and the market down below. In hindsight, I wished that I went up the tower earlier to see the countryside, but with my limited time there, I’m glad that I got to go up at all!

I ended my time in Rothenburg wishing that I had a bit more time to do the Night Watchman’s tour and to visit the main church in town. Even in the short bit of time I had here, I’d say that it was a day-trip well worth the effort.

As I was leaving, I go to the ticket machine to print out a schedule of the trains I need to take.

Guess what it tells me.

Something along the lines of “the journey you have selected is not possible.”

All of the trips back to Munich that night said that.

My cortisol levels went through the roof, but the first train that I needed to get on was running, so I went with it. The next stop, everybody went to wait for the next train and…it came! So I get on that train. Is it the last train that had the problem?

NO!

Everything went smoothly!

All that stress for nothing! I still am confused about what the ticket machine told me, but it’s better that way than having real problems.

Back to what I said in the beginning about there being multiple Rothenburg’s…well, as I was leaving, there was this lady on the phone with whom I’m going to assume to be her friends that she was going to pick up from the train station. From what I gathered, they had gone to the wrong Rothenburg! And they wouldn’t be able to get to that one until the next day. So, if you go, just know that this cute town is Rothenburg ob der Tauber. (That last part is important!)