So it's been a while since I've updated and quite a bit has happened. This past weekend I had a great trip with Janina and Nona down to Bavaria to meet Janina's parents and see where she grew up. Going down there was pretty awesome, since it involved multiple autobahns and one of the smallest cars I've ever been in. Going 100 mph and still having BMWs and Audis flying past is certainly a unique and fun experience, and I experienced plenty of it on our drive down.
We left Friday evening and drove for about three hours to her small village, Geiselbach, near Aschaffenburg in the north of Bavaria. It was interesting to learn about all of the German driving laws. First off, it takes a huge amount of money (thousands of dollars usually) to get a license here since everyone is required to take way more classes than in the states. It's only allowed to overtake someone on the left, and if you do so on the right police will immediately take your license. The rest stops were also interesting; it costs 50 euro cents to get into the bathroom, where everything is automated and the urinals and toilets talk to you as you walk up. However, if you use the restrooms you get a voucher for the money which can then be used when you buy something at the counter.
Anyway, we got to her place around 9:00 that night and her mom had made a great, apparently typical Bavarian meal, which was a sort of chicken and bean stew. When we had finished dinner, Janina, her brother Jan, Nona and I headed off to check out some of the bars since, in the words of their mother, "If anyone can show you the bars around here, it's Jan." We ended up driving about an hour and went almost to Hamburg to a winery which makes an apple wine for which the area is famous. It was pretty hilarious - in Bavaria the smallest drink you can order is 1/2 liter, though it's just assumed you'll have a liter so they brought us a 2l "bimbel" (a fat jar) of the wine. It was really awesome and we had a fun time hanging out and talking. My favorite part about the restaurant was the sausages that were being carried by - the standard serving was a meter long!
The next morning we got up early and headed down south to Rothenburg. This small town was stereotypical German and so beautiful. The city was surrounded by a massive wall, which we were able to walk around before heading toward the old city center. There was a market going on, where vendors were selling everything from fresh pressed apple juice to bread shaped and decorated like a little pig.
One of the best things we saw was Käthe Wohlfahrt, a massive year-round Christmas store which has everything from cuckoo clocks to a 12 foot Christmas pyramid. There was even a whole village of little stuffed animals that were each doing a different chore, everything from sawing wood to washing laundry to baking bread. (Every animal was moving!)
After spending a bunch of time in that store we headed on toward the edges of the town, where there was a beautiful overlook of the valley below, and where I also saw some grape vines up close for the first time. It's so cool to me how grapes and random fruit just grow everywhere over here.
We wandered into the cathedral in the center of town where I saw the most massive organ, at least 2 stories high and towering over the pews below. There was a great carving of an angel stepping on what looked like a sort of rabid wolf, but which a sign said was a representation of the devil. It was actually the most "pagan" Christian church I've been in - there were carvings from African tribes and various reliefs of natural settings, something which was somewhat refreshing after seeing so many of the ordinary sort of churches.
We went again to the town center and into a museum and old prison, where there were scenes of a classical apothecary, a typical was scene, and an amazing drawing of Jesus the was made not from lines but tiny lines of scripture. We then went down into the old dungeons, where there were torture devices and some of the most dark, dank rooms I have ever seen. (It definitely made me glad to be neither a criminal nor alive a thousand years ago.)
After seeing all there was to see in this small town, we headed back to Geiselbach, where Janina's mom had made a spaghetti meal which somehow had a German twist and tasted amazing. A short nap and we decided we would head off to Frankfurt, but more on that soon!
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