Germany

Todd and I took a much needed holiday!  We were originally headed to Germany to see his brother who had recently been married and it was cheaper to see them in Germany than Missouri for the wedding.  Well... he is in the Air Force and was assigned a TDY, a tour of duty, to France during the time we'd be in Germany to see him, then his wife of four months left him and moved back to the states.  Now no one would be there when we arrived, and it would have cost too much to change our flight.  Then all TDY's were cancelled, so now he would be there.  Todd's dad had a tumor removed from his head and John was summoned home by his sister, so he came.  Now he was in Portland and we were in Germany!  Ugh!  So we rented a car and headed to Rothenburg ob er Tuber.  It was a quaint little village.  I loved it!  Germany is known for it's Christmas shops, and boy were they wonderful!

The streets were so narrow that when you looked up everything seemed to be right on top of you!  This is the church tower.  We met this goth American student, who studies in Holland, outside of this church.  We were debating if we wanted to pay to go in and she got out her booklet and there was supposed to be some carving behind the organ pipes or somewhere that were cool... we opted not to go in.  Remember I am married to a finance guy!  She was very nice and was traveling on the weekend all by herself.  She has been all over Europe, awww to be young and single again!

This was one of the main streets through town, beautiful...  Did you notice the sign in the first photo as well?  All of the shop signs were ornate as this one and yet all different, they were my favorite.  You have to try the hazelnut snowballs, a pastry, delish!

Above all the little shops and down the other streets were housing for the locals.  I just loved the lace window curtains.

Our second day in Germany we took the train in to Frankfurt, which is not really a tourist destination, it is a financial hub or business city.  But we had to do something to kill time, so we looked at all the churches in town.  What was really cool was that for about an hour and a half all the churches took fifteen minute turns ringing their bells to call their congregations to mass!  It really was quite beautiful!  Once mass started, we weren't allowed in to see the church, so we headed to the museums across the river, which turned out to be in remodel and ruined our kill time idea!

Look really closely at the corner stones.  Can you tell where they had rebuilt after WWII?  Amazing!  There was a lot of this here.

As we were crossing the pedestrian bridge we noticed all of these engraved locks all along the bridge, curious!  So I just had to ask someone if they knew anything about them...  legend has it that a couple gets their names and date engraved on a lock and they lock it onto the bridge sealing their love and relationship forever.  She knew of someone who had broken a relationship and it was too bad they were still locked together, no key!  ha ha!

Last night we took a cab to go eat some spetzle, German food.  It wasn't that good, and it was probably our most expensive dinner in our married life together!  Ouch!  So see this wooden box  with a fabric curtain?  Well it says toilette.  There was another box in the other corner of the room.  I was dumbfounded, how can a toilet be in there with everyone sitting right next to it, gross!  I can't believe how naive I can be sometimes!  You enter there and there is a door to a hallway behind it!  I though maybe it was an antique and that is why it was there instead of just a door on the wall, who knows... weird, I say!