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Walking along the Via Romea Germanica from Stade, near Hamburg, in Germany south through Austria and Italy to Rome.

Saturday 28 April 2018

Rothenburg ob der Tauber – Day 32 and 33 including a day on the train followed by a rest day on the Way.

After checking out distances, dates and so on, I decided that as I would have to catch the train for close to two stages, catching it from Sommerhausen seemed the best plan.  Except I couldn’t catch it from there – instead I had to hike across the bridge to the other side of the River Main to Winterhausen – from Summer to Winter!  This meant that I could skip the stage to Aub, and go direct to Rothenburg ob der Tauber where I had planned to spend a rest day to have a good look around.  This meant I had two easy days for my foot to recover completely – a bonus.
Just some of the garden plots on the outskirts of Sommerhausen
Winterhausen

I had originally planned to walk the six kilometres to Ochsenfurt, and catch the train from there, but for some reason my information kept telling me that I would not be able to catch it there (as it turned out I could have) and so I decided not to risk it and instead just hiked over the bridge and caught it from the other side.  An interesting and enjoyable  train journey followed, with only one “change trains”.  On the second train I met Mandy, a tourist from Hong Kong who is hoping to go to University in Australia.  She had never heard of the Camino, and so I filled her in while we waited for the train to depart, and interestingly the first thing we both saw at her hotel was a shell and a sign that it was pilgrim friendly!  She said “it’s and omen”.  Neither of us could check into our hotels, so we had lunch together, and after check in shared dinner, going on the Night Watchman’s walk later in the evening.  It was lovely having some company for a day, especially as it was here that my friend Julie had planned to join me but had to pull out because of a knee injury.  The photos on this post are for you Julie.
Mandy
    
The Nightwatchman, and the night view.
 




the Markt

             

             

A pilgrim statue at the point where 2 Camino's depart (bottom left)

The 30 years war, which we hear nothing about in Australia, had many repercussions in Germany (and other parts of Europe too)  It was not only the military conflict, but the starvation, the illnesses such as plague, the massive death toll, and the destruction on the land that wreaked so much devastation.  It began in 1618 and ended in 1648, and though it began as a religious war between the Protestants and Catholics, mainly in Germany, eventually countries such as Sweden, Holland, Spain and France took sides and it escalated into a full scale general war.

Rothenburg, like so many towns across Germany had havoc wreaked upon it over that 30 years war.  It’s population was decimated, food was short, and when the war ended the population just eked out a living, barely surviving, and that was about all for several hundred years.  The town decided that they were not going to alter anything and so the medieval city continued to exist with no changes to speak of.  This continued until the early 1900’s when it was discovered by artists, writers and such like.  It became a mecca for the art world.  One American woman visited the town in the early 1900’s and took home a painting of it, which hung in her home.  This painting was to save the town from bombing in the 2nd World War because her son saw that painting every day and loved it, planning to visit the town one day.  The war intervened, and he (now a high ranking army officer)  intervened in it’s destruction by asking the general who was planning to bomb the central town the next day to find some other solution – he was told that ”this is a medieval town and cannot be destroyed”.  A combination of events occurred and the German officer in the town surrendered, with his men, thus saving the town from certain destruction.
Various parts of the Ramparts surrounding the town





I’m not going to say much more – hopefully my photos will tell the story.  The rest did my foot the world of good, and I can barely feel discomfort now.

2 comments:

  1. Oh Janet , thankyou for the photos , as beautiful as I remember it , and just look at the blue skies!
    Xx

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  2. Think I need to visit Rothenburg, stunning.

    ReplyDelete