Day Fourteen

Rothenburg

We had a leisurely morning, and a bunch of us headed out to look for the Mittelalterliche Kriminalmuseum. We wandered into a fairly likely-looking building and went up a flight of stairs before we realized that it wasn't the museum. Since we were already there, though, we paid the two marks each to climb a steep little ladder up to the tower. From there we had a view of the whole city and the surrounding countryside.
After we actually got directions to the Kriminalmuseum we found our way there. In English they call it the museum of crime and torture. It was not really graphic or scary in its depiction of medieval (that's the mittelalterliche) punishments; the worst part was imagining having to wear the scold's bridle. I would gag. A scold's bridle is a kind of face-mask thing that they used to put on women to keep them from talking; it usually had a depressor that held the tongue down. The women who were sentenced to wear a bridle had talked when men thought they shouldn't have, or said things that men thought they shouldn't have. I also liked the ducking stool they had outside.

Rothenburg has several year-round Christmas stores, though I'm not sure why. I went in some of them to look around. They were like little Christmas theme parks. There was tons of cotton-batting-snow and lights and fake trees. Most of the ornaments were arranged by color, so you'd go into a section and there would be a whole wall of red glass balls and spindles and stars, then a whole wall of blue ones, and so on. It was pretty crowded, and most of the ornaments struck me as expensive (and fragile and difficult to pack), but then I saw it: a brown and gold glass ball for seven marks. I had to get it. How could I not?

Looking into the Marktplatz. In the building just right of center is a clock that reenacts an event when the mayor saved the city by drinking beer.

We went back to the hotel to get changed for our final concert, in the Marktplatz. It was raining sporadically, but the band played on. Before the concert, though, our special visitors showed up. Two of our classmates from school happened to be in Germany on a separate trip, and we'd told them when our concert was, so they showed up with their German host. We ended up going to a German/Italian restaurant with them, where they spoke lots of German and we felt dumb. I got bratwurst with sauerkraut, and E taught us how to flip a coaster (actual coaster from the restaurant scanned at right). We went back to the hotel and hung out for a while, and then they had to go. It was unexpectedly fun.

After dinner we went on the Nightwatchman's tour of the city. You may remember that around Christmas this past December I posted an entry about how I saw our nightwatchman on TV. His black cape and the evening hours made the city seem so much older and more mysterious. It was really cool.

Finally, we had our end-of-the-trip meeting. Our head director talked to us for a while, and some of the other directors did as well. Then they let any of us who wanted to talk. I don't remember who spoke, except for one of the crew. He got up and talked about how good the trip was, and how he was sorry if we annoyed anyone, and how the back of the bus ruled. My journal says that "We all cheered for him because he is one of us." We took lots of pictures and said goodbye to friends.

Tomorrow: a special send-off at Frankfurt airport and thanks