Really... in a Moat?

It was the best of times and the worst of times. That sums up today. I guess I’ll start with the best because that’s chronologically how it happened. Mom and I were up and at them at nine in hopes of seeing a little more of Rothenburg before we needed to make our way to Heidelberg. I also, shockingly, wanted to try and find a hoop that featured the old wall.

Breakfast was in a super cute little eating room that we had all to ourselves two minutes into the meal. Many of the places we have been have been rather quiet. I’m not sure if this is a result of people canceling their trips because of the volcano or the fact that the worldwide economy sucks. Either way it has made for a very nice vacation for us.

As mentioned in yesterday’s post. I was excited by the fact that it was possible to march around on the wall. I wanted to do a little more of that, get a Schneeballen, and poke my head in a few of the cute little shops that weren’t open last night. We started by wandering the shops. I spotted a sign that looked like it led to a school. Schools often have basketball hoops, so I wanted to go there. We spotted a field where kids were playing and a teacher was leading a class. I swore in the distance I heard basketball bouncing. As we approached the sound it become clear that we were about to find the town’s old amphitheater. As we looked below I saw three kids dribbling and passing around a basketball. One took a shot. I followed the ball and watched it hit... the wall. They were playing basketball without a hoop. This was like the ultimate tease in hoop hunting. It would have been a remarkable picture to have a hoop in that amphitheater. Instead I just have a story of frustration. I also, however, had a bit of hope. It seemed to me that if one of the kids actually owned and was playing with a basketball, there was likely to be a hoop somewhere.

Mom and I continued to wander near the wall. We found a stairway leading up and decided to climb around on it for while. It was actually a convenient place to look for hoops because of the elevation. All of the windows on the wall are a little different. Some are little slits, some are like larger shaped key holes and others are more significantly sized rectangles. Every ten windows or so I would stop and try to take a look out one.

We had been hiking around the wall for 20 minutes or so when it happened. “It” can only be described as a miracle. I found a hoop in a moat. It’s entirely possible that this is my favorite hoop of all time. I have taken them all over the world, with some of the most famous monuments, yet there was something special about this shot and its 1000 year old wall. I can’t wait to show those of you that are interested.

Having found a better hoop picture than I ever hoped possible, I was ready to give up hiking on the wall. I think mom was over hiking it way before I, so we decided to head back to check out of the hotel, stop in a few remaining stores and buy a schneeballen.

Schneeballen are everywhere in Rothenburg. In fact, Rothenburg is the only place I have ever seen them and they are in every other store front. The front desk lady in our hotel described them as fried cookie dough with a sugar or icing coating. Mom and I didn’t find any that tasted like cookie dough but more like fried pie crust or puff pastry. They were decent but there are definitely other things I would prefer to eat for my calories, like the dessert at the BMW place. Filled with schneeballen and happiness from my hoop find, we were off to Heidelberg Castle.

We never made it to Heidelberg. As we attempted to merge onto an Autobahn we saw standstill traffic. People were literally standing outside of their cars on the highway. I have no idea what happened. We had seen a fair amount of construction traffic on this trip but nothing like this. As far as the eye could see in both directions cars were stopped. It was like a parking lot. Mom and I debated whether we should attempt to throw the car in reverse and back out the on-ramp. As we were discussing this another car pulled up behind me. At first he gave me a dirty look for being stopped sort of far back and slightly on the side of the road. Then he realized why I was there. He and his passenger then decided to start backing out. This was the perfect opportunity for me to do the same because if we got hit, he would clearly get hit first. A car came flying by us and gave us both an extremely dirty look. He then got passed the blind curve, saw the standstill traffic, and before we knew it was also backing out behind me. I knew driving in Germany was going to be fun but I never thought I would get to drive in reverse on an Autobahn.

After making it back to a moving highway I looked at the map on the GPS and tried to locate a route that avoided A6 for a while. I found one, but unfortunately it seems everyone else with GPS, a map, or that could understand German radio traffic reports did as well. Traffic was sloooooooooow going for a long time. In fact, we never found consistently fast moving traffic until 6:30 pm, after we had been driving for five hours. In all a trip that should have taken us three hours took nearly seven. Needless to say by the time mom and arrived in our final destination for the night, the town of Rüdesheim, we were ready to be out of the car.

Our hotel, called the Hotel Lamm was super cute. The exterior and common rooms were sort of old-school but our room itself was super clean and fairly modern. We actually had wireless which was awesome and gave us the opportunity to gchat with dad again. After getting all of our stuff settled we decided to walk around the town a little bit and get some dinner. The town was fairly dead. We strolled the whole thing in 20 minutes or so and decided that we would just eat back at our hotel. We had a very nice dinner in a restaurant that was, yet again, all to ourselves.

We are now back in the room and it is post midnight as a write this. I am really tired from all the time in the car and must get some shut eye. Tomorrow night we are staying in a castle. Literally. I don’t think it has the Internet, so I’ll do my best to post when I can.

Katy