Rothenburg to Schwangau, Deutschland (Germany)

The Gästehaus Raidel served a wonderful breakfast, after which I walked the wall.  Rothenburg is a walled city and on that wall, one may walk the perimeter, fairly comfortably as long as you’re under six feet.  There are some great views of the city and the surrounding countryside and river from the wall.

I was planning on staying another night in Rothenburg, but I was anxious to get on the road and head south down the Romantic Road (Romantische Straße) to Schwangau to see Neuschwanstein, Mad Ludwig‘s castle in the south of  Germany.

I passed though a few towns and then for some reason, the traffic in each town I approached was horrible.  It took an hour to enter one little town and another hour to enter the next.  So I got off that road, and off the map.  My map didn’t have enough detail to show exactly where I was so I winged it, trying to keep heading south, keeping the sun in its appropriate position.  It sort of worked, except for one little circuit of three towns that I made.  After a bit of that, it was getting late, so I tried to get on the Autobahn and I figured out why the traffic on the side roads was so bad, the Autobahn was closed.  So, I kept trying to head south keeping the Autobahn within about 30 km.  I finally found the stretch that was open and got on.  I covered the remaining distance in a couple hours.  I never did find out why the Autobahn was closed.

I arrived in the Füssen/Schwangau area and guess what.  There really are some mountains here in Germany.  I had just passed through beautiful deep green grassy meadows on rolling hills punctuated with towns and villages every few kilometers.  And then all of a sudden, mountains.  Big ones.  With black clouds hanging over them and I could see a couple of different rain storms.  I would explore tomorrow.

I found a hotel (Alpenhotel Meir) with reasonable rates and had a dinner of Schnitzel and potatoes and a salad at the hotel.  Then I went out searching for an internet connection, skulking through neighborhoods and found one.  I sat in my car during a rainstorm and uploaded my posts.  I got cut off during my last post though, I guess whomever I was snarfing off of was wondering why their connection was so slow and/or found me out, or just wanted to go to bed and shut down their system.  I went looking for another, but didn’t find one.  Oh well.

On the way back to the hotel, the three castles in the area were lit up.  They were about the only things that were; there weren’t even any street lights.  I stopped the car and got out for a few minutes to admire the view which was haunting.  Then I heard a loud clanging and my heart skipped a couple of beats.  It was cowbells.  Something, probably me, must have stirred the cows in the field I was parked next to and they started moving around.  It was really scary in an exhilarating sort of way, all this clanging from different directions from invisible cows.

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