Continued from Heidelberg Day 2.

Today will be a traveling day. We’ll be taking a train to Rothenburg, or rather 4 different trains. Seriously, it takes 3 different train transfers just to get to Rothenburg from Heidelberg and it’ll take us almost 4 hours. This is for two cities that are just 166 km apart from each other by car. I’d hate to complain, since we’ve been on much much worse rail systems, but the German rail network is not quite as good as the Japanese one.

Tip for the maid plus our left over tram tickets. Pretty sweet deal for them, 4.40 euros just in tram tickets alone! Too bad we couldn’t make use of them. It was cheaper to buy 5 tickets rather than 3, so we got the 5 pack and had two left over.

It’s nice and cool today. I hope it doesn’t rain on us on our walk to the station.

LOL!!! That’s a funny looking helmet trailer.

Heidelberg station.

First time to use our German Rail Pass to purchase tickets. The passes should pay for themselves by my calculation…

It’s almost 11am so we’ll be buying some breakfast at the station since we’ll be spending much of the next 4 hours inside a train.

My German brunch. It does the job, nothing more. Well, that’s a lie, I was hungry and rather enjoyed the mediocre sandwich.

Tired.

Train #1, arrives right on time.

Our German Rail Passes stipulates that we’ll need to reserve our seats for certain trains. It is the case for this train, and we had to kick some guy out of our reserved seats. I don’t think the German are used to many people reserving seats.

Soon after taking this photo, both of us promptly fall asleep. Neither of us slept well last night.

Ah, the German and their graffiti covering everything.

Transfer #1.

Train #2, also arrives right on time.

Again, we had reserved seats on this train, and kicked a girl out of our seats. Kicked out is too strong of a term, we were all nice and civil about it, this being Germany and all…except for that guy at Media Markt, I hate that guy.

Again, we fell asleep soon after taking this photo. I had read the time wrong on this train, so halfway during the ride, I started putting on my pack ready to get off. Then RL told me that I had read the time wrong, so I had to take off my pack again…I bet everyone on the train snickered at me. Doh!

Transfer #2.

Cool, a little mini conveyer belt for your luggage up the stairs at the platforms.

Little known fact that 25 and 27 comes before 1.

Train #3, arrives on time but does not leave on time…this is problematic. We’ve only got a short 4 minutes transfer for our last train, so with this train leaving late, we may not make our final transfer…Again, I miss Japan and their super punctual trains.

The German trains do have nice giant restrooms though.

OK, finally leaving the station. Let’s go let’s go!

This guy was funny, he folded himself onto two seats and then put on his earplugs and eye shades to sleep. Then as a final touch, he slipped his train pass right between his face and his pillow so that when the conductor came by to check tickets, they wouldn’t wake him.

Yes, everything is beautiful here.

Transfer #3. Our train arrives late, but I can see that our last train still hasn’t left yet. Hurry!

Train #4. I guess this train waited for everyone on train #3 so that we could all make the connection. I’ll take it.

Finally, we can sit back and chill for a little bit. Did not enjoy feeling unsettled with so many transfers.

Finally arrived in Rothenburg!!

Looks like a pretty typical German town right outside the train station.

It’ll be about a 10 min walk for us to get to our Pension. I had called them about a month before to make a reservation and the only confirmation I received from them was over the phone. I had intended to email them to follow up…but forgot. I hope that our reservation is still good…

OK, this is looking more like the fairytale Rothenburg in the photos.

No attraction would be complete without at least part of it being under renovation.

One of the best preserved medieval town in Germany. Notorious for having lots of day tourists arriving on big tour buses, but everything seems ok so far.

According to my map, this is supposed to be our accommodation for the night…except, it’s a grocery store…

Walked around the back and we see the Pension Elke sign, so we know we are in the right spot. I guess we’ll ring the bell from the back door. A man came and answered the door, so we are in the right spot. However, my name isn’t in their hand written reservation book…Finally they decided that my reservation got written down under the name “Chan” instead of my actual name…Sure, I guess all Asian names sound alike over the phone. Either way, we’ve got a room so everything worked out!

And, it is connected to the grocery store in the front. I guess the pension and the grocery are owned by the same people. This will make it easy for us to stock up on anything that we need!

This is what $85  a night gets you in a very good location inside the medieval city of Rothenburg. Pretty sweet deal.

It does have one of the smallest showers ever though(realized after taking a shower later in the day). The shower is in the shape of a triangle so what you see in the picture is about the actual size.

After being stuck in a train all day, we dropped off our stop and went out the door to explore and get some food.

The city hall. It’s difficult to take bad photos in this town, sort of like Venice.

KL points. I am trying to find the entry way to the stairs that leads up to the tower on top of the city hall.

Found the stairs. Hope we’ve still got some of our Huangshan stair climbing legs left in us.

Half way through, it goes from the newer section of the city hall to the older section and it gets downright medieval.

The stairs are also getting smaller and smaller.

The last rung of stairs, and you squeeze through what appears to be a crack in the roof.

Pulling myself out of the awkward exit.

Rewarded with this spectacular vantage view. This used to be the view of the fire watchmen at night back then.

Town square.

The fire watchmen used the ring the bell regularly at night to let them know that they had not fallen asleep. Wouldn’t the bell continue to wake people up at night?

That was fun, time to head back down. Going down is even more awkward as going up.

The tower we just climbed down from.

To be continued at Rothenburg Day 1 Part 2.