Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Yesterday was a big day of Germanness. One of the teachers that I work with (Gabi Borchardt) invited the French assistant and me to join she and her husband on a trip to Rothenburg ob der Tauber, which is about 100 km from Bamberg. A group of their friends were having a big gathering, and so we tagged along. We arrived in Neusitz (about 2 km away from Rothenburg) around 4 pm and were invited into the main couple's house for lots of coffee and cake. Then the four of us went to Rothenburg to walk around for a bit with the man of the house, Wolfie. Yes that's his name. We explored the city as the sun set, in the midst of light snow. It's one of the great German towns along the Romantic Road. The entire town is surrounded by protective walls, which you can walk along during the day. We just explored some of the streets and shops, including Kathe Wohlfahrt. This is a store, where it's always Christmas. Every day, all year. It was crazy! We walked through this store for about 25 minutes and didn't even get through all the different rooms devoted to ornaments, nutcrackers, and more. Then we picked up some Schneeballen ("Snow Balls), which are balls of dough that are fried and then rolled in sugar or chocolate or some other tastyness. Eventually we couldn't feel our noses because of the cold, so we went back to Neusitz.

The whole purpose of the night was to look at a whole lot of photographs taken by the hosts on a recent trip to India. There ended up being a group of about 14 adults, who have been having "world traveler" nights for the past 27 years or so. The pictures were awesome, and the stories that they told made the images even better and more interesting. It was also great, because they made all this Indian tea and had brought back this pistachio baked candy type treat. We spent a few hours looking at the slideshow and didn't sit down for dinner until almost 10:30! BUT they had cooked this huge Indian feast, which I loved. We sat and ate and talked until 1:30 a.m. It was lovely.

Oh and there were two little kids too...Anne & Lissy. If you ever want to test how well you know a language, all you have to do is play with little kids. Oh man. It was loads of fun, but I was so tired after. Yay for new places and people!