Christmas Market Tour 2022 - Rothenburg
This is our first winter in Germany. We took advantage of it and made our first Christmas market tour before Christmas 2022. First we drove to Rothenburg ob der Tauber, a medieval walled town in the state of Bavaria. It's along the famous German Romantic Road. That makes sense because the old town was so charming!
We arrived at the town in the early morning. It was just when a sever winter storm was hitting Europe. The town was lightly covered with snow. The temperature in the morning was I believe almost zero degree Celsius. It was freezing but the cute Christmas decorations there made me feel warm, at least a little bit.
Käthe Wohlfahrt is a famous German retailer that sells Christmas ornaments and decorations year-around and their headquarters are in Rothenburg. There were their flagship store and Christmas museum next to the town's market square, which looked like one of the popular attractions in the town. When the store opened, people came there in waves!
St. James Church, the largest church in the town stood behind the market square. We couldn't see the inside of the church because a mass was performed at that time.
It was so cold to keep walking in the town until the Christmas market opened. We jumped into a cafe that just opened.
Holding a cup of hot tea was a pleasure. I also had a slice of apple walnut cake, which became my breakfast of the day. They didn't have any savory foods for J, though. He needed to wait for the Christmas market for his brunch.
After the defrosting break, we explored the town more. Rothenburg has about 40 towers. Most of them are along the town wall, at the six gates into the city and along the fortifications. Finding a cute toy-like tower during the town walk amused me a lot! We saw no more than 10 total, though...
Finally the Christmas market opened around 11am! It was still pretty cold but the sun got higher and the small town was getting lively. J found a local wine store on Ob. Schmiedgasse, one of the major streets of the town and had a cup of Glühwein, or traditional German mulled wine. That was a starter of his brunch.
The Christmas market was held in the market square in front of the town hall as well as some open spaces and streets behind the town hall and around St. James Church.
We couldn't ignore the smell of grilled sausages. We got a Nuremberg sausage roll. Nuremberg sausages are small bratwurst that originates from the city of Nuremberg, a large city in Bavaria in the early 14th century. The roll held three mini sausages. We also bought käsespätzle, another very typically Bavarian dish. It's like a German version of mac and cheese. Both were tasty! Actually later we came back to the same vendor and had another Nuremberg sausage roll. Then I became so satisfied and felt that I was done with sausages already on the first day of the tour.
The town hall had a tower. A very tall one with over 220 steps up. We saw the tower in the morning and I asked J if he would like to climb up. He said No. After we snacked at the Christmas market, we happened to find a door at the town hall open. We stepped into the door to see what the inside of the town hall looked like. The hallway inside somehow tricked us. It smoothly led us to the entrance to the tower. We couldn't head back at that point. We had to go up! The old the spiral stairs were narrow and long. The last several steps to the observatory were particularly cramped and steep. The observatory was so tiny and wind-swept; only a few people could share the limited space at a time. However, the view was fantastic! It was too freezing to stand there for more than five minutes, but it was a true highlight in Rothenburg.
Then we visited Medieval Crime Museum and walked around the town a bit more. We found a store that sells Japanese products by chance. Although the store was closed on the day, a lady inside saw us and kindly let us in. We chatted with her for a while. It was nice meeting her. Around 3pm, it was getting dark and we had to say good-bye to the picturesque town.
To be continued...
