The Spirit of Christmas along the Romantic Road

Boy, if I was not in the mood for Christmas, I sure am now! I have spent the last few days going through a bunch of small German towns up the Romantic Road and it has been wonderful. I think this has actually been one of my favorite parts so far. The Romantic Road is this route in the South Western part of Germany that is comprised of all these really old, well preserved little towns. It used to be a very important trade route back in the day before the current big cities were formed. The first town is actually the town of Fussen that I wrote about in the last post so I will start with the next town I went to. I did not get to see them all so I had to pick a few.

First stop of the day was Landsberg. It is this great little town that has a main street in the shape of a Y with shops running along both sides. It is all decked out in Christmas decorations right now and so that just added to the charm of it. It is built along the edge of a river and even as an old wheel that turns in the water (I cant think of what they are called right now). I spent a couple of hours walking around there and then it was off to the next stop of Augsburg.

Augsburg is one of the biggest towns along the Romantic Road with a population of approximately 400,000. It was not my favorite town that I saw but I still liked it. I walked around and saw a good portion of the old downtown, which was luckily right by the train station. There were tons of old buildings and an old church that dominated the main square. In the main square, there was this great Christmas market going on with tons of decorations, a few rides, and booths selling food and Christmas items. Every town seems to have one of these right now for the Christmas season and they had just opened. It was past lunchtime when I was there so I decided to find some food. My nose led me to something called Schupfnudeln. Now, what is that you might ask? That is a GREAT question to which I am still not sure. It is this thing that has something in it that is the texture of gnocchi and roughly the size and shape of my pinky finger. It also has what appears to be maybe saurekraut or onions in is and it is all made in a huge wok. Whatever it is, it is good! After a brief lunch, it was off to catch my final train of the day to my resting place for the night in Rothenburg (pronounced like Row-ten-burg, thats important for my next paragraph).

Now, when I went to get my ticket at the train station, I pronounced it phonetically as it is spelled. They came back with the schedule to me and almost sent me to another town of Ravensburg (go figure that sounds like Rothenburg is spelled). I spelled it out for them and they corrected me on my pronunciation. Once I arrived, I found the place where I was staying and was off to explore.

This was by far the best town on the way. It is really small with only about 12,000 people and is very well preserved. It is the epitiomy of your cute small German town. It has walls surrounding the city and you can walk along them. There are also a few old churches and other old buildings as well. The whole town has cobbled streets that just add to its charm and all of the buildings and houses look like they are straight out of the 16th century. The whole town is decorated with Christmas right now and there is a huge Christmas market going on in the Main Square. I walked around that and it was definately THE place to be on Saturday night. It seemed like the entire town was out there! The whole town has tons of Christmas stores that are open all year round. It has the biggest store of the German Christmas Ornament maker Kohl Wolfarsten (I know I mispelled that but I dont have the spelling right in front of me). When I found it, I decided to go in and check it out. It was incredibly unbelievable. It was the first time since I was a kid that it brought back that feeling of magic at Christmas and I felt like a kid at Disneyland who cant stop looking at all the attractions and everything around them. The whole stop is set up like this little village with different rooms and themes in the rooms. The first display you see is this whole small village made up of miniature houses with stuffed animals who are decorating them for Christmas and the whole thing is automated. Then you pass through room after room of decorations and such. There is a room that is made up of all these little houses a little higher than my head and you go in to see the various decorations. Another room has a huge tree right in the center that is 2 stories tall, completely decked out in decorations, and rotates. It is a massive store and not one square inch of it has not been decorated. That includes the ceiling which has garlands, ornaments, and lights strung all over it. It truly looks like Christmas exploded in there. Now, some of you know how much I love to touch things in stores, ESPECIALLY when there are shiny or bright, so it took all of my self control not to touch everything for fear that I might break something, but it was so tempting!

The town was just great and I loved it. All of the train rides throughout the region were beautiful and covered with small towns along the way, rivers, and green fields with some trees. The weather was cold, but not snowy, so walking around with all the Christmas decorations it really began to feel like Christmas!