Bad Windsheim Day 2 (and Rothenburg Ob Der Tauber)

I took the the second day to explore more of the Kurzpark and do some grocery shopping.  This is what I found...

Some very Autumn scenes...

...and, quite randomly, a few goats and...

...and aviary of parakeets!  The parakeets were the biggest surprise to me.  They were all colors: pink, green, blue, yellow...and they were outside where it was cold!

I took a solo trip to the grocery store and found this...a ninja stylist!  Who knew?

This cat has claimed a small stretch of sidewalk.  I saw three different people petting it, Etsy went a little crazy last night trying to catch it, and today, it walked right up to me for a nice picture.  I went to pet it afterward are it acted repulsed by me and scampered away.

In the evening, J's CLE organizer set up a time to have people go to the Rothenburg Night Watchman tour.  I looked it up online and it was very highly regarded.  When we got to the city, it was impressive even at night: six large city gates, a cathedral sized church that had a street going underneath it, and this clock who's windows opened automatically to show two human-sized figures moving around at the top of each hour.

Interesting history.  Rothenburg was first built around 1100 AD and was never taken until the 1600's during the 30 years war when one of their own accidentally blew up the gun powder tower.  It never recovered from poverty after that, was taken a second time, and lost the north and west walls during american bombing in WWII.  It was spared complete destruction because of two reasons: the local American commander's mother loved Rothenburg so they asked the occupying German force to surrender the city, and the German occupying force was temporarily missing their commander.  The poverty was what actually preserved the city for so long after surviving a very long time without being sacked or burned.

This is the main gate.  They still have the door there that was built in the 1500's.

During the tour, the Watchman gave a short plug for one of the city pubs: Zur Hoelle, or in english, To Hell.  The local city joke being, "Go to Hell!"  We decided with the people we car pooled there to check it out.

To our surprise, the Watchman showed up a few minutes later.  This is the best shot I could get.  It was dark and I didn't want to use the flash.  You will find a better picture of him online.

This is J enjoying spiced hot wine, a seasonal favorite of Germany.  I took a sip.  It was really good.  However, I was driving so that's all the more I had of that.

One of the ladies we drove there was also a JA who's husband was a civilian, just like me!  We've decided that we will all have to hang out in Belgium at some point.  That is where she is stationed.