On the eve of departure from Rothenburg and looking forward to the next bit. The place has an ambient calm, a sense of human life and community rooted in the landscape. Not so much an in-the-moment city buzz but more the low hum of continuum, something slowly grown over a thousand years of people getting up every morning and doing stuff; mundane, joyous, selfish, constructive, nasty, artful, murderous, thoughtful. The tourist tide washing through each day now and the cash they deposit help reverse the physical decay and, while they taint the aesthetic of the place during the day, a walk around in the early morning brings a sense of the ancient core of a place like this; and the workers arriving at that hour are the same people who arrived to work at 6am in 1515 to do much the same sort of thing. There are probably more people over 30 now though; and more witches.
The constraints on the town imposed by the walls around it create a feeling of tightness while living inside. I suppose this would have been a comfort during siege or when marauders were loose in the land but would for me would feel like having all the inlaws staying after the long weekend was over. Going for a drive in the countryside today brought this unexposed sense of close-proximity carefulness blinking into the sunlight as we marvelled at the wide smooth roads, open fields, far-apart buildings and un-obstructed sunshine. On the outside you also have the capacity to stride confidently while walking owing to the absence of jangly cobblestones.
Great place. Speaking from my truly narrow experience of Germany I’m sure you wouldn’t find a more condensed and authentic example of a mediaeval town that’s still being lived in, not a mummified and dusty throwback being desperately preserved for future don’t touch generations. And seriously, the way it’s become the landscape along with the wolf infested woodland, gibbet fed crows and misty dawns where raptors turn into Michelle Pfeiffer (ignoring the wind turbines for a moment) it feels like an apt setting for any of Grimm’s most gruesome fairytales (let alone Deathly Hallows or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang movie).
Pictures at 10. Remember the successful traveller practices good hand hygiene!
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