Travel to Bavaria and Southern Germany – Amateur Traveler Episode 188 Transcript

Travel to Oahu, Hawaii – Amateur Traveler Episode 184 Transcript

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Chris: Ok. We should say the other thing that it’s well known for and the reason why you’re not mentioning it is because your next destination. It’s also well known for its Christmas market.

Jason Yes, it is well known for its Christmas market…

Chris: But…

Jason: although my personal favorite Christmas market when I lived in Germany was in Rothenburg.

Chris: Ok.

Jason: And again this may be my leaning towards smaller towns so Rothenburg was an independent free city for most of the Middle Ages. It has buildings that date back to the 900’s and I’ll actually get to the oldest building in a minute. But Rothenburg is known very much for the wall that goes around the city.

Chris: Right.

Jason: When you go to Rothenburg, one of the things that you should make sure that you do is the Night Watchman’s Tour. This gentleman is a very dashing character. He’s very easy to see. He leads a tour in English at 6:00 pm and I took the same tour in 1997 and it was the same gentlemen that led the tour. He’s very entertaining, very knowledgable. The tour takes about an hour. If you have difficulties walking, there are a few hills. He goes at a relatively slow pace but if you’re going to have trouble walking more than about 3 kms then he also sells DVD’s. So you can always get the Night Watchman’s DVD.

Janie: On Amazon.

Jason: And it’s on Amazon. He’s very famous.

Chris: One of the three video episodes the Amateur Traveler has done or that I have done. I don’t know why I am referring to myself suddenly in the third person. I have done three on Rothenburg and one included portions of the Night Watchman’s Tour for anyone who wants just a little taste of that.

Jason: Yep and then he would appreciate it if you bought the full version. It has a wall that’s about 2.5 kms that you can go up into the wall and see where all the defenders of the wall would walk around. And there is particularly interesting piece of the towers. The towers that have the gates that lead into the city, you see masks above the gates. The defenders, as they were being attacked, would close off the gates and they were usually facing a hill so you had to go up the hill and then try and ram down the door. Meanwhile the defenders would pour hot pitch out of the eyes and the mouth of these masks that were on top of the tower. And pour down the boiling oil, the hot pitch and then whatever else they could find onto the attackers.

Janie: The masks were sort of just holes in the stonewall that looked like eyes and nose and mouth.

Chris: Un huh . I don’t remember seeing that. That is interesting.

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