We just got back from Germany on Friday, and we’re excited to share some of our images from the trip!
Last Monday, while Kristen was learning all sorts of new management techniques at a conference for Zeiss in Heidenheim, Charlie and I took off up the Autobahn to a popular tourist destination: Rothenburg ob der Tauber (Red Fortress on the Tauber River). Rothenburg has the distinction of being the most well-preserved medieval town in Germany. Beyond that, I won’t try to educate you much more, because everything I learned came after the visit, by reading up about what I saw on Wikipedia.
Now, I’ve got to admit, like most things these days, taking off to a random-ish town—I had just learned of Rothenburg the day before we flew to Germany, you see—in a foreign land is a completely new and un-planned adventure. I don’t really know a lick of the German-language, and didn’t have any tour-guides or anything booked. Just an American out for a stroll… with about 40 pounds of baby and camera strapped on.
This is St. James’ Church (St. Jakob’s Kirche in German). I was amazed at it’s size and all the details of it’s beauty. 
Luckily, there were a few other American tourists in the church at the time. A nice guy named Scott took this photo of Charlie and I. Charlie was just LOVING his new vantage point for our trip.
I can tell you that while I was walking through Rothenburg that, I was, absolutely, feeling lost the entire time. My only real source of information was common sense. Faux-reading German started to come to me just by recognizing words that were similar to English words and recognizing the same words used over and over. Even though we have these wonderful marvels of technology known as smartphones, I wasn’t about to turn it on and start translating volumes of historical text… partly because that’s just a wee-bit dorky, and mostly because my data bill from AT&T would have been more than I could ever afford.
Some great buildings around the town square…
A few details of the Rothenburg town hall…
Loved this view of an empty side-street!
This is the view from the city wall, back to St. James’ Church. After climbing the stairs up to the wall, I set off in one direction, only to have to turn around because at one point the walkway became so narrow that I couldn’t fit through with all the baby/gear I had strapped on.
Anyhow, I’ll, hopefully, be better prepared next time I go off on a grand-adventure. The upside is that what you see with your eyes is beautiful in any language, and even though I didn’t know what I was looking at, I knew that I liked what I saw. So, I hope you enjoyed these photos even if my writing is mostly just ramblings today. More to follow!