Rothenburg; Friday, 15 December, 2023

I had a relaxed start to the morning and headed over to the station with plenty of time to catch my 11:30 train for the first of three legs to get over to Rothenburg, each with lots of connection time between them, or so I thought at the time! Despite being a pretty busy train DB were only laying on a 4 coach double deck train over to Würzburg, so I was quite glad I was already on the platform when it arrived from the depot and was able to get a nice window seat, by the time the train left about 20 minutes later there were virtually no spare seats left and the train only proceeded to get fuller along the line.

Just outside of Frankfurt we hit a problem with the signalling and ground to a halt for about 10 minutes, and then – because the train was so full – proceeded to lose time at every single station down the line as passengers struggled to get on and off. By the time we were approaching Würzburg my 20-minute connection had completely disappeared and I made it across to the connecting platform just in time to see the train disappearing off into the distance.

I took advantage of the enforced 59 minute wait for the next train to grab a bite to eat, visit the WC and then settle in on a bench on the platform to await the arrival of the inbound train, which again turned out to be a good move as the ancient two coach hunk of junk that pulled in 15 minutes before we were due to depart was pretty soon completely full – clearly nowhere near enough space for the people needing to use it, and once again along the way we kept losing time as people struggled to clamber on and off – it was so old that there were two steps up into the train – and at most stations had to run along the platform as they were clearly expecting a much longer train.

Thankfully the delay was only about 5 minutes by the time we reached Steinach – or to give it it’s full name Steinach (b. Rothenburg o.d. Tauber) [Steinach near Rothenburg upon Tauber], a junction station in the middle of nowhere were the train had a 13 minute, thankfully still 8-minute, connection onto the small train down to Rothenburg.

Despite being quite busy this train made it’s journey without any issues and 15 minutes later I was disembarking in Rothenburg and heading round to my hotel to checkin, drop off my stuff and freshen up from a needlessly long journey.

Refreshed, I headed out of the hotel into town, wandering in through one of the impressive barbican entrances that protect the old town from the outside world and headed over into the centre of town to visit the Christmas Market and have my first gluhwein and bratwurst of the season.

The Christmas market stretches over a large part of the city centre – including in the space under the town hall and out into the neighbouring squares. I spent a decent amount of time wandering around the market, and keeping my gluhwein mug topped up.

Having also picked up some last minute Christmas presents along the way I headed out of the market area and had a bit more of a wander around the city, taking in the Plönlein area which is the symbol of the city – one tower and one of the city gates at different heights at a fork in the road with a half timber house at the junction. If you were to type Fairytale German Village into Google it’s usually this spot that comes up as the number one image.

From there I wandered further down to the Spitaltor an equally impressive barbican entrance protecting the southern entry point to the city and from there followed the walls part way back before taking a side road off that brought me back to my hotel and a well deserved rest.