Rothenburg ob der Tauber

Yesterday a few of us hopped in the train and went into Bavaria and visited Rothenburg ob der Tauber. We were entering one of the most touristy places in Germany when the train that took us to the town, talked in English and German (which doesn’t happen ANYWHERE else). The altstadt (old city) is surrounded by a tall wall that was used to protect the city from invaders during the middle ages. The streets were all very narrow, but that didn't stop people from driving through their cars to get around the town, even if that meant driving through sidewalks and highly populated areas (which I have found is just a German norm). We first visited the Christmas Museum, which was like Christmas in April. It was awesome! They had a whole entire floor of Christmas ornaments and decorations; some old, some new. And then upstairs was the actual museum about the history of Christmas. Fun fact: Did you know that Santa used to carry around a stick that he used to beat bad children with while he was out giving presents? Even stranger, he started to have some devil looking guy follow him who punished the bad children by beating them and eating them. Needless to say, that story was quickly banned after it started. After the Christmas museum we walked over to the St.Jakobs Church. In this church there was a crystal that contains a drop of Christ's blood (you couldn’t get close enough to actually see the drop). The alters that they had were so amazing. They were huge wood carvings of Jesus in different settings and such that took usually about 15 years to complete.  From the church we went to the Kriminal Museum. This was a three story museum of all the different torture devices they used on criminals in the middle Ages. There were a lot of shame masks that they made people wear around town to indicate the crime they had done, there were wooden violins that they would put quarreling women in until they solved their issues, chastity belts, and my favorite was a wooden barrel they would make the drunks wear around town. Some of the crazy stuff that they did to people back then is so unbelievable! Could you image how much our crime rate would go down if we started doing that again? :-). I kid, but really haha. We finished off our visit by buying antique looking beer steins and such, found a nice table on the main street to eat some food and have a beer in the beautiful 70 degree weather before taking the train back home. All in all, a great day in Germany! I will post pictures from the trip later. I miss all of you, hope you're all doing well!