Thursday, April 1, 2010

Deutschland: Grunsfeld + Rothenburg

Haley (my roommate) and I had booked flights to Frankfurt in early February to spend the long Easter weekend (April 1-5) in Germany.  There was not much research done before we decided to book (and with RyanAir, once you buy the ticket you can't change anything) so as planning began a in mid-March we were a quite disappointed to discover that:
1) There is nothing to do/see in Frankfurt which is mostly industrial 
2) We were flying into Frankfurt-Hahn which is about an hour away from Frankfurt anyway 
3) The trains in Germany are unbelievably expensive and the cheapest option would have been the three day Europass which still cost around €270
4) A car rental would be cheaper, but as both Haley and I are under 21 this was not an option
5) The two cities we wanted to visit - Munich and Berlin - were about 5 hours apart.

Okay, so now we're both a little panicky and our only goal is to make this trip as little of a disaster as possible.  In art history later that week, Becca, Katie and I were discussing our travel plans when Katie (who, by the way, is 21) says that she still has nothing booked for Easter and, oh, wouldn't it be nice to go somewhere different like... I don't know, Germany?  So two days later Katie is booked on our flight and with new possibilities of a road-trip the real planning could begin. 

I asked Grammy to contact her cousin Ralph - a member of the "Walz" (Gram's maiden name) family living in PA but still in communication with our German cousins - if he had any suggestions for my trip, ancestor/family wise.  He was kind enough to contact our Walz relatives still living in a town called "Grunsfeld" who said they would be happy to give Haley, Katie and I a tour.  We arrived in Grunsfeld Thursday afternoon after the GPS took us on a 3 hour detour through Nuremburg (the drive was supposed to take 45 minutes) and met Herr Weinmann, a family friend of the Walz's and our tour guide for the evening.  He spoke only a small amount of English so also accompanying us as translator was my distant cousin, Maritess, who was 18 and studying English in school.  

We were shown around the town church, museum, and cemetery before being invited to the Vollrath's (Maritess' family) house for dinner.  We had intended on spending the night in a hostel in Wurzberg, about 20 km away, before making our way to Munich Friday morning.  The Weinmann's and Vollrath's invited us back the next morning to see another chapel and also Maritess' mother's town about 5 minutes up the road.  Having the car made us very flexible and we were delighted to return to Grunsfeld on for a morning of tours and Good Friday lunch at the Vollrath Haus.  

On the way to Munich that afternoon we stopped in a medieval city along the Romantische Straße (Romantic Road) called Rothenburg.  Every building was perfectly restored to look as it had in the Middle Ages.  The shops were closed for Good Friday, but we were able to take pictures and buy our postcards before moving east to "Munchen".

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