Thriller (April 23rd)

It was once again time for Jordan and I to say goodbye to a European City. This time Munich was the victim of this unstoppable reality. Lucky for us though, we were to stay in the country where the beer flows like the "salmon of Capistrano" and the sausage is cased like any good court room...Germany here we stay!

The train ride this time was more of a time machine than ever, as we stepped foot into Europe's best preserved Middle Ages town and the only completely walled town left: Rothenburg ob der Tauber

If you are nerd or a Middle Ages history fan, you will love Rothenburg. It is really as close to a genuine time warp as I can imagine. The houses look like Middle Ages houses, the roads look like Middle Age roads, and the Wall is still there. It is great and the best part of it is is that besides the parts of the town they had to rebuilt due to Allied Bombings in WWII, it is the structures that have stood the test of that time.

First on the agenda was to find a hostel. There is only one and we didn't fail.

We kind of wish we did though as the doors of the hostel were locked from the inside! And once the Old Mustache Man unlocked the door to let us in, we discovered there was a Decrepit Old Woman sitting at a table about 15 feet away, just staring at us as if she was bearing into our souls!

We handed over our money and Old Mustache Man handed over the skeleton key to our room. We quickly scampered up four creaking flights of stairs to our room where we found a perfectly laid out double bed...it was so creepy.

The whole place was just weird!

On with the adventure...Jordan and I, being nerds, walked the entire 1.5 mile wall, pretending at nearly every look out hole to be shooting our imaginary cross bow at the invading enemy to protect our beloved Duke of Rothenburg. We also found a nice stage area and performed a few posses for the camera.

As the day rolled on, Jordan and I walked in to Annaliese's Freise Shop. We came to know this place through the third traveler on Jordan and I's journey: Rick Steves. If you don't know him, he is the author of many travel guides and particularly mine.

Good ole Rick, as Jordan and I refer to him as, told us to go visit his friend Annaliese. And one of the first questions Annaliese asked us when we walked in was if we heard about her in Rick's books. When we said, "We sure did," she launched into a 10 minute description of how, when, and why she came to know Rick, all the time showing us letters, pictures, and autographing a map that she drew by hand over a three year period.

She was a very happy elderly lady and with her German accent, you couldn't help but smile.

With supper time approaching, Jordan and I decided that we should do something European...so we watch the entire soccer match between Manchester United and Barcelona...

...Now these next couple of sentences may offend you soccer fans out there so don't read...

I have now given soccer its fair chance and can say with confidence that I really can't stand to watch it! To quote my good friend Jordan Whalen: "Soccer is a game of 11 Punters playing 11 Punters." They do hardly anything but fake fall or fake injury or just kick it to the middle and hope that their guy kicks it in the goal and then grimp and complain as if they graduated from the Rasheed Wallace School of Bellyaching. And what is it with that damn clock that runs up and then gets an arbitrary amount of time added to it...AHHHH!!!!!! Frustration and boredom consume my feelings when I watched that Zero to Zero TIE!!!!!!

I have to stop writing about this, but AHHHHH!!!!

After the waste of 2 hours, Jordan and I headed back to the hostel, threw a few things in the room and then head to do a night version of what we did in the day time: Wall Patrol.

But as we were leaving, we met the Decrepit Old Woman at the bottom of the stairs. There was this awkward spooky silence that was broken only by here raspy angry German words that sounded like a warning of impending doom...

We just tried to smile, nod, and get the hell out of there...but Jordan struggled to get the door unlocked (from the inside remember) as the Decrepit Old Woman stared deeper into our souls...AHHHH!!

Finally, Jordan got the door open and pulled me from my daze to the curb because I was entrapped by the woman's stare...(okay this last part with the entrapment stare is not true but the rest is!!!!)

Maybe it was the hostel and the Decrepit Old Woman that got our creeped-out-o-meter reading high levels, but the our wall patrol was a ton creepier in the stone and wood confines of the wall at night. The shadows cast eerie shapes and your nerdy imagination runs wild with images of the ghosts of guards patrolling from the past.

To protect us, Jordan kept his Swiss Army knife drawn.

With our senses heighten, we felt alert enough to make the long dangerous journey back to the hostel and the even longer, more dangerous journey up the creaking four flights of hostel stairs.

But we made it to the room and to our relief through the night.

Through Vincent Price narrated our dreams.