Rothenburg ob der Tauber

The site owner very kindly let us stay camped until Monday (17th October). Maura busied herself loading her bike then she set off bound for her home in Northern Italy - it was good to catch up with her again.  Almost all others had left by Sunday morning leaving just a handful of folks to help take down the marquee and generally tidy up. By Sunday night there was only me and Mark and one other, Al from Australia, and we had a few drinks in the bar and then hit the sack.


By the time we got up next morning Al had packed up his stuff and was ready to leave. We said our goodbyes to him and, not before I had taken advantage of the site's COLD shower facility, we set about the always unpleasant task of taking down tents and packing the bike ready fro the next part of the journey. Jens, the meeting organiser, had suggested that we head for Rothenburg ob der Tauber citing it as one of the prettiest towns in Germany so we simply had to pay a visit.


We set out around 10am and made our way on the back roads (dry thankfully) and arrived in Rothenburg, a walled medieval town, at around 3pm.  We rode through the town gates on cobbled roads and found ourselves a hotel not too far from the Rathaus (Town Hall) and checked in for a couple of nights. It was so nice to have a hot shower and a good meal in the hotel restaurant. The town itself is indeed a pretty place and home of several Christmas shops which will please my wife, Gina, no end.


Suitably rested we left Rothenburg on Tuesday morning and, as it was raining, we gave up any notion of riding the back roads and just hit the nearby motorway which took us all the way to Essen and to our pre-booked hotel in the Bredeney area of the city suburbs. We sent a message to Svetlana saying we had arrived and in no time at all she met us at the tram station opposite her dormitory.


The last time we had seen Sveta was when we left Vladivostok in early July and it was so nice to meet up again and we just had a meal and chatted for a few hours before it was time to say goodbye again. We made sure that she got a taxi back to her dormitory and then had a nightcap and retired for the day.


Thursday morning (20th October) was dry and we set out on our 550 km ride to Berlin which we achieved in good time until we hit a huge traffic jam some 20kms long near Magdeburg which added a good hour or so to our journey. We arrived at John's apartment in Steglitts at around 5pm and a welcome hot coffee soon had us back on track !

Town Square