The Curse of Friday the 13th...Stranger Danger

Thursday, August 12th and Friday, August 13th

The door to our Rothenburg
hotel room. I think it was meant
for hobbits!

I write this from a little ice cream shop on Karl Marx Allee in Berlin that has wi-fi. The apartment we rented claimed to have wi-fi, but the owner cannot seem to find the password. That's okay because the apartment is great in every other respect. We are in a quiet area of East Berlin, so we had to walk a loooong way to find someplace with wi-fi capabilities.

I decided to combine the above two dates because we had about 24 hours in Rothenburg sandwiched between two long train trips. The train trips were uneventful, so I'll focus on our time in Rothenburg.

The first thing you must know about Rothenburg is that it is probably the most adorable town you will ever find. It is a medieval town that still has it's wall intact. There is not much to do in Rothenburg except shop, go on the Night Watchman Tour, shop, see the Medieval Crime & Punishment Museum, shop...well, you get the point.

We got to the hotel (located in a 600 year old building), freshened up, and headed downstairs for dinner...which was great...our hotel includes a restaurant, both of which are recommended in Rick Steves' guidebook. I was very happy with the choice.

After dinner, we browsed the shops deciding what we would buy the next morning. Most of the shops were preparing to close, so we didn't have much time. Mike and Matt then went on the Night Watchman Tour. I had gone with the girls in 2004 and decided to skip it. They both thoroughly enjoyed it. He is pretty funny.

The following morning, we had breakfast and made our way to an ATM to withdraw money for our shopping spree...only to find out that our cards were not valid! If you recall in London, we had an issue with our Capital One MM ATM cards...they were putting a hold on our deposits, but we were okay because we had two other accounts to utilize. Well, those accounts were running low, so we checked with Cap1 the day before and found out that the hold had been released...so, the money should be available, right...wrong. I called Cap1 (at over $1 per minute) just to find out that I needed to call at 8 am Eastern time (2 pm in Germany).

What happened right after that? Mike gets stung by a bee on the back of his neck. He couldn't recall ever being stung, so I had to keep an eye on him. He has quite a lump on his neck, but no other reaction.

We decided to make the best of the day, so we did some restrained shopping, not knowing what was going to happen, we wanted to be prepared to tighten our belts. We also went to the Medieval Crime and Punishment Museum. The museum is quite entertaining. They had laws against EVERYTHING. If a seamstress made a collar too large, she had to wear a wooden collar; if a baker made his bread too light, he had to sit in a strange chair; if a musician played badly, he had to use a punishment flute...all very funny stuff. I especially liked the the beads one would wear if you fell asleep in church! Stephen would be wearing these every week! ;)

Then it was time to head to the train station to have lunch and await our 3 pm train. While Mike and I were getting lunch, Matt was waiting with our luggage (within our eyesight). I noticed a man talking to him, so I headed over to him. As I approached, Matt was making some very strange eye movements. I figured he was trying to tell me something, but couldn't figure it out, so I just sat next to him. The man stood behind us for awhile and then left. Matt told us that he wanted to know where he was from, why he was in Rothenburg, where he was going next...lots of questions that made him uncomfortable...he made up a story that he was from Madrid, so the guy wouldn't know we were from America and rob us...what a dork! He actually wanted today's blog named Stranger Danger all by itself...I overruled him...but included it for his benefit.

At precisely 2 pm, I called Cap1...they said our account had been frozen because of the suspicious transactions taking place in Europe...even though I had notified them that we would be in Europe! Anyway, they lifted the freeze and we were able to withdraw money...from Mike's card, for some reason mine is still frozen...but, I'm not going to complain...I'm just happy Mike's is working.

We caught our train and other than it arriving half an hour late in Berlin, we had a peaceful trip.