We got up in the morning and went on a tour bus. It went along the Castle Road and would ultimately take us to Rothenburg. It kinda sucked because all it did was play a short audio recording about each major village as we drove past it. We stopped in one village for lunch. Amazingly, Jason said he was full before he finished his plate at lunch. This was the first time it had happened since we arrived in Europe back in April, so I just had to take a picture of him. I really ticked him off by doing this so he finished his food out of spite. Fortunately, Rothenburg was so awesome it totally made up for the sucky bus.

We had the great fortune of visiting Rothenburg during Meistertrunk, a huge festival to celebrate a fake historic event. Hey, the whole village still exists due to tourism, so why not celebrate an event that never really happened? Our first clue that something big was happened was when a group of uniformed men on horses passed us and then stopped in front of a tavern to sing! We made it farther into town in time to see the big parade. I think they had more horses in that parade than I have ever seen before and probably a wider variety as well. I took tons of pictures which probably are worth more than anything I can type here.

While we were on our way out of the village, we stopped in front of an area that appeared to be a medieval campsite. Even more people than were in the parade were hanging out here with tents and campfires etc. Unfortunately, there were people setup with a table charging admission to get any closer. We weren't in the mood to spend that much money to see this up close, so we watched it from behind the wall for a while. Then we walked about 10 yards down the road and noticed there was another entrance to the campsite. Nobody was charging admission and there was no indication that we were not supposed to enter there.... there wasn't even a hint that it was restricted access. So we walked in and got to see the medieval splendor close up. At the far end was a biergarden of sorts with food and live music. It was suppertime, and I had the pleasure of eating a nice turkey leg while listening to the band. Due to some oddity of their biological clocks, the others weren't hungry. But they were kind enough to tolerate my appetite for both food and music. Afterwards we went to the train station. We were a little early, so we played cards on the platform for a while. I actually walked around for 15 minutes or so to find a mailbox so I could mail a postcard to Megan. That night we took a night train to Copenhagen.