Romantische Strasse

The Romantic Road is a route that covers the southern part of Germany from Fussen to Frankfurt. In this map you can see the various cities and towns that we visited in a span of a day. We only stopped for 10-15 minutes in each place and sometimes skipped the less picturesque places along the journey. There were so many stops that I couldn't remember the name of the places nor what we saw at each stop. The Zizzster made notes but after a few towns, we couldn't keep track of the places. The driver spoke little English and all he did was put on a tape at specific intervals during the trip describing the next stop. It was fun but tiring.

This picture of the Bavarian Alps shows the start of our journey where we pushed off from Fussen, the town made famous by Neuschwenstein Castle, purportedly the castle that inspired Walt Disney for his cartoons. Pictures of the castle will be posted in future instalments. For now, if you use a magnifying glass you could actually make out its outline in the mountains. At least, I think it is.

Now why did I take this picture? It just occurred to me then that this is a good opportunity for me to capture on film, a German cock checking out two German chicks. That, my friends, is one confident cocky cock. This was in front of a church that looked plain enough from the outside but the fresco inside was amazing. Too bad we couldn't take pictures inside. Hence the picture of the cock!

It was fitting that this Benz entered the frame. A German car in a quaint German town. This is Rothenburg. Our favourite stop along the Strasse. It is a medieval town totally surrounded by a 20ft wall. Wouldn't mind going back there and roam the cobbled streets for a few days. Amazing how one of the most advanced country has managed to keep its heritage pristine for centuries while we teardown pre-World War II buildings indiscrimminately.

Even the newer buildings are built in the old design. Here we want ugly glass structures that lose their novelty after a few weeks. If you think about it, building designs nowadays are either too elaborate or too functional. Nothing that is ageless. For instance, all the Balinese design homes, they do not look at all like the homes we saw in Bali. So what's so Balinese about them?

This hottie was on the bus with us. Hey! It's the Zizzster! I have to hand it to her. She found out all about Neuschwenstein, the Romantic Road, the Eurorail, and charted out our trip even before we got to Europe. Mind you, we had to book all the hotels via the net and she did all that by herself. I just had to nod in agreement and read out my credit card number. She has this knack of making it seem like it was my idea in the first place. So for all females out there, that's the trick in handling your men. FEED our ego! For the guys out there, admit it. That works out just fine for us.

Some buildings just had to outdo their neighbours. This one in particular had ornate statues lining up the exterior walls. We never enquired about what those statues represented. Just found it unique and pretty. I believe architecture is another expression of art. No matter what period they are, art is to be enjoyed by all. If you think it's nice, then it is. You don't need an expert to TELL you it's a classic. If you don't like Picasso, no matter how many lectures you go to on understanding the creator's meaning, you either like it or not. Hence why I never really liked Shakespeare. Cos I can never understand the language!

These guys are hung like a ....
Okay, maybe that's why I never appreciated Shakespeare. I'm just a simple neanderthal. At the end of the day, my needs are simple. Coffee in the morning, Astro remote control in my hand and clean pair of underpants. Of course being a neanderthal, the other carnal needs are a given.

I can't remember which town this is. The town centre is a crisscross of tram tracks and a web of all the overhead cables. The buildings were very nice except that we were there on a Sunday so it was mostly deserted. Mind you, the trams don't really make a lot of noise as it runs on electricity so right after this picture was taken, I was fortunate to get out of the way of another oncoming tram.

Churches define each town that we visited. Without fail, these churches manage to coax us into clicking away at our cameras. No matter how small a town, they are all built grandly and to a certain extent, opulently. I guess it was hard times for people back then and faith was a strong comforter. How else would you represent divinity but with extravagance.

Hope you've enjoyed a snapshot (literally) of Germany. I'm trying out the sepia feature in iPhoto so don't try to tweek your monitors. All pictures were taken with a NIKON Coolpix digital camera at a very low pixel setting so I can't really enhance them that much given that it was cloudy the whole time with not much light. Nevertheless, it served its purpose in helping us capture memories of our journeys.

Till later. Auf Wiedersehen!