"Tourists, tourists and half timbered... " a Rothenburg ob der Tauber Travel Page by Sjalen

During all my childhood with German relatives, I had never heard of Rothenburg, as I mostly heard of Germany from the Germans themselves. In fact, it was not until one of those relatives started working for the German tourist board that I found out that Rothenburg-ob-der-Tauber was the most famous of the "Romantic Road" towns and sees thousands of visitors every year. Then I joined VT and here it is impossible to miss it as just about every American member travelling to Europe is asking about it or have been here. During a November week in Bavaria, I finally decided to take the opportunity to vitit it myself, hoping for fewer tourists than during summer, or the December Christmas market. This is what I found:

Rothenburg is only a small town of some 25000 inhabitants. That is why the tourists are noticeable, and they are everywhere! I was lucky enough to be able to go in autumn when the streets were manageable and the town not invaded by coach parties, but nevertheless found myself being in the most touristy destination I have ever been. In the end, I had been there a day and only managed to see ONE supermarket within the city walls. Everything else were either restaurants or shops selling Christmas things and teddy bears!

So was there not one nice thing with Rothenburg? Yes there was. The town is simply gorgeous! Set on a cliff above a river valley, there is a city wall surrounding the old part, and inside this is the remains of towers from an even older city wall. There are higgledy piggledy half timbered houses just about everywhere and the town has everything you think of as German although this is probably the least German town there is in the country. American English and Japanese is what is spoken here and it is all very adapted to what tourists expect. Even the Germans themselves start by speaking English to you, something I as a German speaker had huge difficulties with, but then the area has had plenty of post war US army bases.

The conclusion is, go to see it if you can stand artificiality, but try to go off season (and stay the night so you can escape coach party crowds) and do not expect people to be as cheerful as in the rest of Germany. Here they live off tourists and it shows a bit in the attitude of the locals too. No one was unfriendly towards us, but there was a bit of a conveyor belt feeling wherever you shopped or ate. Bring a digital camera as you could easily walk around a day and just take photos!