No rest for the weary – breakfast was at 7 am and we hit the road
again at around 8 am bound for Rothenburg. On the way, one of our
bus coordinators, Randy, shared the lyrics he wrote for a song about
our bus to the tune “Thank God I'm a Country Boy” - changing the
words to “Thank God I'm on the Blue Bus” instead. The song was
meant to be sung by the Blue Bus kids at the final evening before
departure where every bus would be given the opportunity to do a skit
or presentation. The words were hilarious and reflected some of the
unique things our bus got to experience.
We arrived at Dachau Concentration Camp at around 10:30 am and had
some free time to explore until about noon. It was drizzling pretty
steadily. We walked over to the Maintenance building as a group
where there was a very large display that chronicled the timeline of
the camp. After a bathroom stop (there was another set of bathrooms with no wait towards the other end of the maintenance building from where the film was being shown), I started at the beginning of the display and made my way through. It was interesting but I wish there was more time to see the whole thing. At 11:30 am there was a short film about the camp and then
it was time to go. We didn't have a chance to walk over to the other parts of the camp.
Our next stop was a restaurant nearby that was described as a
“chicken place”. We started with a simple salad and some
pickled vegetables. The main dish was fried chicken and french
fries. The chicken was really good. After lunch, quite a few of the
students (and many adults too) lined up to get ice cream from the
vendor outside. We hit the road again around 2 pm.
We arrived at our Rothenburg hotel at about 5 pm and attended an
orientation by our city coordinators. This time, most of the blue
bus and the red bus both stayed “inside the wall” at the Hotel
Schranne. The rest of the Ambassadors stayed in hotels just outside
the wall. This hotel had no elevator so we carried our luggage up a
flight of stairs to our room which was a typical room for this trip
but I was so happy to see a hair dryer in the room. I was hoping for
better Wifi at this hotel but that was not to be. We unpacked a bit
and then headed to dinner downstairs at 6:15 pm.
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| arrived Rothenburg |
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| our hotel - the Schranne |
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| Discounts were everywhere |
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| orientation |
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| view from our hotel window |
We started with a vegetable noodle soup, followed by pork medallions,
and some kind of pudding for dessert. The food was pretty good.
After dinner, we headed to the town plaza to meet up with the Night Watchman for his tour of the city which was rated as one of the best tours in Europe. The guy doing the tour was really informative and funny. He did really well considering there were so many people on the tour. He had a very laid back style and told some good stories. He normally charged 6 Euros per person but extended the student discount to OAM of 4 Euros. Rothenburg is a really neat old city - the part inside the wall had cute decorated buildings and the area outside the wall was just beautiful with all of the hills. This was a city that we would love to come back and explore with more time. The Nightwatchman Tour group was huge but the guy led us around a small circular route and stopped at various places where his voice carried pretty well - even with so many people we really didn't have trouble hearing him.
After the tour was over, we actually got a little lost and decided to
climb the stairs up to the top of the wall so we could get a vantage
point to look for our hotel. We made it back to our hotel at around
10 pm.
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