Running from Frankfurt to Munich is the “Romantic Road,” a former Roman trade route filled with cute All-German towns turned tourist attractions. We left Zurich early in the morning to reach the medieval ‘Route 66,’ heading north on the Autobahn to join the Romantic Road at the town of Dinkleburg, just past the thriving metropolis of Ulm, and continue on to Rothenburg ob de Tauber, the Road’s central attraction. (I expect you all to have Google Maps open in a separate window as you read this and trace our route with your finger.)
A note on the Autobahn – it’s not really like the Indy 500 with Mini-vans. Americans (especially men) hear the word Autobahn and instantly are mentally whisked away to the moment they first got their drivers license and wanted to drive “AS FAST AS IT CAN GO!” I’m convinced they all think that it would seriously be an all-out drag race where you can finally prove, once and for all, that you are the KING of the Road. Not to burst any bubbles, but it’s actually just a normal two-lane freeway (exactly similar to the AutoStrada in Italy), where people actually drive smarter… using the right lane as the normal lane and only going left to pass. What a novel concept!
That being said, we did pretty much average about 160 km/hr the entire time on the road, which is 100 miles per hour. Oh yeah… and did get passed about twice per minute!
Just after 1pm we reached the town of Dinkelsbuhl, a small dot on any map but a pretty dot at that. We caught a glimpse of its gothic spires jutting over the treeline, and when I saw the main entrance went over a moat and through a guard tower, I had to check it out.
As a basic rule of thumb, any city that you have to cross a MOAT to get into is cool.
As soon as we stepped onto the cobblestone streets, we knew we weren’t in Kansas (or Alberta) anymore. Every building had a bright orange roof and was painted as if the town were one large ‘paint by numbers’ using strong pastels. As long as we’ve wondered Europe, I’ve always had the vague sense that none of this is real. The little towns can’t be THAT cute. The people don’t really where THAT. Eventually the ‘extras’ will go away, and I will look behind a building and see the lumber holding up the façade. But I can honestly say that this is real… and nowhere is this truer than in Dinkelsburl… even if I will always laugh when I say its name. (The same the happens with Regina, Saskatchewan as well… I hate words that rhyme!)
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