Foodivore: The Final Lap: Germany

Town walls at Nordlingen, within the meteorite crater

Western Germany had good memories for Tracey from a previous trip eighteen years ago, so our final few days were spent in Bavaria, Franconia and the Rhineland. Here we found places that confounded preconceptions and wooed us so much that it's a definite "return to". So (as the Germans would say): what was so good and so notable?

Our four night stay at Burg Colmberg, which is a 1000 year old castle replete with stuffed critters staring down at you, medieval equipment and weapons.
Rothenburg. Foodivore-prizewinning charming medieval village with elaborate gilded merchant signs, well-laid cobblestones, an old woman regaling us with a stop-by-stop description of her cycling tour honeymoon of Tassie back in 1947 and Christmas shops that smell of cinnamon with room after room of colourful ornaments , Christmas lights and nativity sets, with none of the tack that we find at home.
Dinkelsbuhl - another charming Franconian/Bavarian village, this time with a great name
Nordlingen - medieval village with an intact encircling wall, built within the Ries (a meteorite crater)
Fabulous names such as Pfaffenwinkel and Gute Fahrt (primary school humour never goes out of style)
Piloting Pierre, the Flying Squirrel, down the autobahns at up to 200km/hour...we would have gone faster if it wasn't for the war wound one of Pierre's tyres suffered in Barcelona.
Beers - marvellous amber glasses full of sweet malt, dunkel (dark) tankards with more hops, Andrew's very manly shandy (radler) and the 100ml "aperitif" beer in Miltenberg
Beautiful churches and bell towers with lacquered roofs, simplistic beauty without the fussiness found in France and Italy.
Miltenberg - a gorgeous town streets hidden from the main road that passes it, but worth the stop. Because the traffic is off to the side the main street, which is quite long for such towns, retains loads of its historic feel and charm.

Nordlingen: they'll build a house
anywhere, apparently
The bewildering maul of costumed folks that constitutes Oktoberfest. Being new to the experience, it's with some embarrassment that we confess to having wandered, dazed, through several "tents" containing literally thousands of revelers being serenaded by brass oompah bands until the penny (pfennig?) dropped that there's no bar...you get served. We wangled a seat at a reserved table and sampled a beer. A new moral was learned: you can lead Andrew to Oktoberfest, but you can't make him drink.

Some of the memorable food:

Deer goulash with red currents and pear
Sword skewer of beef and pork with Cognac sauce
Ridiculous amounts of potato and stodgy dumplings, spetzl (a doughy short noodle)
Venison steaks with pink and green peppercorn sauce
Crispy skin suckling pig
Beef broths with liver dumplings and/or strips of pancake (odd, yes, but quite pleasing regardless)

Grapes, paddlesteamer, pretty village....the Rhine is beautiful

Sample Rhine castle - dozens as beautiful as this

Another fabulous Rhine castle

Pork: the emblem of central Europe?

Random local at Oktoberfest

Pork and cabbage everywhere

The final night of our six month journey was in the wonderfully-named and equally sumptuously-appointed Suite of Seven Maidens at Schonburg (near Oberwesel). We did slum it with our 5 rooms, private balcony, four poster bed, beautiful views overlooking the Rhine River, robe & slippers, not to mention the silver service breakfast the was delivered to our room the next morning (while we watched round 2 of the Grand Final). We also had a lovely seven course degustation (less pretentious than some we've encountered) which included Brussel Sprout soup, smoked duck slices and French cheeses (as if we hadn't had enough already...but they were good).