Simply Medieval.

On our way to and from Austria, we made stops into the cities of Rothenburg and Bamberg, both in Bavaria. Rothenburg is a strictly maintained city from the middle ages and is flocked to by more tourists than you can shake a stick at. The main town attraction is a pastry called  Schneeballen, which is essentially leftover pastry crust rolled into a ball and dusted with sugar, chocolate, you name it. It was disgusting.

Aside from tourist shops, a medieval torture museum (that didn't accept human donations, the nerve!) and a toy museum, the only thing left to do was to find a quiet place for the kids to run around and play hide and seek. This was our favourite part of town, with pretty views and a desire to steal candy coloured houses to call my own.  

I'm not a fan of posting pictures of myself unless I resemble my 23 year old self, or it has inherit comedic value. This one has the latter. Aaron, bless his heart, is a full foot taller than me. His remedy for this is to bend his neck so that it level with mine. This results in near dislocation of my own head, but at least we're in the same frame, right?

Severed nerves do not make for the best facial expressions.

Walk with me a little. We leave Rothenburg, go to Austria, sing DoReMi, turn around and land in Bamberg. Destination chosen because of its halfway to home location and its Rauchbier. This beer is brewed with smoked hops, and essentially tastes like Polish sausage. We attempt to find a legit place that both brews and serves its beer with hearty Bavarian fare. Tada! We find it. All hustle and bustle, suspenders and pretzels. We find our seats, order our beer and are handed our menus. Oh, mother of God. We hardly understand a thing on this menu. We know, by now, that Schwein means pig, but all those extra words surrounding it could mean boiled testicle on a bed of raw onion. We had to ask for help. Worst decision ever. Our waitress was, excuse my language, the nastiest bitch we have encountered to date. Holier than thou German bar wench. "Umm, can you please tell us what - schweintesticleonion - means?" For which we received a glare that turned the children to stone and the reply of "Don't you have your guide book with you?" HUH?!?
So we quickly grabbed our beers, asked for the bill, waited for the 5 cents change, which was Aaron's idea as he didn't want her to think we were tipping her five whole cents, and ran into the courtyard. From there we spotted a second dining room and came up with a plan. We would go in there, hope that our wench didn't see us and try to order again. Enter scarier looking wench than the first. Start to sweat as she approaches the bar man and whispers in German. He stares our way, and starts moving towards us. "We just want a pretzel!" I blurt out. He asks where we got the beer from. I'm not above crying at this point, but decide that tattling might prove to be more useful. "The waitress on the other side doesn't want to serve us! She asked us where our guide book was!" Tattling totally works. He handed us an English menu, gave the girls "sweeties" and waited on us himself. The meal was delicious, the beer even more so. We're never going back.