04 September 2007

Day Thirteen: August 31st Leaving Nürnberg, Germany

One nice thing about staying here another night was the fact that I found a reasonable, centrally-located, historic hotel: Hotel Deutscher Kaiser. It was the same place I ate that great meal at yesterday. And it was across the street from the hotspot I found! Perfect!
One odd thing was that there were 2 doors to my room. Meaning, you open the front door, walk in less than 1 foot, close it behind you and be encased in between 2 doors 1 foot apart. Then you open the other door to get into your room. And there's even a coat hook in the middle. Strange.
I was happy to stay there, though. Close to everything, cheap and historic: how could I go wrong?

But really, I want to get the fuck out of this town already, I swear!
It is very beautiful and historic and I enjoyed seeing it but I wanna put this whole thing behind me. I should've left for home today but I will NOT end my trip with this. No way.
So I'm sitting in the airport waiting for my car rental. I can't wait to get on the road again.

*break*

Just arrived at a hotel in Uffenheim, Germany. And damn it's cheap! Only 29€! I'm on the perimeter of a cluster of castles and castle ruins. I plan to get up early and take a drive back into the hills/mountains to check them out tomorrow morning. There are at least 8 castles in this area. It'll probably take me around 3 hours to see them all if I stay on track.

After I finally left Nürnberg today I headed into the the wilderness. Nürnberg seems to be a pretty popular tourist destination. I had no idea, but I'm not surprised after being there.
But I had to get away from the crowd after 2 days there. I drove north toward the castle region I'm in now. And the transformation was amazing. Nothing like seeing a sign saying you're entering a town, only to see that you're leaving it less than 20 seconds later. Over and over again.
It was refreshing.

I got to the area earlier but it's fairly mountainous and not clearly charted on the map so I didn't get to check any of the castles out before nightfall. But dammit if I didn't try!
I found this road that clearly led to one of the castles (near Sugenheim), but it was very, very close to nightfall. I started driving up, up, up this road and next thing you know it turned into one lane.
Then one narrow lane.
Then one narrow lane with very bad structural integrity.
Then I found myself on (at least) an 10% grade going up into black woods at nightfall on a road I couldn't turn around on. I'm not ashamed to tell you guys that I freaked out! I mean...it was a straight shot up a tiny mountain road and it was dark! I pictured a pack of axe murderers appearing in the road before me. Not one axe-murderer, mind you...but a pack! So I turned around somehow and drove back down the mountain as fast (and carefully) as I could. It was definitely my scariest driving experience so far.
But I am going back up there tomorrow morning! ;)

I gotta say, there's nothing quite like pulling out a map of a country and saying, "Hmmm...where do I want to go next?"
This really has been the trip of a lifetime. But I am starting to get homesick.

Sorry, I didn't really get any pictures today, just this one from Uffenheim. And again, because of shaky driving syndrome it's a little blurry...