Bamberg

Today we took a day trip to Bamberg, a town about 45 minutes away. We hopped into our sporty 1991 VW Golf and hit the Autobahn for our little outing. We haven't quite figured out how the parking works in terms of permits, so we took our chances parking in an area that didn't appear to have any signs saying we shouldn't park there. We still don't know if we were really supposed to have parked there, but we didn't receive a ticket. We're going to do a little bit of research on general parking rules in Germany before our next outing!

Bamberg's claim to fame is that it has the biggest Old Town in Germany to have survived intact through the centuries. The city is over 1,000 years old! It's pretty wild to think that buildings that we saw today are multiple times as old as the country of the United States! Here's a picture of the old Rathaus (town hall) which is actually built in the middle of a small river and has a bridge running through it.

After exploring the twisty, tiny streets of Bamberg (and sampling a piece of fresh bread from a bakery), we ate at a cafe located at the foot of the bridge leading from the old Rathaus. Our waitress was very sweet and helped us with our German. Knowing full well that we were Americans, she humored us by letting us order 'auf Deutsch' and communicating with us primarily in German. I hope that every day we give ourselves a little German challenge while we're here. I had the most interesting salad there. One that I'm sure my sister would love!! It was a regular salad with mixed greens, tomatoes and cucumbers, served with a light mustardy dressing. Sitting atop the salad were fried mozzarella sticks...brilliant. It may have ruined the salad in terms of healthiness but it was tasty! And they did this clever thing where the marinara sauce was baked into the center of the cheese sticks!

After our day at Bamberg we returned home and hit Rock Band on our Xbox 360, our new favorite passtime :) All in all, a very good (though a bit chilly) and very enjoyable day.