Rothenburg ob der Tauber (o.d.t.)

"Where are we? You said this GPS is easy to use with the POI (Points of Interest). Obviously you have no clue and we are in this god forsaken town in the middle of nowhere called Weimar. We should have let the concierge in Mandarin Oriental, Munich input everything when he offered. I'm not gonna trust you with this again!!", mum complained after driving for almost 3 hours from Nuremberg with the intended destination being Rothenburg but ended up somewhere else. Dad had tried a lot of different names they had printed for Rothenburg and related places on the POI but all of them gave a multitude of choices all over Germany with the exception of this church called Jakobkirsch gave a unique destination which he thought must be the right place to enter. What a terrible faux pas!! Mum went into the Weimar town hall and found the address Käthe Wohlfahrt which they knew had the main store in Rothenburg. They drove another 240km+ before they got to Rothenburg o.d.t. For those using a GPS, remember this is the name you want to look for!

It was well worth all the effort to get to this pretty town. Judging by the amount of Japanese tourists there, it's not an unknown destination either. It was the most picturesque among the places they have been in Germany and the drifting snow didn't hurt either. They were literally starving when they arrived and there was nothing better than sausages grilled on red hot charcoal especially when the frigid wind was blowing upon your face.

If you ever dream about decorating a house full of Christmas trees, walking into the main store of Käthe Wohlfahrt was liked a dream came true. The myriads of Christmas tree balls and other ornaments were simply blinding with top-notched quality that merit more than a casual glance. No wonder, even Michael Jackson went and visited back in 2003. Perhaps one day, mum and dad would get a real X'mas tree to decorate.

Schneeballen, literally snowballs in German, are strips of cookie dough molded into the shape of a ball deep fried and coated with icing sugar, a Rothenburg o.d.t. speciality. Like so many things, the original Schneeballen has spun off into a variety of tastes, like caramel, cointreau etc. But then the originals featured in the shop window are still the prettiest.