Fun, Fun, Fun on the Autobahn

On Saturday we hired a car and went and did some tourist-ing in a nearby town called Rothenburg ob der Tauber. Rothenburg was apparently the inspiration for the town in Pinoccio, if Wikipedia is to be believed (and who doesn't believe Wikipedia?) If you look at Rothenburg from the top of a tower that is approximately 200 metres from the ground it looks like this:



We didn't stay up on the tower for very long, because apparently it has no actual foundations of its own, it's just sort of resting on the top of the building. Thieu didn't like that. I kept saying 'it's not windy, don't worry,' but we came down in record time anyway.

I've been looking through the shots we took and I've noticed an important difference between the shots Thieu takes and the ones I take, even when the subject matter is basically the same. Here's my shot of the town hall:



You see, I like to pretend I'm the only tourist in the town. And the only way I can pull that off photographically is to take lots of shots of roofs and sky. Luckily, this was a pretty nice roof. Thieu doesn't care so much about pretending the tourists aren't there. Here's his photo:



Clearly, his is much better. And it's partially because of the tourist in the foreground. Who is he? Is he wandering around on his own? Perhaps he's come to Germany for business purposes, leaving his family behind and when the weekend came he thought 'Well, I may as well do some sightseeing. I probably won't come back again.' Or maybe his wife and small children are sitting in an icecream shop. Who knows?

This is another one of Thieu's:



I love the small, bobbly head in the foreground, but most of all I love the small figure (a kid?) pressed against the wall of the building. What the heck is he doing? Is he kissing the building? Doing push-ups with his nose? I have no idea, and that's why I like it. I also like the man walking past who is staring at the kissing figure, obviously also confused. So I'm going to review my approach to photo-taking at tourist attractions. The tourists will be the attractions from now on.

This is from Rothenburg too:



This is outside a quaint little shop where you can buy mannequins of small girls. I don't look particularly happy with my purchase, do I? But I think it's just that I'm realising that I'm going to have to lug it around for the rest of the day and I'm regretting not taking the shipping option, bugger the expense.

On the way back home the autobahn was so choked with people returning home after the bank holiday weekend that after covering only 20 kms in one hour and having tired of discussing what a Schwein Grippe would be if it were a wrestling move instead of a deadly virus, (we decided it would be when one wrestler grabs hold of the other wrestler's nose) we turned off and hung out in some town whose name I forget that had 1. a playpark and 2. some non-German restaurants. We had Greek food. It was good. And I finally spotted my first socks-n-sandals combo. Nationality of the wearer is unknown, but I have my suspicions.