Day 35 (June 6) Alsfeld

Today (Mon) was devoted to heading into the land of Rotkäppchen (Little Red Riding Hood).  While travelling, Monday's are my least favorite days as generally all museums are closed.  Today was no exception.  They were all closed. However, in Alsfeld the tourist information office was open.  But I'm getting ahead of myself.

When we arrived in Alsfeld after a nice ride south from Niedenstein, we found a parking spot and began to remove our motorcycle clothes.  A policeman came up to us and asked if we had a parking permit to which we had to answer, "No".  We then asked where could we park the motorcycle (generally in Europe they can be parked anywhere), and he said they didn't have specific motorcycle parking areas, but we might be able to find something up near the church.  We thanked him, re-geared up and rode a few hundred yards to the church where we found a spot to park.  It was about 100 yards from the tourist information office.  Score!

At the tourist information office we picked up a walking guide that would lead us on a one hour tour of town taking us from place to place where each numbered place was marked with a placard written in German and English.  In all there were 38 stops.

One of the cooler stops was at a fountain in from of a house labelled 'Funk Family' which is our youngest daughter's married name.  Another cool stop was at the birthplace of Dr. George Kober who served at Kamiah during the Nez Perce wars.  He went on to head the medical school at George Washington University and was a key researcher in infectious diseases ( before the end of the 1800's).

The most striking building was the Rathaus which appeared to be built up on stilts to provide for a farmer's market underneath.  We then enjoyed some inexpensive Chinese food at a local restaurant.  

After lunch we toured the local church which was quite plain inside, and then suited up in the 80°f weather in order to ride to the next three cities associated with fairy tales:  Schwalmstadt, Knüwald, and Efze.  The museum was closed in the first city, and the others were only tangentally related to the Grimm's so we did drive throughs before returning to our hotel.  We did note that the grass crops were starting to be cut.  Soon we were back at our hotel where we had pizza for dinner before retiring for the night.  But first, one last food picture from lunch:.