I like to think I’m a sensible person. I don’t take huge risks, I think things through and I generally try to plan for every possible outcome. Yet, somehow, I found myself stranded at a German bed-and-breakfast with no car, no ability to speak the language and about a thousand porcelain dolls for company.
But I’m getting ahead of myself.
Back in college, my mother and I set out together on a trek across Europe. In so many ways, my mother was my best friend—the yin to my yang, the Lorelei to my Rory. We’d been on plenty of road trips within the U.S., each one planned meticulously down to the last detail.
That is where the irony of this story truly lies—the fact that at our core, my mother and I were two of the least spontaneous people you’ll ever meet, but for this particular trip, we decided to “play it by ear.” Despite being deeply inexperienced international travelers, we only planned out the basic route and rough timeline, then left the rest up to fate.
Spontaneity for the uninitiated
For most of the trip, our spontaneity actually worked out great. We came across some truly darling places to stay, saw things that we otherwise would have missed and generally got to have a proper adventure.
However, it was also how we found ourselves driving down a dark road in rural Germany, desperately trying to figure out what the word for “hotel” might be. On the side of the road, there was a large posted map that looked promisingly like it was aimed at tourists, so we stopped to try and decode it as best we could.
While we cursed our high school selves for not learning German, a car pulled up behind us. The man who emerged was tall and broad, and—most concerning for two women standing in the dark in the middle of nowhere—the sort of imposing figure to play the antagonist in a Lifetime movie. Even so, being the proper Midwestern ladies we were, we didn’t want to be rude, so we tried to just ignore him.
That is, until he said the word “hotel.”
While he didn’t speak much English, we spoke absolutely no German, so he still did the heavy lifting in the conversation that followed. Through scattered words, pointing at the map a few times and a flyer, the man managed to tell us he knew a place to stay.
Smiling, he waved to our cars and said, “Follow.”
We did.
Not our best idea… but not our worst, either
Driving into the little town of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, we immediately got lost. The medieval streets twisted and turned and became a maze that we were fairly certain we’d never escape. That was OK, though, because it gave us time to brainstorm about what the headline would be after we got murdered. (My favorite was “Idiotic Americans Drive to Their Doom.”)
When we arrived at our destination, it looked more like a family home than a business. Though it had a small sign, it was made up of unfamiliar German words, so it didn’t help much, except to verify the flyer we’d been given.
Before we could decide to flee after all, a woman emerged who spoke a substantial amount of English. She explained that her husband—our mystery savior—drummed up business for their bed-and-breakfast by waiting where tourists most often arrived by train, bus and car, then offering to bring them to the hotel. It was a fairly lucrative model overall, and we watched it fill up the hotel by the night’s end.
We were so relieved by such a sensible explanation that when the woman told us to hand over our car keys to her husband so that he could park it in their “secret spot,” we were barely even suspicious. All in all, it was starting to feel rather serendipitous… until we went inside.
Every possible surface was covered in porcelain dolls. They lined tabletops and stair steps, shelves and stools. Everywhere we looked, glass eyes stared back at us.
The woman showed us to our room—a space that fell somewhere between “budget hotel” and “last place you’ll ever see.” It was clean and involved a bed (and, of course, we’d hate to be rude), so we went inside. We waited until the woman left, then moved a chair in front of the door while we discussed our likelihood of surviving the night.
The story behind those dolls
We did stay, and we did survive.
By morning, the dolls hadn’t gotten less eerie, but they did finally have an explanation. It only took a few minutes wandering the historic town to realize that many of the surrounding shops were famous for their dolls, and the decoration choice was likely just a way to lean into tourist trade.
We found our car again, too, and it really was in a rather clever secret parking spot.
As for the couple who could-easily-have-been-murderers? They turned out to be some of the sweetest, funniest people we met along our journey.
Even now, when I tell this story, I start it with the caveat that it’s basically a list of all the worst decisions I’ve made in my life. By all rights, things shouldn’t have worked out the way they did. However, it’s one of my favorite memories precisely because it was an unexpected adventure that took us outside of our comfort zone. It was the sort of thing that could only happen by “winging it” along the way, and, though stressful at the time, it’s the sort of memory that makes up a lifetime well lived.
Photo by phM2019/Shutterstock.