We were finished with lunch at the Louvre Japanese Restaurant just around the time the Criminal Museum opened for the afternoon.  During the low season, it’s only open for a few hours in the afternoon.  However, if you have any interest in crime and punishment, especially during the medieval era, I would highly recommend visiting the Criminal Museum.  It’s very large and extensive.  We spent over an hour in there and we didn’t read everything.  If you take your time and read all there is, you can easily spend a couple of hours looking at exhibits and learning about the ways people of a bygone era dealt with those who committed offenses.

Below are some pictures I took of some of the more interesting exhibits.  Suffice to say, you had to stay on a straight and narrow path to avoid being publicly humiliated, tortured, or executed.

The outside of the museum.  It’s connected to a church and we heard the organ playing as we passed it before the museum opened.

Throughout the museum, there were cool little exhibits that reminded me of dollhouses.  They showed how people were punished.  Another showed how kids in school were disciplined.

The two above pictures were taken in the very extensive exhibit about the original Martin Luther and the many witch hunts that took place in medieval times.

An executioner’s cloak.

A drunk tank.  Men who drank too much were forced to wear this barrel, sometimes weighted down for extra punishment.

One of many masks worn by people who needed to be shamed.  This one was an especially nasty one.

The above photos depict an exhibit showing how children in school were punished.

An iron maiden.

As a musician, I got a kick out of this device, meant to shame bad musicians.

Admission to the museum is 7,50 euros per adult.  I thought it was well worth the price because it’s so extensive and everything is translated into several languages.  It looked like a number of young kids were also enjoying the exhibits.  We ran into one couple who were telling their sons about the double “violins” people wore that basically yoked two people together who couldn’t get along.  They were forced to wear the device until they stopped fighting.

Another exhibit explained how couples who fought could be shamed.  If a man let his wife beat him, the roof of his house could be torn off.  He and his wife would be publicly punished and they were forced to give their neighbors a tankard of wine.  Premarital sex was also a no no and violators were publicly shamed.  They weren’t allowed to marry in a church.  Instead, they had to marry in an inn.  Later, the husband would go to jail while the wife spent some time in a pillory.

After the Criminal Museum, we went back to Anno 1499 and enjoyed a little CNN and a brief rest.  Bill got some love from our dogs, who were enjoying getting to vacation with us.

Zane isn’t much of a kisser, but when he does kiss you, he does it on the nose.

We decided to have dinner in town, even though I was kind of full from lunch.  Originally, we were going to try an Italian place we saw on Saturday.  I kind of wish we’d done that, since it was rated #1 on Trip Advisor.  Instead, we went to a German restaurant at Hotel Reichskuechenmeister, a place about a block from the Marktplatz.  On the way there, I took more pictures…

More Schneeballen and other baked goodies.

This time of year is nice, if only because it’s dead on a Sunday night and I can get some good night pictures.

Stop right here!  Your dream job (at a bank) awaits!

We decided to eat at the Hotel Reichskuechenmeister because it smelled good.  When we walked inside, I could see the place was pretty full, which is always a good sign.  A waiter opened a small dining room on the side for us.  Although I was tempted by a pasta dish with scallops and shrimps, I decided to have fried carp.  Bill went with goulash made with venison.

Substantial salad I shared with Bill.  It came with my fish.

Bill listens intently as I flap my gums at him.  He’s a good sport.  I had to use the ladies room, which involved taking the elevator to where the guest rooms are.  I guess their public restrooms are being renovated or something because they had what looked like a tiny single hotel room set up as a WC.  They placed a Schrank so that you couldn’t access the room, but I could see it was very small and had a traditional Bavarian twin sized bed in it.

I enjoyed the presentation of my fried carp.  It was position to look like it was jumping out of water.  It tasted good, too… very fresh.  However, there were a lot of bones.

Bill liked his hearty goulash, which included cranberry sauce and spatzle, as well as the dreaded mushrooms I hate.  He had a dark beer with his dinner while I had a glass of locally produced Sylvaner, a crisp white Riesling.

Outside by the front door…  I think we spent about fifty euros on dinner.  It was a pleasant experience.  Next time, we will have to visit the Italian place where we were originally headed.

And a few more window displays…

My last post in this series will be my traditional “what I learned” post…  Stay tuned!