Tonight in Rothenburg

Summerlike conditions in Rothenburg. Temperature today was nearly 90 and the evening smells like a heavy rain is coming, sometime.
I don’t know, the sky is full of stars. It feels more like August than late May. After doing some work with the Night Watchman on our new film, I joined friends Georg and Martina at the Gasthof Zum Schwan for a couple of beers. The Schwan is on the main street of Rothenburg and the view was fine, up towards the Marktplatz which is illuminated in the evenings. We had our beers and talked Big Ideas, as we usually do when we’re relaxing. “Schnaps Ideen,” is a phrase I just learned from Georg. This means an idea born out of drinking too much. I guess I have plenty of “Schnaps Ideen.” After all, the business I’m in now and which I’ve operated for 20 years was a “Schnaps Ideen.” (Who the heck ever heard of custom-designed, private tours for as few as one person in 1989? I came up with it and it’s the business of European Focus today.) My current daydream is to convert a little hole in the wall across the street into a burger and wurst joint. The problem is, the owner of the house uses the door I’d need for my customers as his entrance to his home. He wouldn’t appreciate people in line for burgers and wurst. Darn it. Another million dollar idea down the toilet. Speaking of the toilet, Rothenburg’s new zillion dollar sewage system, which caused lots and lots of pain on the main street last year with torn up streets during high tourist season and lots of dust has resulted in monumentally smelly sewer grates which on a fine evening like tonight, send tendrils of stomach turning stench up the street to the outside diners. Will this result in a civil engineer being fired?