August 8 Thursday – Joe and Sam took the train up the river valley to Wimpfen. They started out on foot, and took a peasant’s cart seven more miles to Heilbronn [Rodney 103]. They browsed around the town and admired the old buildings. They ordered red wine at the Hotel zum Falkan but got something different. They discovered the label was wet and had just been applied. Sam wrote in his notebook “2000 labels sent to one American firm so they can furnish any wine desired.” He also noted an unusual ornate clock on Heilbronn’s Rathhaus, built in 1550, which he later put in Chapter 12 of A Tramp Abroad [MTNJ 2: 130]. Sam didn’t sleep well, as he:

…heard the ¼ hours struck & the sweet trumpet blow, from 10.15 to 4.30. Got up in night to get my feather bed & barked my brow on an ornament of the tall stove. I could not do it justice, so said absolutely nothing.

The hotel about 300 years old is a comparatively modern building—but some of the stenches were quite old—they were antiques, I should say [131].