Baumgartner seasons his historical presentation with sly puns and a comic's timing, never lapsing into the excessive earnestness that can afflict some museum docents and role-playing characters

As he leads the way through town, Baumgartner points out evidence of the harshness of medieval life: the protruding attic pulleys residents used to haul up the year's supply of food they kept to guard against famine, the windows through which they tossed household waste down onto the street. That in turn fostered plague and other illnesses, not to mention a pervasive unpleasant odor, especially in hot weather.

"It wasn't romantic at all in the summer in the city," Baumgartner tells the Americans, many old enough to remember the Lovin' Spoonful hit of the same name. "There were no good old days."

He did a riff on how salt came to be the currency of the land in olden times. His "Please don't pay ME in salt" produced chuckles.

It's clear that Baumgartner, 53, is in tune with his audience. He has been at this for 16 years. He lives here and has a shop with his girlfriend that sells fancy clothes, jewelry, gifts and the Night Watchman DVD, produced by Baumgartner and Florida-based Europe tour company.

In the offseason, from the end of December until mid-March, Baumgartner and his girlfriend travel to Thailand and other spots to vacation and buy items for the shop.

He claims not to tire of the watchman tour, though he does vary it. The version I heard, for example, didn't include the town's claim that its Gothic St. Jacob's Church, with magnificent carved altarpiece depicting the 12 apostles, has a rock crystal containing a drop of Christ's blood said to have magical healing powers.

There are other legends — like the 1631 drinking contest, in which a town official supposedly saved Rothenburg from being destroyed by the Catholic army in the Thirty Years War. It's said that he downed three liters of wine in one gulp, besting the conquering general. That victory aside — it's a centuries-old story, but almost certainly untrue — the town was occupied repeatedly during the war and emerged impoverished.

It was rescued a couple of hundred years later by — what else? — the tourist trade. Tourism surged in the 19th century as romanticism, with its appreciation of the past, swept Europe, but the town suffered a setback in World War II, when U.S. bombing destroyed about 40 percent of its buildings and 2,000 feet of its wall.

To pay for reconstruction, Rothenburg began a worldwide fundraising campaign in the 1950s, inviting people to "buy" a 3 feet of its wall; in return, their names and hometowns were carved on it. Eighty Deutschmarks paid for 3 feet then; now it costs more than $1,400, and yes, there's plenty of space for more names.

Visitors walking the wall today can peer through narrow slits through which townsfolk fired arrows at long-ago attackers and a huge stone mask with gaping eye and mouth holes through which residents poured down boiling oil and pitch "to welcome the enemy," as Baumgartner puts it.

Baumgartner makes no apology for the fact that tourism is the town's — and his — lifeblood.

"We just had to wait long enough until the tourist business started, and now we are back, world-famous, rich again, because of you," he tells his appreciative audience.

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His tour typically ends near a pub where part of the building is more than 1,000 years old. The pub's name, Zur Holl, translates as "to hell," and a golden devil cavorts on the sign out front. It's one of the few restaurants in Rothenburg open late at night.

"There's a devil and it's hell, but it's still a nice place," Baumgartner said. "When you walk around our streets and someone tells you go to hell, it's a good recommendation."

Predictable, perhaps, but that line got a laugh, too.

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