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Dinkelsbühl, Germany

We picked a location from the guide book today that would require some travel off the normal train routes and tourist busses. A place guarenteed to be less crowded with the usual camera snapping bunch. Fantastic stuff. We took the train as far as we could then piled into a local bus with a dozen or so school kids on their way home for the day. The drive was as confusing as it was beautiful, narrow, winding roads through farm fields and forests and small towns punctuated with huge wind turbines slowly spinning away in the sun. It was a perfect day to travel. We finnally arrived at our destination and walked the half kilometer or so into the town. Dinkelsbühl is an old walled town, fourteen towers stand around it, each one a bit different from the last. The LP guide says you can walk the walls to see the town but we failed to find any access to the top of the walls that was not either locked or obviously not intended for casual access. The town is part of the Romantic Road and is probably the jewel in the crown of these places. All of the houses within the walls are beautiful, tall, colourful houses. The shops and restaurants are the same and but for a handful of other tourists and backpackers, and a couple of cyclists, we had the place to ourselves. We stopped at a local place and had more delicious food and a couple tall cold glasses of tasty beverage — cola light and not! After the siteseeing we piled back on the bus, back into the closest rail stop and back onto a train to go to Poelling to see Uwe and Simone who offered us lodgings for a couple of days. Things of note: Germany has the solar power/wind power thing figured out. Many of the houses we see on our travels have solar arrays covering the roofs. Lots of commercial buildings have the same. Everywhere we go we see giant wind turbines, ones and twos, off in the distance slowing spinning away. All of the windows, or most, have roll away blinds that provide both protection and privacy. They’re easy to use and help keep sun out in the day and the light out when you want to sleep in complete darkness. Very smart construction. I have to mention again about the value of the eurorail pass. We’ve been able to use it on the highspeed trains (ICE), the regional trains, the U and S Bahn trains, the trams, and busses. With only a couple of exceptions we have paid no extras for any of our transportation on any of the legs of our trip.

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