Dinkelsbühl

Here are some touristy photos of Dinkelsbühl, in Bavaria, that I took on 12 August 1999.

Dinkelsbühl is one of a string of attractive little towns laid out along what's ominously called romantische Straße (romantic road). It's not a road; rather, it's an itinerary devised to string together spots of different kinds of attractiveness. The ne plus ultra of these is Rothenburg ob der Tauber, which sounded as if it would be terminally touristified in August. We thought we'd instead go to nearby Nördlingen and Dinkelsbühl, but were running short of time (and getting bored of zooming along the autobahns) so narrowed it down to Dinkelsbühl alone.

All three towns are excellently preserved (say the guidebooks), though Rothenburg is partly rebuilt after bombing. Dinkelsbühl may be touristy but it handles this well. The tourist-oriented shops are restrained for the most part, and we actually bought stuff. And with a theatre, etc., the town certainly offers more than the obvious. It's helped by its slightly odd topography; arriving and parking as we did, we had a long walk downhill to the centre.

On the outskirts of town is a factory making three-wheelers for eternal adolescents (perhaps those without the sense of balance needed for a much more easily parked two-wheeler).

Your average town street. I could easily have taken a lot more photos of the townscape (even some interesting ones). Certainly the town is photogenic. I don't know -- maybe I just wasn't in a very photographic mood that day.

The door at the top of the steps up the tower of the surprisingly large Münster St Georg, and two views from the top.

One thing you must see in the church is a panel of twenty paintings that depict the ten commandments and the consequences of disobeying each. Yes, you have plagues of (extraordinarily large) locusts and other happenings that make Hollywood's "apocalyptic" efforts look unimaginative. Unfortunately the panel is small and situated high up. It's easy to miss it completely; and when at last you find it, it's hard to view. Moreover, the only image I could find of it was a postcard showing all twenty. The Katholisches Pfarramt might consider having posters printed up.

An appallingly fuzzy photo of a Reutersvärd tri-bar in the garden of Museum 3 Dimension (which we didn't enter as it's pricy), and a wider view so you can see how the tri-bar works. (Now, if I were only a Serious Student Of Literature, I'd say I'd "deconstructed" the tri-bar.) If the building seems atypical of a museum, that's because it was built as the Stadtmühle (town mill); and lying outside the town walls, this building had to be fortified.

Two thousand years of world history, on mugs for sale near the centre. And who's bigger than Napoleon? Why, Helmut Kohl, of course! (We should be grateful it's not Franz-Josef Strauss.)

Any comments? Corrections? Write to me (Peter Evans), or tell the whole world.

First created -- in home-devised cookie-cutter style (batch files and lean, mean software) -- on 7 January 2000. Last fiddled with: 26 January 2000.