October 5, 2008
Written November 9
Dear Friends and Families,
For our last visit of the three-day weekend we stopped at Dinkelsbühl and "discovered" a wonderfully intact old Bavarian city. In the Middle Ages Dinkelsbühl was a "Free Imperial City", like Ulm and, like Ulm, the center of town was a "Minister" or church, St. George Minister. But today, Ulm has grown to a much larger, modern, city while, in Dinkelsbühl, it was easy to imagine the streets with carts instead of cars and merchants instead of chain stores. |
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Our photo record is mostly of old, restored buildings, and they were everywhere. |
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Many were four- or five-story "merchant houses" that had served as trading centers for local products such as wine or the grains that show up on the town "Waffen" or shield. |
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But there were also many quiet streets and squares where we could see that Dinkelsbühl was a town for real people, not just tourists. |
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However, speaking of tourists, we did take a look at the Hezelhof Hotel, a restoration nice enough to charge admission to their lobby! Actually, the price was for admission AND a glass of wine and that suited us just fine. |
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Of course we had to visit The Minister. As with Ulm's "Minister", the height of the church interior is both amazing and intimidating, as I suppose it was supposed to be. I was particularly taken by some of the old doors, doors that told stories all by themselves. |
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We hope to make Dinkelsbühl one of our stops on a planned 2008 assault on Christmas Markets and then we'll have a different focus than old buildings. For now, we leave with the feeling we've gotten yet another glimpse into why Bavarians view their villages with such pride. They really are gifts from the past.
Take care and stay tuned for our Christmas tours, just around the corner.
John and Marianne.
Town website: http://www.dinkelsbuehl.de