Nordlingen to Friedrichshafen

Town center, Nordlingen.
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From Munich, we rented a car and made the journey to Dachau, where we found it closed.  Whoops.  Undeterred, we headed on up the "Romantic Road" to Nordlingen, a small, barely touristy town entirely closed in by a medieval wall.  Apparently, it´s the only wholly intact town wall in Germany, and we were more impressed than we expected to be.  It also has a cathedral (no!) with a tower you can climb (no!), but the view is indeed, again, impressive!

Next day we headed to Dachau again, which was open this time, but barely.  With just a few hours to get through, we watched the movie, walked around the grounds and spent some time viewing the exhibits.  I think the Holocaust museum in Washington provides a more educational experience, but it was certainly interesting to see this disturbingly mundane place that played a part in such horrid events.

the dutiful monks have been turning out brews fit for the king of kings for going on five centuries

Agriculture-themed statue, Nordlingen.
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From Dachau we continued to Kloster Andechs, where the dutiful monks have been turning out brews fit for the king of kings for going on five centuries now.  Gotta love German Catholics.  The monastery is less a spiritual experience than a carnal one, and here I mean eats and drinks, you dirty buggers.  They have delicious beer, delicious sausages, and beautiful views from their lovely monastery-cum-brewery in the forested hills of Bavaria.  A nearby lake provided some desperately welcome relief from the blistering heat that plagued most of the trip.

View from atop Nordlingen's cathedral tower. Whoah, that's high up!
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Next we hit the Bodensee, aka Lake Constance, which borders with Switzerland.  It´s a beautiful lake and we had a lovely bottle of local wine in the hotel bar, but it was too short a stay for us to make any real judgments.  If forced to state an opinion, I´d lean toward declaring it a tad on the boring side.  But no matter, because we were off on the ferry to Switzerland!