First, a thought I had yesterday; perhaps my slight melancholy wasn’t actually melancholy. Maybe I’ve just been so happy for the last weeks/months that my scale is skewed: say on an emotional moroseness/happiness scale of -10 to +10 I’ve been fluctuating around a +2 to +8 for the last few months, and maybe now that I’ve slowed down and had a couple boring days I’m back down to a normal (call it an everyday workday) -2 to +2, which by comparison seems sad. I honestly think it’s possible. Anyway…

The day I left Füssen was a boring travel day; 6 hours of mostly doing this:

I switched trains twice and had a quick wander around Nördlingen before getting the next bus. There are a series of picturesque villages that have been linked together into a tourist circuit called the “Romantic Road.” The “Romantische Strabe” extends from Füssen up to Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and Nördlingen is about in the middle.

Nördlingen is one of the few classic Medieval walled towns around here that still have their original walls intact. An Australian that I had breakfast with told me they survived the war (WWII) intact because one of the bomber pilots had visited them previously and spared them for their beauty. I would visit three of these walled towns during my stay here, of which Nördlingen was the biggest. I took an hour long jaunt into the old town center, past the cathedral and the market, and along the top of the wall.

Next was Dinkelsbühl, where I would stay two nights. The train doesn’t run there so I caught the bus and arrived in the late afternoon. The guesthouse I stayed at has a restaurant downstairs and that’s about as far as I got that evening, ordered a tall beer and some perch in butter-balsamic-mushroom gravy with potato pasta and watched the sunset colors on the buildings.

I had a couple of nice long skype talks with dear ones and decided I needed to come up with some kind of adventure to keep me busy. I spent a long while on the internet and determined there is a large National Park close by. On the map it looked like I could get a bus to the next town up and wander in the woods for a bit, which always makes me feel better. But then at breakfast another tourist asked me if I had been to Rothenburg yet, and when I said I hadn’t they were emphatic that I must go; “it is the jewel in the crown!” So I quickly changed my plans to bus to Colmberg and then to Rothenburg from there.

This day was a weird one. I got a bus to Ansbach and had an hour wander before my connecting bus. This town was much bigger and a lot of the pedestrian ways were under construction. I popped into an outdoor store to price a new pair of boots (160€, ouch!), and then got my connecting bus to Colmberg.

I decided to go to Colmberg because that is where the National Park has an information center, which I reasoned would include trail maps and easy access to the park. I was wrong. The office had displays on the plants and tons of environmental leaflets but no maps, and no trailheads in sight. The next bus didn’t come for 2 hours so I walked towards the woods, hoping to find a sign. This was a small town and newly developed, without the charm I expected but I did take note of some thoughtful town planning and pedestrian/cycle only access. While I was walking I suddenly spotted some kind of castle on the hill and decided to check it out; the road I was on petered out into a machinery storage yard so I backtracked.

After walking back through town and up the hill, I was disappointed to find the castle, or “burg” (makes me think of the Hornburg of Tolkein) has been converted into a hotel/restaurant with surrounding golf course. Kind of odd but I did find a little shelter to eat my picnic lunch and enjoy the view of the valley. I was interested to see clearly a series of towns, each maybe 5 k apart, with their own church steeple and surrounding houses and fields. It was easy to picture it being exactly the same hundreds of years ago in the medieval system.

After lunch it was down the hill and back on a bus to Rothenburg ob der Tauber. It was really as beautiful as I had been told (although also overrun by tourists.)

I decided to try to catch the bus that ran once a day directly back to Dinkelsbühl, which gave me only and hour and a half. I grabbed the free map at the tourist center and away I went. While reading the pamphlet as I was walking, I was surprised and ecstatic that the cathedral here is not dedicated to St. George as most of the others have been; this is a church of St. Jacob, St. James, patron saint of my pilgrimage to Santiago de Compostela, Spain. Subsequently it was the only thing I wanted to see and I headed directly there, welling up with unexpected emotion. I paid the 2€ to get in, which I am generally against on principal, found a pew and sat. And as I was kneeling, praying, and feeling, I was brought back to what is important. Feeling positive, rejuvenated and more my normal self I looked around the church and read that not only has it been a pilgrimage site for those headed to Santiago de Compostela, but it also houses a Holy Relic; a drop of Jesus’ blood from the crucifixion. The supposed blood is contained in a crystal capsule, set in a reliquary cross (circa 1270) and displayed in an enormous woodcarving masterpiece. Regardless of wether you believe the relics are “real,” I find there is often power in anything that has been a focus of prayer for ages. I said my prayers and was emotional again.

I did not want to leave the church but neither did I want to spend unnecessary time on more buses. I took a long way back to the station to see a few more sites listed on my map, and got there with time to spare. But the bus didn’t come. After 20 minutes of waiting and feeling frustrated that I had rushed out of town for nothing, I caught the next bus south, took it to the end and then connected with a bus back to Dinkelsbühl. A strange, long day visiting 4 towns in 8 hours. But I was feeling good again. I stopped in two bakeries on my way back to the hotel for an early dinner which included raspberry cake and something called a blackberry “butterplunder,” which I plundered. My stomach satisfied, I washed up and then went for a walk around town. I had noticed last night that the place quiets down considerably while everyone is in restaurants eating dinner, and I had a beautiful evening following the walls all the way around, again admiring the golden sunset against the towers and buildings, alone on ancient cobblestone streets.

I want to say thank you to a few people who have sent me supportive messages or comments in the last week. (Hilal, Janet, Kelly, The Clarks, Robin, etc) They mean so much to me!