Susan Finlay Writes ~ Mysteries and Suspense

Shortly after our arrival in the medieval city of Nördlingen, we spotted a huge bird nest on top of the City Hall building. I zoomed in and snapped photos. A stork! That was cool.

But seeing a stork wasn’t the only cool thing about visiting Nördlingen. This Bavarian city is round and still has its original wall with a covered walkway. Of course we had to walk all the way around the city on that walkway. We were exhausted when we finished, but it was well worth it. I took hundreds of photos in Nördlingen.

When I told my son and his girlfriend that I wanted to go there, they answered that it was far away–a two-and-a-half hour trip by subway and then two trains. I wondered if it was worth the time and money to go all that way. But it was more than a medieval city to me–I’d been to one of the city’s gates before, twenty-nine years ago with my mother, her brother and his wife. We’d stopped outside and gazed in but didn’t have time to visit. I was enthralled with what I could see and I told myself that if I ever returned to Germany, I would go to Nördlingen. I guess you could say it was on my ‘bucket list’. That’s not all. I wrote a time travel mystery novel set in Bavaria and I modeled my fictional city on Nördlingen.

As we walked through the town and along the overhead walkway, even my husband was excited. He’d read my book and could imagine the characters there.

One thing I discovered is that the wall’s walked isn’t entirely covered. It wasn’t level, either. There were spots where we had to climb stairs or descend stairs, or where we walked out in the open. In some spots, houses were built right into the lower part of the wall, and we could see their rooftops from the walkway. The old church could be seen from almost anywhere along the walkway.

Something else I noted was that the city had spilled outside of the wall, where more modern buildings dotted the landscape. Along the upper wall were occasional slots where you could look out and see the modern city.

Nördlingen, I discovered, has a large brewery, a canal running through the old city, and many cobblestone streets. Also, I couldn’t help but notice the occasional locked door along the wall’s walkway and my imagination went into gear wondering where those doors led.

I hope you like my photos. To me, this was a fairytale place and I’m thankful to my son and his girlfriend for taking us there.