Places
Unterdorn
The village below the dam, with one bridge out
Unterdorn is the village below the dam in the Dorn valley. It sits where the valley briefly opens up before closing again: houses along the river and the one road, a church, a square with an inn and a bus stop, a school 100 meters from the river with a sports field on the bank. The fire station is on the other side of the one-lane bridge. The municipality has 2,812 residents, just under 2,000 of them in the village itself. The front doors sit three or four steps above the street. On the slope behind the church, a former schoolhouse now holds a nursing home with 47 beds. For twelve kilometers, a single road is the only way out of the valley.
First encounter
- First noticed: “Unterdorn was a place that didn’t hurry.”; two old men on the bench outside the inn, watching the unfamiliar car go by
- Object: the sign at the bridge, “7.5 tons max.”
Connected to
- The DornA short, fast mountain river, dammed above a village
- Dorn Reservoir (Dam and Power Plant)Reservoir, dam, and a power plant deep in the mountain
- The Town at the ConfluenceWhere the valley ends and the only road leads
- Lena VossOceanographer at the ICRU in Hamburg, following a falling line
Spoiler-free. This describes the starting point of the book named, without its major twists or resolutions.