Sunday, 11 June 2006
Another morning train carried me to Regensburg in eastern Bavaria by about 9:15.
When I got off the train, the first impression was that the city was highly efficient and clean-- given the glass-walled bus stops, large boulevards, etc. Walking north along the boulevard leading straight from the train station, I gradually entered into the old town area, where the paved roads were replaced by cobbled roads, and streets became narrower.
At about 10:00, I entered the
Dom--the main church of Regensburg, and was lucky enough
to hear the famous
Domspatzen boys' choir sing. Then I crossed the
Steinerne Bridge, an
old, gently arching stone bridge, overlooking the
Danube River. It was quite rewarding to cross the
bridge and then look back at
Regensburg at a distance.
On the bridge, I prided
myself in holding the first "sustained" conversation in German with an old man, which
consisted of the following:
Old Man: "Japan?"
Kevin: "Kanada."
Old Man: "Kanada ist sehr schön!" (Canada is very beautiful)
Kevin: "Deutschland ist schön auch!" (Germany is beautiful too)
Yay.
Having visited the Porta Praetoria, a gate built by the ancient Romans (the gate was pretty much cast halfway inside a wall, and beyond the ancient gate, there were parked cars--so anachronistically positioned that I was unable to take a good picture of the gate).
Having passed by the Rathaus (Town house), and several bright and open squares, I ended up in the Thurn und Taxis Palace to the south of the city. The guided tour was only in German, so I was offered a tape player, and whenever the guide signalled, I would press start or stop, listening to the English transcriptions. The family that built the palace started its ascent to aristocracy at first by offering the first German postal services-- so efficient that it would only take about four days for urgent mails to go from Brussels to, for example, Vienna. By this time, I was quite used to (and slightly nauseated by) the opulent and lavish decorations in palaces--so I will pass by these in silence. The interesting thing about the tour was that the site of the palace was at first a medieval convent that was closed down. We actually visited the medieval part, and immediately things took on a more distant and remote feel--you could almost feel in the air the burden of the additional few centuries in the medieval part of the palace.
The tour lasted about 90 minutes. After that, I quickly made an excursion to the Neupfarplatz, but all street stands were closed on Sunday (isn't that odd, given that tourists are probably most numerous during the weekend?). But I managed to have a pretzel (which the Bavarians proudly claim as their invention), and took the train at 12:30.