The boat ride was nice, but I found it to be cold and it was threatening to rain so I was nervous that we would be caught in the rain

Actually, I found ordering food in Germany much more difficult than in the other countries we have been b/c Germanic names for food were hard to make out while romance language food I could figure out (even though, English is a Germanic language). A lot of English food words came from French, similar to Spanish which I know a lot of food words

It had a nice view of the valley and Danube

We got sick of German food very fast

Stop complaining

Regensburg: Day 2 and Environs

This is what we saw everyday...for two weeks

Let's talk about German breakfast. During the Berlin trip mentioned above I came to know it as a meatgasm. I had had fifteen different meats to choose from, and each one more horrible than the last. At this hotel, however, there was a mere five meats to choose from. And thus we ate the first of many breakfasts consisting of:

  • Barely cooked hard-boiled eggs that Lin-Wei would de-shell and then not eat
  • A salami, cheese, and cucumber sandwich for Lin-Wei, with juice
  • A coffee, danish, and bad, barley-type chocolately flake cereal for me, with juice

Rinse and repeat for two weeks.

After breakfast we drove to the city of Kelheim, about an hour away, from which we would take a boat ride up the Danube to a monastery where they brew their own beer. How cool is that! Parking was interesting. The ticket lady at the boat booth told me to park in some gravel area under the highway overpass, where it was free. It was kinda fenced off, but lots of cars were parked there. So that's where I left our Leon.

Boating up the Danube

I had put Lin-Wei in charge of getting tickets, but I could see the ticket lady and Lin-Wei were at a bit of an impasse as to whether or not our ticket covered a return trip, but we sorted it all out (it did).

The boat ride was cold, but relaxing. And we saw some neat cliffs and other various river sites. Disembarking at the monastery we went for a short walk, but seeing the crowds building up on the path we figured we'd better get to the beer hall ASAP and get a beer in my belly before the crowds got there.

I've found that when going to a foreign country it is a really good idea to become fluent in the local language. It's just a theory of mine. But if that is not possible, you really only need to learn roughly ten words / phrases:

  • Yes
  • No
  • Please
  • Thank You (very much)
  • Hello (optional: good morning / good day / good evening)
  • Goodbye
  • One
  • Two
  • Three
  • Do you speak English?
  • The bill (optional. You can usually just pantomime writing into your hand)

I can currently say these ten things in seven languages. I can also usually figure out what is fish and what is chicken on a menu, with about a 15% margin of error (Schinken is actually Ham).

Beer! Bier! Beer!

So anyway, I ordered "ein" beer, "bitte", and said "danke" when it was delivered. I then took a surreptitious look at the guidebook to relearn "Die rechnung, bitte" so that I could ask for the bill.

Noticing many of the patrons finishing up and hurrying to the pier, we figured we'd better get down there too so as not to miss the boat, so I slammed the rest of my beer, and we hurried down to the dock (with me burping the entire way).

The ride back was much faster, due to the strong current of the Danube, and we saw some crazy circular building up on a very steep hill, somewhat near the parking lot. "I wonder if we could hike up there?" Lin-Wei mused. Unfortunately for her, anti-Acrocorinth statutes had been in place since 2004, which forbade the hiking up of steep hills to structures on said hills, if an alternate means of transport exists. What that means is, we drove our lazy asses up there. Thanks Leon!

Please tell me we can hike up there

The building itself was some weird monument commemorating the defeat of Napoleon in 1815, called the Befriungshalle. We couldn't pronounce it, but the inside was neat, filled with some very large winged statues. There were also stairs for us to climb, a staple of any Bonney vacation.

After some lunch there (my second Weiner schnitzel in a row) we headed off towards something called Walhalla. "The mythological home of the Norse gods!?" you ask. Yep. And by 'yep' I mean a replica of a Greek temple built by King Ludwig I, and inside they tell us are busts of famous Germans from throughout the ages. We wouldn't know since it cost a lot of Euromarks to get in there, so we just traipsed about the grounds for an hour.

It had already been nearly a day on vacation, and we had as of yet gone on no epic hikes. So, one was quickly ordered up, delivered, and lamented. We arrived back in Regensburg and proceeded to tour every last inch of the old town. Every square, every bridge, every park, and we were even accosted by a homeless German guy in a native American outfit. He kept yelling at us to notice him, for as Americans, only we could truly appreciate his attire. We hurried on.

No vacation is complete w/o the sunset mode

Dinner that evening was at a small restaurant in a hotel off the main square, where I consumed my THIRD Weiner schnitzel in a row, this time with a nice mushroom reduction. Very tasty that, but anti-Weiner schnitzel statutes were soon to be put into effect. Afterward we admired the sunsets.

Writing this I figured we must have stayed three nights in Regensburg, since there was no way we could see all those sites, and go on that epic hike all around Regensburg in only two days. But Expedia.com confirms that we were only there two nights. I suppose it was good foreshadowing for the rest of the vacation...

Freedom in the wilderness. And canoes.

Copyright (c) The Sticklers 2006