Regensburg Abenteuer No. 3

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Well here I am in my very own Bayerische Groundhog Day adventure, for the third time in Regensburg ostensibly learning to speak German.

Füssball fever has really hit the town with the Weltmeisterschaft only a few days away, and the black, gold and red German flags are springing up everywhere, hanging from windows or adorning cars and even bicycles and perambulators.

However the big question on everybody's lips is 'ob Deutschland gewinnen wird' - whether Germany will win...

The Regensburgers are curiously apprehensively confident about Germany's chances, a little doubtful initially, but then exuding an unwavering certainty that the team will do well. When they quickly discover you are an Auslander - usually as soon as you say something to them - they anxiously ask your opinion, and then look most downcast if you say you think Brazil, Spain or Argentina could be potential gewinners but fail to say what they really want to know - whether you think Germany will win.

A Bayer - a gentleman from Bavaria, a lady would be a Bayerin - whom I met in a pub explained the prevailing Bavarian opinion on the matter...

He told me that although everyone in Germany knows that they have no real world class players, they do have a good team setup that they think should at least carry them through to the semifinals, but they will probably need a lot of luck if they are to win it. However he seemed to be very pleased that everyone appears to have completely written off England's chances...

The ex-pat Englanders in Murphy's Law pub in Spiegelgasse are not feeling particularly bullish about their chances, even with the talismanic Rooney in the team. On the other hand the American ex-pats are quietly confident of causing an upset in their opening fixture against England on Saturday.

Mike, the owner of Murphy's Law, has promised a free beer for every goal the US score against England - well after all he is Irish...

I am hoping for at least 7-0 and free beer all night...

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WEDNESDAY 2nd JUNE 2010 - MUNICH

There has been a remarkable change in the weather this past week. I arrived in München on Wednesday evening 2nd of June to torrential rain and unseasonably cool temperatures. However on Friday morning the sun, which had been posted missing for several days, made a very welcome return, and since then the temperatures have been in the high 80s.

The flight left Edinburgh Airport at 5.45pm in bright sunshine and landed at 8.40pm midst lowering grey clouds and torrential rain at München Flughafen. It was only a two-hour flight, but as Germany was an hour ahead of BST I had to adjust my watch, although my clever Sony-Ericsson mobile updated itself automatically to the correct time and date on Vofafone.de when I switched it back on again in the terminal building.

I had enrolled for the third time for another four week course attempting to learn German at the Horizonte Sprachschule in Rote Hahnen Gasse in Regensburg. I had visited Germany a couple of times on holiday but had never been to Bavaria.

Germany 1976 - Kaub-am-Rhein - A Wrong Turning - Kassel

The first time I went to Germany was in 1976 when I toured through Belgium Germany and Holland with a couple of friends - Tommy and Alex - and Alex's Ford Escort. We drove off the ferry at Europort in Holland, spent a couple of days in Belgium at Namur, crossed the German border and drove down the Rhine valley before stopping for the night at a campsite in Kaub-am-Rhein.

It is a very picturesque little town on the eastern side of the Rhine river, halfway between Koblenz and Wiesbaden, and just a few miles from the famous Lorelei rock upon which the legendary siren was said to have sat and bewitched sailors on passing boats, luring the poor wretches to their doom on the rocks below...well, according to Heinrich Heine she did.

It was the first time in Germany for all three of us, and after finding the campsite up the hill just outside the town we pitched the tent and headed off to find out what the town had to offer in entertainments. We soon found a pub with a wonderful view of the Rhine and consumed several halblitres of excellent beer with considerable enthusiasm. A few hours later we meandered outside and larked about on the famous field guns in the town centre, sitting on them and shouting "Fire!" very loudly, to the consternation of the locals who had probably never seen inebriated Scots-on-holiday in action before.

As Alex was the driver Tommy and I took turns in the front seat and acted as navigator. So the following morning it was Tommy's turn to sit in front and he had the maps I had provided for the trip. We headed through the pouring rain down the Rhine and arrived at the complex of roundabouts outside Wiesbaden, where Tommy proceeded to give Alex precise directions for the right road to take us south-east to Wurzburg.

After we had been driving for about ten minutes, Alex equably pointed out to Tommy's surprise that instead of going south-east, according to his car compass we appeared to be heading in a generally north-easterly direction.

Tommy indignantly insisted there must be something wrong with either the compass or the maps, and tossed them to me in the back seat to see if I could make any sense of them. I couldn't figure which wrong turning we had taken either, but it seemed reasonable to carry on until we came to a town we recognised the name of.

We carried on the mystery tour until we were driving past a town called Giessen, and Alex asked if there was a town with a campsite not too far away. I scanned the map and spotted a town called Kassel a hundred and twenty kilometres distant near the East German border. It seemed to be an interesting name for a town, so we made that the day's destination, and drove on through the constantly driving rain and arrived a couple of hours later.

So by a quirk of map-reading fate I missed my chance to visit Bavaria, and it would be another thirty years before I finally made it there.

Camp Fulda

We found a campsite a mile from the town centre - a rather forbidding-looking place called Camp Fulda, after the river that flowed through the town. We thought it must have been a former Kriegsgefangenerlager, as it was surrounded by a barbed wire fence. We laughed and joked in schoolboy fashion about starting a tunnel.

We completed the campsite registration formalities, which were very strictly observed with the brusquely-efficient chap on reception noting all our details on the form - names nationalities and passport numbers. Having completed the preliminaries to his satisfaction he gave us our Platz number and we went back to the car and drove off to find our allotted space. We found it quite quickly and plonked our tent down in a very damp patch of grass, but at least it wasn't very far from the toilets.

The site was fairly quiet for the time of year, with only a few caravans and the odd tent dotted about here and there. It might have looked nice on a sunny day as it was located right by the river with plenty of trees and large grassy spaces, but in the dreich damp conditions it didn't appear all that attractive.

The rain had finally stopped and we cooked a meal of corned beef and beans outside the tent, amid comments about the typically German strict administrative measures, and joked about asking the Kommandant for permission to go into town for a beer later. There was a restaurant on the campsite, but to save money for beer we had decided to cook our own food on the two Camping Gaz stoves. We had visited a large Hypermarket in Wiesbaden and had stocked up on enough tins of corned beef and beans to keep us going for a month. Luckily we all liked corned beef and beans...

We washed the plastic plates, cutlery and single cooking pot, packed everything away and then inflated our airbeds with the rubber foot pump which we called the duck because of the strange quacking sound it made when being operated. We put them into the tent with our sleeping bags on top and we were ready to go.

Then we headed into town...

Rufen die Polizei an!

Our knowledge of the cultural delights of Kassell were almost nil. According to the brief description on the side of the map Kassell's main claim to international stardom was as the home for the Brothers Grimm when they were collating their famous Marchen. The town also supplied a lot of soldiers for the British during the American War of Independence - Hessians they were called - from Hesse. It was also fairly well trashed during the Zweitere Weltkrieg by British and American bombers, but was completely rebuilt during the 1950s.

After we had walked for about twenty minutes we found a dark and cosy little bar in a side street with the obligatory pine wooden furniture. We entered and sat down at an empty table. Alex, who had been doing all the driving and therefore hadn't been able to drink very much as a consequence, decided he was going to really enjoy himself as we were staying two nights.

After a few hours quaffing beer and in a fit of inebriated bonhomie we decided to try some Schnapps with our beer and Alex ordered three large measures. Tommy and I took a sip but didn't fancy the taste at all, but Alex took both our glasses laid them out in front of him, and proceeded to down all three one after another, putting the last empty glass down on the table with a flourish to the astonishment of some hearty German locals sitting at the next table, who cheered loudly and applauded his sterling effort. Alex modestly inclined his head in acknowledgement and looked quite pleased with himself...

A couple of hours later at one in the morning as the pub was closing, Tommy and I, although rather worse for wear ourselves, helped a by now exceedingly inebriated Alex to his feet and carried him to the door. We said "Auf Wiedersehen" to the barman and set off on the stagger back to the campsite. How we managed to find the right road back to the campsite still remains a mystery, but we headed off in the vague general direction from whence we had come.

Somewhere along the road as we were meandering slowly through a quiet residential area, we decided to regale the locals with a rendition of the perennial favourite of drunken Scots abroad - Flower of Scotland. We must have been very loud and riotously off key and some outraged music-loving resident must have phoned the police, as a few minutes later a pee-pawing police car zoomed along the road toward us and stopped immediately opposite.

There were two cops inside and one rolled down his window and understandably rather gruffly asked us something in German. Tommy and I carefully supporting the inebriated Alex between us regarded one another quizzically puzzling over what he had just asked us. Tommy was the only one with even the merest smattering of German, but to my surprise he turned to me and asked 'Wha...Wha's he saying...?' Having no German at all I naturally responded that I had no idea. Alex the Coatbridge policeman, was beyond all appreciation of the situation and merely grinned around him benevolently.

Tommy said to me 'ashk...ashk him what he wants'. So ever-willing to oblige I relinquished my grip on Alex and leaving him in Tommy's capable hands I staggered over to the car. I leaned in the car window and breathed beery fumes over the two cops, who naturally reeled back in their seats. Summoning my last vestiges of sobriety and meaning to ask therm if they could speak English I blurted out the only German I could remember 'Sprechen sie Deutsch?' I asked confidently of the two very German policemen. They looked at one another and as Tommy helped Alex lurch over to the car one of them asked me 'Sind sie Englander?'

Wir sind Englander Nicht!

Having grown up with Commando war comics I knew what an Englander was, and naturally this grave insult to the honour of Scotland could not go unchallenged. So Tommy and I launched into an indignant drunken riposte with vociferous denials that we could possibly be Englanders and that we were most definitely Schottlanders, with Alex obviously wishing to join in the general protestations adding a drunken 'Ja!' to everything we said to emphasise his indignation as well.

After all as Tommy explained later, '...how could they possibly think we were English when we had been singing Flower of Scotland...?' The two cops must have been completely fed up with us and instead of throwing the three of us in the clink overnight, they mustered what little English they had and asked us where we were staying. Tommy replied confidently 'Der Campingplatz', adding the 'Der' with a linguistic flourish to impress them with his masterly grasp of the Sprache. The campsite was fortunately only a couple of hundred yards away. The cops sternly said to us 'You vill be quiet...ja?', and ever-obliging we proceeded to shush one another loudly and drunkenly, making even more noise than before, and at that the cops decided to make a break for it and drove off at speed into the distance.

We resumed our stagger back to the campsite but out of consideration for the sensibilities of the local residents we refrained from reprising our singing. At the campsite gate we showed our tent ticket to the vigilant watchman who was accompanied by a very large growling German-Shepherd guard dog. Both he and the dog looked at us with deep suspicion, but he eventually opened the gate and let us in. In the darkness of the big campsite we stumbled aound for ten minutes trying to remember where our tent was located, before Tommy had a brainwave and remembered that all the places were arranged with letters and numbers which were printed on the ticket, so he fished it from his pocket and we triumphantly staggered over to our dark tent, opened the fly and gratefully flopped down on our sleeping bags and slept the sleep of the drunken righteous.

The following morning in the cold light of day when we reviewed the events of the previous evening's debauch, Alex said he wondered what he would have done as a policeman if he came upon three very drunk foreigners in Glasgow who were making a lot of noise and then asked him if he spoke English...

We drove on to Bielefeld and spent a couple of happy days there, and then went on to Arnhem, Amsterdam and Rotterdam which were interesting in their own way, but we all agreed that our brief few days in Germany had definitely been the most enjoyable.

Englander oder Schottlander

It wasn't until I was in Regensburg that I discovered one of the many linguistic quirks of German. When introducing myself to the class in Horizonte, I naturally enough said I was 'ein Schottlander', on the reasonable premise that an Englishman was 'ein Englander'. I was swiftly disabused of this notion by the Lehrerin who informed me that I was not a Schottlander at all but 'ein Schotte'. Naturally I was a little nonplussed and the Lehrerin couldn't explain to me why Scots weren't called Schottlanders, she just said that was the rule...and who was I to even consider flouting a rule in Germany...

I went back to Germany in 1994 and enjoyed a two-week cycling holiday entlang the Rhine and Mosel river valleys. The relaxed atmosphere and the friendly people we met contributed to a very enjoyable experience - the excellent local beer probably helped as well. The German people we met were for the most part very friendly and helpful, and as far as I was concerned they couldn't have been nicer to two Auslanders who couldn't speak the language.

Pickelhaubes at the Ready

They certainly weren't anything like the familiar image of coal-scuttle helmet wearing Teutons, ready at the drop of a Pickelhaube to invade any country they felt required a touch of old-fashioned Teutonic discipline to set them to rights. I spoke some schoolboy French and Spanish but in April 2008 when I retired, I decided to broaden my horizons by adding to my meagre linguistic achievements and learn to speak German, and by staying for a month in Regensburg I thought it would give me a better appreciation of the place and the people.

Don't Mention the War

I had the merest smattering of the Sprache gleaned from war films and the comics I read as a boy a few years after the end of the Zweiten Weltkrieg - The Victor, Hotspur, Hornet, Eagle and Valiant - and the even more intensely jingoistic, patriotic and heroic Commando series which you could buy for a shilling. These avidly-read publications were positively bursting with uplifting tales of heroic exploits and derring-do by courageous, upstanding and plucky Brits against wicked and dastardly Huns, or short-sighted, bespectacled and buck-toothed Japanese.

The Germans uttered guttural Teutonic phrases like - 'Gott in Himmel!, Achtung! Spitfeuer! - 'Ach! Englander, für sie der Krieg ist vorbei!', while the Japanese, obviously having nothing better to do, malevolently brandished Samurai swords and screaming 'BANZAI!' at the top of their lungs launched relentless suicidal assaults against stoically heroic and heavily-outnumbered British soldiers, who mowed them down in their thousands with good British Vickers machine guns that seemed just made for the job.

From today's perspective those comics seem almost ludicrously jingoistic. The message they peddled to young and impressionable minds was that the Germans and the Japanese - but principally the Germans - were irredeemably wicked, hell-bent on invading their neighbours and slaughtering millions of people they didn't like without the slightest qualms of conscience, while Great Britain and the Commonwealth, with the emphasis on the 'Great', was a beacon of civilised moral superiority, dedicated to the selfless protection of the weak and helpless in the face of barbaric Teutonic aggression.

Oh, and of course the Americans and the Russians helped...just a little...but we were also encouraged never to forget that the Communist Russians had colluded with Nazi Germany in the invasion of Poland in 1939, so they weren't to be trusted either...

It was only when I studied history at school, that I discovered to my consternation that Japan had actually been our ally in the First World War - when we started numbering them - and we had been allies with Prussia and Russia against Napoleon and the French in 1815, and allies with Turkey and France against Russia during the Crimean War in the 1850s...what a confusing scenario...I mean what is the point of teaching us to believe the Germans and Japanese are the very dregs of humanity when they can be so perverse as to actually be on our side...well...occasionally...

In between times I picked up some German from working in a Music Library and listening to German Lieder and Wagner and Strauss Operas.

Wo soll ich gehen zu lernen, Deutsch zu sprechen? - Where should I go to learn to speak German?

Having looked at all the various language school options in Germany and Austria, I finally decided on Bavaria as a destination, mainly because I could get a reasonably inexpensive direct flight with Easyjet from Edinburgh to Munich. No other airline flew direct to Germany from Scotland and our national airline - British Airways - required a connecting flight from either Heathrow or Gatwick, entailing a six to ten-hour journey, which was quite ridiculous as well as being much more expensive. There was a Eurostar train from Glasgow to Brussels via London, but that option entailed catching various connections on the journey from Brussels to Regensburg and it took an interminably long time and so just priced itself out of the equation.

Bavaria Beckons

I had never been to Bavaria however it evoked pleasant images of beer, Lederhosen, Dirndls and Schnee-bedecked soaring Alpine Mountains, and according to the White Beer Travels on the web, it was a beer-lover's Paradise - a not inconsiderable inducement.

Regensburg is a smallish city by German standards with about 140,000 inhabitants, situated on the northernmost point of the Danube on its long journey to the Black Sea, about 90 kilometers north of München. It is still referred to occasionally as Ratisbon, which is the old Celtic name for the town. I had heard of Ratisbon before from a half-remembered fragment of a Robert Browning poem, called prosaically enough, 'Incident of the French Camp' which I had read at school. It related the story of a young gravely-wounded French soldier, bringing the important news to Napoleon that Ratisbon had been taken by the French during the siege in 1809, and then having delivered his important message to the great man he promptly dropped dead. I could only remember the last line of the poem -'"I'm killed sire". And his chief beside, smiling the boy fell dead'.

Browning didn't happen to mention Napoleon's reaction to the lad's unfortunate sudden demise, but I imagine he would have felt quite pleased at securing Ratisbon as a strategic crossing point on the Danube, little realising it would all end in tears in 1812 during his retreat from Moscow. I had always wondered where Ratisbon was located, figuring it to be somewhere in Mitteleuropa and didn't connect it with the town called Regensburg until researching language schools in Germany.

On scouring the internet for information about Regensburg, I found it had recently been awarded UNESCO cultural heritage status, because it had a largely intact medieval city centre, which had miraculously escaped destruction from the bombing that had decimated so many German cities during the Zweiten Weltkrieg. There was also the small matter of the old stone medieval bridge straddling the Danube, which was completed in 1146 and constituted a marvel of medieval engineering. Its construction meant that it was the only bridge over the Danube between Ulm and Vienna, and accordingly became of great importance to Regensburg, which flourished economically for the next few hundred years, becoming a centre for trade and political importance.

The Romans had left their mark on the place when Marcus Aurelius, taking a break from fighting the Parthians, built a stone camp on the south bank of the river, the remains of which can still be seen in Schwibboggen near the river. Regensburg lies where the river Regen joins the Danube, hence the name, but apparently there had been a Celtic settlement there hundreds of years before Marcus Aurelius arrived called Radasbona, so it had been a popular spot for a good while before I took an interest in the place.

It all seemed most intriguing, and although there were any number of language schools dotted about Germany and Austria, many of them seemed to be pitched at their preferred clientele of young people. I wanted to go somewhere there would be at least a few people of my vintage. It was possible to book courses for over-50s, but I thought that would be worse than being with a crowd of fresh-faced youngsters. Horizonte seemed to tick all the right boxes for me. Additionally Horizonte was an independent school and not affiliated with a travel agency, which seemed to be the case with many of the other language schools, so I took the plunge and booked a four-week general language course for June 2008.

Despite my misgivings about being unfamiliar with the language and my ability to live on my own in a foreign country for a month, I thoroughly enjoyed the time I spent there that wonderfully warm and sunny June. I had such a good time that I went back the following year at the same time for another four-week course. I learned some basic phrases and Grammatik the first sojourn at the school, but my linguistic limitations were cruelly exposed on the few occasions I tried to speak German. Fortunately for me many Bavarians and Regensburgers spoke excellent English, and were most helpful and friendly and somehow I muddled through.

The Regensburg Bio-Laden Fiasco

On one occasion in 2008 in a fit of healthy inspiration I went into a little Bio-Laden - wholefood shop - in Gesandtenstrasse, and confidently selected a number of healthy items including organic milk and organic tomatoes and marched over to the checkout. The young lady at the till rang up my goods with brisk efficiency, I handed over the money, she gave me my change and just as I prepared to escape with my booty, she asked me a question...

With my mind racing frantically trying to work out what she had just said, and with the inevitable queue of people building up behind me I replied 'Bitte?' She repeated the same unintelligible question to me and waited patiently for my answer. I couldn't for the life of me work out what it was she had said, so with my flimsy linguistic defences in complete tatters I crumpled and asked her 'Sprechen sie Englisch?' and she calmly responded in perfect English 'Would you like a plastic bag?' Burning with the shame of linguistic humiliation I responded 'Nein, danke' and practically ran out of the shop and never went back...

The dialect of German spoken in Bavaria I found hard to understand, and the fact that in German the verb always seemed to come at the end of the sentence left me totally bemused, as I was so used to thinking in a linear English way. However the beer - particularly the Helles - was wonderful, and I just loved the Bayers' joie de vivre, bonhomie and cheerful, helpful and polite disposition.

The town centre is very compact and mostly flat, with the picturesque old medieval houses packed into narrow Gasschen - small lanes - and large open squares, although they are more oblong than square. There are loads of shops and a satisfyingly high concentration of drinking establishments. Additionally the centre is not generally open to traffic, being a large pedestrian zone or Füssgängerzone, which means it is ideal for pedestrians and bikes which are everywhere.

Regensburg Biergärten

In summer the preferred drinking establishments are the tree-lined Biergärten just over the old stone bridge on the north side of the river - the Goldene Ente, Alte Linde and the Spitalgarten. There are a number of other Biergärten dotted about here and there in the main part of town, but sitting under shady trees by the banks of the Danube drinking superb Helles beer is a most pleasant and relaxing way of passing a quiet warm and sunny evening.

The Biergärten serve food as well, usually very filling local Bavarian dishes like Würste and Schnitzels with French fries or chips, but it is most definitely waiter/waitress service only. You pick an empty table sit down and wait for the Kellner/Kellnerin to come and take your order. Normally if you ask for a beer you will most likely be served a Helles unless you specify a different type of beer, like a Weisse or Dunkel for instance.

The prices are very reasonable and compare most favourably with Munich prices, which are at least twenty per cent higher. The normal measure served in the Biergärten is a half litre unless you specify a Maß, which is a litre. During beer festivals the normal measure is a litre, and in Oktoberfest in Munich a litre is all you get even if you ask for a soft drink. Most of the waitresses speak only German, but you can always point to the menu to indicate your preference.

Der Alte Linde - The Old Linden Tree

The Alte Linde - old Linden tree - just across the old stone bridge on the north side of the river lies in the most favoured spot for a Biergarten with a superb view of the river and the town dominated by the twin spires of the Dom. The aforementioned Linden trees provide welcome shade from the sun on hot afternoons, although it can be a little hazardous leaving your beer uncovered during the autumn when the leaves are falling fairly regularly. It serves Kneitinger beer, which is a locally produced brew, and normally if you asking for 'ein Helles' you will be served their Kneitinger Edel-Pils which is slightly more bitter than a classic Helles and has a nice clean fresh flavour.

The Spitalgarten

The Spitalgarten just a little farther on over the bridge has been located on the same spot for hundreds of years and used to be a hospital that served beer to the patients when beer was considered to have health-giving properties, and they actually still brew their own beer on the premises. Their Helles is superb, light and very refreshing. It too has a large open-air Biergarten with lots of shady trees and a nice view of the town, and they often serve daily 'specials' of enormous portions at very cheap prices.

Der Goldene Ente - The Golden Duck

The Goldene Ente - Golden Duck - is on Badstrasse, just a little farther along the river from the two bigger establishments. It claims to be the oldest Wirtshaus - tavern - in Regensburg. The tree-lined garden area is a little smaller than the others but cosier and more sheltered, with high walls surrounding the beer garden, although this also blocks the view of the Danube.

The Biergärten are usually open during the Spring and Summer months and closed from October to April, although it is possible to sit inside in Autumn and Winter. The popularity of the Biergärten in the summer means that the pubs suffer from a lack of business and only properly liven up when the Biergärten close at 11.00pm.

Arrival at München Flughafen - The S-Bahn to the Hbf

We touched down in the torrential rain without mishap at 8.40pm German time, despite my natural pessimism which successfully conjured up apocalyptic visions of the plane aquaplaning across the tarmac and crashing headlong into the adjacent fields.

München Flughafen is actually called Franz Josph Strauss airport after the Bavarian politician who was head of the CDU, and it is located about 18 miles from Munich itself. It was decided to locate the airport so far away from the city to minimise inconvenience to residents with the high volume of aeroplane traffic day and night.

Construction began on the sprawling site near Freising in the early 1980s, and it was eventually completed in 1992 when it finally opened. It is now second only to Frankfurt airport in terms of volume of air traffic in Germany. There is an underground S-Bahn that conveys passengers to Munich in about forty five minutes, and for those wishing to go farther afield, there is a bus service to Freising about fifteen minutes away where trains connect to Regensburg, Vienna and Prague.

When our plane finally came to a halt, there was the usual frenzy of activity of people grabbing their belongings from the overhead lockers desperately trying to be first off the plane. I couldn't understand why there was all this frantic activity as we all had to be transported to the terminal building together anyway, so I just sat in my seat until the doors opened and people started wending their way down the stairs towards the two buses that were waiting to transport us to the arrivals terminal.

Amongst the last to leave the plane I made my way quickly down the stairs in the pouring rain, and splashing through the puddles I jumped on to the nearest of the two buses. When the last passengers were aboard including one lady in a wheelchair, the doors closed and we were whisked off to the main terminal building, where we were deposited and then hung around for the usual tedious procedures of luggage reclaim and passport control.

The thin veneer of civilisation is stripped away at the luggage reclaim carousel, and this one was no exception as most of the passengers milled about the start of the very long carousel. This degenerated into a debacle as grasping hands tried to grab their cases whilst they were still travelling along the carousel, bumping into people who refused to move out of the way because they insisted on standing right at the carousel instead of waiting a few feet back and then moving in to collect their luggage when it appeared.

I went to the far end where there were only a few people like myself who disdained being the first to get their luggage. However my anxiety level rose significantly as each case appeared and it was whisked off and their owners left to continue their journey with mine still posted missing. With the crowd thinning considerably I speculated whether my case had been allocated to another flight and tried to remember if I had retained the details of my travel insurance and how I could make a claim for a lost case...

Just as I was on the point of confronting an airline official over my missing luggage, I spotted my bag emerging onto the carousel, and when it finally completed its interminably slow journey, I heaved it off and dragging it behind me hurried through the glass doors into the main airport area along to where I thought the entrance to the S-Bahn was located.

However I somehow or other contrived to get myself lost in the airport, and not wanting to have to ask anyone for directions, I wandered around for several minutes before eventually stumbling across a sign directing me to the S-Bahn, and I hurried along to the entrance. Casting increasingly anxious glances at my watch every few seconds, I knew I wouldn't have much time to catch the 21.44 S-Bahn to München, and of course I still had to buy a blasted ticket for the train.

The S-Bahn Ticket Machine

Mercifully there was a ticket machine next to the S-Bahn escalator and there was no queue either. However the machine appeared to be carrying out a malevolent personal vendetta to prevent me from buying a ticket, not helped of course by my total unfamiliarity with the process. After several 'transaction cancelled' attempts I eventually secured a Tages-Takt - Day's Ticket to München Hbf for 10.80 Euro.

Having purchased my ticket I then had to find a machine to validate it with a date/time stamp. The MVV - München Verkehrs und Tarifverbund - Munich transport system - operates on trust, no-one checks your ticket on the train, but if you travel without a ticket or fail to validate it, the fines if you are caught during the occasional spot-checks are hefty, about 50 or 60 Euro.

Fortunately I found one of the little blue validating machines at the entrance to the S-Bahn escalator. I placed the ticket in the slot and the date and time were duly stamped on it, so feeling pleased I had been properly validated I took the escalator down to the S-Bahn station where the 21.44 silver-liveried train was waiting at the platform, and I struggled onto the first available carriage with my bags. Fortunately the train was level with the platform so I didn't have to negotiate any awkward steps.

Ist hier noch Frei?

Spotting a vacant seat I asked a young couple who were sitting opposite in German if the seat was 'noch frei', which is the standard polite request to fellow travellers in Bavaria. It is considered most impolite to just sit down uninvited, even if it is obvious the seat is vacant, so you usually ask 'Ist hier noch Frei?' Anyway the young couple merely nodded in response and I gratefully dumped my bags and sat down. I then discovered the young couple were also Auslanders as they conversed with one another in a distinctly Eastern European tongue. We were then joined in the carriage by a gaggle of elderly Bayerische ladies, one of whom asked me whether the seat next to mine was 'noch frei', to which I replied confidently 'Ja! Naturlich!'

My complete mastery of 'Ja! Naturlich!' often landed me in the soup, as people hearing my flawless delivery naturally assumed I was a fluent German speaker, and would then respond in a torrent of German, which usually led to babbled and incoherent responses, invariably concluding with my last resort of 'Sprechen sie Englisch bitte?'. However this time the little old lady seemed satisfied with my response and they all bustled about with their luggage, removing their coats and eventually settling down in their seats.

In Bavaria people don't often say 'Ja Naturlich!' which is quite formal Hochdeutsch, and so you are more likely to hear 'Ja, Freilich!' or just 'Freilich!', which is considered a lot friendlier and informal.

The train moved slowly off on time, and I listened to the little old ladies nattering away to one another in Bayerische, which is the South German dialect of German, a bit like Glaswegian or Cornish English would sound to a foreign visitor to Britain, and although I was listening intently I had absolutely no idea what they were talking about. I caught the occasional word here and there but for the most part it was totally incomprehensible.

Ankunft an München Hauptbahnhof

The train took forty five minutes to get to München Hbf stopping at numerous stations along the way, so I just sat back and relaxed, although the view outside was depressingly obscured by the darkness and heavy rain battering off the windows. The train arrived at the hbf at 10.35pm the doors opened automatically and I dragged off my bags and walked along the platform trying to find a sign for the Arnulfstrasse exit. I had been to the Hbf a few times but had never been down on the S-Bahn platform, so it took me a few minutes to find an escalator up to the street.

More by accident than design I somehow found the Arnulfstrasse exit, and I emerged into a dark and empty concrete covered platform with rain still battering down incessantly on the street outside. While I was walking along sheltering from the rain under the overhanging concrete trying to find the best way to cross over the road, I was approached by several young teenage girls who rushed over to me and asked excitedly auf Deutsch: 'Bist du von Hier?', meaning: 'Are you from here?' They had to be Auslanders as a native German speaker would never have used 'bist du' and would have said 'sind sie' to a stranger.

For a moment I wondered whether they had mistaken me for some elderly pop star or old Boy Band singer arriving in town incognito, however my brief moment of teen adulation passed very quickly after I responded: 'Nein, ich bin aus Schottland'. They looked most disappointed and then rushed off to accost someone else farther along, so I never did find out what they wanted...

Munich - The Hotel Creatif Elefant

The rain positively teemed down quickly soaking my light Regenmantel as I meandered through the dark and empty streets across to Pfeffergasse, and then I turned into Lämmerstrasse, where I was comforted to see the lights of the Hotel Creatif Elefant through the gloom a few yards farther on.

I pushed open the single glass door and dragging my bag behind me I went over the few yards to the tiny reception desk, where sat a slim balding middle-aged chap leafing through a magazine. He looked up at me expectantly as I heaved my heavy bag to a halt, and still dripping wet I made my carefully prepared speech to him: 'Guten abend' I began confidently, and as he nodded in response I continued: 'Mein Name ist Devine, ich habe eine Reservierung in der Hotel heute Nacht'.

I thought my delivery must have been pretty first rate as he nodded understanding of what I had just said, but he then responded with a torrent of German which was completely beyond my comprehension, and I had to resort to the first of my flimsy linguistic defences: 'Langsammer bitte?', I asked pathetically, asking him to speak a little slower. He looked at me somewhat surprised and repeated the same phrase slightly slower probably thinking I might be a bit deaf. However this produced exactly the same conclusion as the first time, and so I finally had to surrender all pretence and asked him 'Sprechen sie Englisch bitte?'.

"Of course" he replied in perfect English, and we negotiated our way through the preliminaries without any further difficulties. I reflected ruefully on whether it was worth all the effort speaking a few German phrases when I could barely understand the responses. I considered whether it would be better just to admit my total ignorance and speak English from the outset, rather than to get myself into a complete linguistic fankle, and make a complete fool of myself as well as wasting everyone else's time.

Zimmer No. 47

He handed me the Zimmerschlüssel for room number 47 on the 4th floor, and pointed out the breakfast room just across from the reception and mentioned breakfast was served from 07.00 till 10.00. I thanked him and made my way over to the lift. I just managed to squeeze into the tiny lift with my bags and then pressed the button for the fourth floor. The doors opened into a narrow dimly-lit and empty corridor with closed doors all the way along. I found no.47 right at the very end. Putting my bags down I inserted the key into the lock but struggled to turn it, and for a minute I thought I might have inadvertantly found the wrong room, however by dint of a little pulling on the handle the lock slowly turned and the door opened.

I switched on the light on the left as I entered. The room was tiny and cramped, with a medium-sized single bed on the right, a small wardrobe beside an even smaller desk with chair, a large window which looked onto the street and which had been left open and which I promptly closed, and a door leading to a bathroom with shower at the end which itself was probably half the size of the main room. I took off my wet rain jacket and trousers and changed gratefully into dry clothes. Once dry I felt in a much more positive frame of mind, and having unpacked everything I needed I thought about getting something to eat, as I hadn't eaten anything since early morning, and was feeling quite peckish.

Abendessen at Vi Vadi Restaurant

My spare Regenmantel was retrieved from my case and I put it on, not really expecting to have to use it this early in the trip. I removed two twenty Euro notes from my wallet and then placed it and the passport in one of the drawers of the sideboard. I usually took only enough money with me to cover probable expenses, and always left my passport and travel documents in the room. Technically you were required to carry some form of identification documentation with you at all times in Germany, but I had never once been asked to provide papers, so I thought it completely unnecessary, although I did have a copy of my passport picture somewhere in my documentation.

I locked the room door and went down in the lift to reception. The chap was still sitting there reading his magazine and as he looked up at me, I asked him in my best German where I could get '...etwas zu essen in der Nahe'. He very obligingly took me over to the door and having determined from our previous encounter that it would probably be a bit of a waste of time speaking to me in German, in English he pointed out a street where he said if I turned left there I would see an Italian restaurant called Vi Vadi across the road, that he could personally recommend.

I Danke Schoened him and putting up my hood wandered out into the dark street and pouring rain, turned the corner, and across the road where he had indicated I spotted the lights of a little restaurant which appeared to be part of a larger hotel building. Before hurrying across the road, I carefully checked the traffic and from which direction it was approaching, as it usually took me a few days when abroad to get used to the traffic appearing from the 'wrong' side of the road.

Taking shelter from the rain under the canopy at the door I surveyed the little menu in the window. Given it consisted of mostly pasta and pizza dishes it didn't take long to figure out it was an Italian Restaurant, and Vi Vadi didn't exactly sound typically Bavarian either. However as there didn't appear to be any other eateries nearby, and the prices seemed quite reasonable, I went inside.

It was a charming cosy little place with only a few people seated at wooden candlelit tables talking quietly. A young waiter appeared in front of me and I asked him for a 'Tische für eins', and was guided to a small table in the corner where I removed my Regenmantel and sat down. The waiter handed me the a la carte menu and asked me auf Deutsch if I would like something to drink, so naturally I ordered a Helles.

A couple of minutes later he brought a half-litre glass of beer over and placed it in front of me, and I ordered Tomatencremesuppe for starter, and for the main course, Spaghetti Napoletana, which is pasta and a tomato sauce without meat. He noted it down on his little pad and went away again. As I drank the delicious Fischer Helles beer, I quietly congratulated myself both for being able to order in German, and also understanding what the waiter had said to me, without having to resort to the humiliating Sprechen sie Englisch.

I heard the three waiters talking to one another in Italian about Italy's potential prospects in the forthcoming football World Cup, so it was clearly an authentic Italian restaurant. The waiter returned and placed a basket of different types of sliced breads on the table, and then placed a large plate of tomato soup sprinkled with fresh herbs in front of me and said ' Guten Appetit' and left. I tried some of the different types of bread with the soup which was delicious. I have always liked tomato soup and made short work of the big plate. When I finished he removed the empty soup plate promptly, however I was given ample time to relax and enjoy the ambience of the place before he returned with the main course.

He placed a large steaming bowl of spaghetti covered with a rich tomato sauce garnished with fresh herbs of Basil and Oregano, which smelled very enticing. He then asked 'Möchten sie etwa Parmesan Käse?', to which of course I enthisiatically replied 'Ja, bitte' as I love Parmesan cheese, and he brought over a little silver pot full of cheese which I liberally sprinkled over the plate.

The pasta and sauce tasted delicious and I thoroughly enjoyed my first meal in Bayern albeit an Italian one. When the waiter came over to remove the plate I said "Die Rechnung, bitte" and was pleasantly surprised to note how reasonably priced it was, and so I gave the waiter a generous two-Euro tip...well at least I thought it was generous.

When asking for the bill in Bayern some people recommend that you say "Zahlen bitte" which means literally "to pay please" rather than "Die Rechnung, bitte" meaning "The Bill please". I had used both in Regensburg pubs and restaurants without any problem and had never been corrected either way.

I left the restaurant and wended my way through the rain and empty streets back to the Hotel, pushed open the glass door again, and said 'Hallo' to my friend at reception who was still engrossed in his magazine. He nodded back to me and I went over to the lift and up to the fourth floor. Standing in front of my room door this time I pulled the handle slightly towards me, it opened easily and I went inside.

Sitting down on the bed I switched on my laptop which hummed and beeped into life, clicked on Internet Explorer and entered the code for the wireless internet connection which I had found in the 'Folder for Guests' lying on the table. A few seconds later the 'connected to the internet' sign appeared and I clicked the BBC news link. However I was disappointed that the signal was so weak it kept disconnecting every minute or two.

There were wireless internet connections from nearby hotels that were stronger than the Creatif Elefant, however naturally enough they required a code to gain access. I found the constant dropping of the signal to be very frustrating. I accessed my email, and although there were quite a few messages in my inbox, I could not respond owing to the unpredictable nature of the connection.

Patricia and I had previously exchanged mobile numbers and I had already texted her to let her know I had arrived and had received her reply, so at least we could communicate. We had met the previous year at Horizonte Sprachschule in Regensburg and we were both attending the course again this year, and because of flight times and schedules we were going to be in München at the same time.

She was originally from New York but had lived in Seattle for the past fifteen years and had the same level of German as me, but she had a much better grounding in Grammatik, having learned German at school. She was staying in the Blauer Bock Hotel which was in the Viktualenmarkt in the Altstadt, a good twenty minutes away from my hotel.

I picked up the guests folder again, sat down on the bed and perused it, carefully noting the fire evacuation procedures. Having been on fire safety courses, I was acutely aware of the importance of knowing the location of fire escapes, especially in unfamiliar places like hotels. I thought my room was in a particularly hazardous location, right at the end of a long corridor with no exit, and being on the fourth floor didn't help either. There was less of a fire hazard these days since smoking had been banned, but it was always wise to check the details.

Germany had recently adopted the EU regulations on banning smoking in pubs bars restaurants and hotels, and as a non-smoker, this was a most welcome development. Some pubs had subverted the regulations by declaring themselves to be 'clubs' -'Rauchklubs' - where for a nominal fee - usually a Euro or two - smokers could legitimately smoke and drink as before, but by and large most establishments adhered to the new regulations, although it was interesting to note that the Germans' who normally love rules and regulations could cheerfully subvert them when it suited.

I watched a German news programme on the small Fernsehen in the room, but given my linguistic limitations I could barely understand what they were saying, however I did catch the Wettervorhersage, and it didn't take a master linguist to see that the forecast for tomorrow was for more of the same - torrential rain all day, and I wondered whether I should have packed two additional Regenmantels.

Fernsehen is another of those composite words that Germans enjoy constructing. The two separate words are 'Fern' and 'sehen' meaning in English 'far and 'to see', the whole literal meaning of which is 'to see far', and which strangely has no obvious relation to the electronic device known as a television. In English we would usually just say 'telly' or 'tv', but I hadn't heard of any German colloquialisms for tv yet.

I switched off the TV and tired out as I was after a very long day, drifted off to a contented dreamless slumber at about 12.30am.

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THURSDAY 3rd JUNE 2010 - REGNERISCH ENGLISCHER GARTENS - STARBUCKS - ZUM FRANZISKANER - SPOCKMEIER

At 07.30 I woke and lay in bed for a few minutes gazing out the window at the depressingly gloomy skies and steadily pouring rain, with water dripping from the sill above the window on to the sill below in a steady monotonous rhythm.

Wettervorhersage - Frühstuck Crisis at the Creatif Elefant

I switched on the laptop again in the vain hope that the weather forecast might have changed overnight. But no it appeared to be even worse than yesterday with heavy and sometimes torrential rain forecast all day for Bayern and particularly München. I switched on the TV in the vain hope the forecast might be different. No such luck as the forecaster confirmed the depressingly miserable forecast, however he tantalisingly hinted at the possibility of the bad weather clearing up on Friday with a return to proper summer temperatures. Well at least there was some hope on the horizon.

Half an hour later I surfaced and having showered washed and changed went down to the breakfast room at 08.45. There were a few people sitting around at various tables when I entered, and spotting an empty table in the middle of the room I went over and sat down. The sound of piano music was coming from somewhere, and on turning round I noticed a young chap sitting at an old upright piano in the corner of the room. He was playing very well indeed a mixture of classical and popular pieces, and managed to produce some exquisite sounds from what looked a well-used instrument.

The Tea Crisis

A waitress came over to my table and asked me 'Möchten sie Tee oder Kaffee?' After a brief moment of hesitation I responded 'Tee, bitte'. However my heart sank when she asked me what type of tea I wanted - 'Welchem Tee möchten sie?' she asked, and stood waiting expectantly for my response. I understood the question of which tea I would like, but had no idea what she was talking about as I thought tea was just tea.

However noticing my blank stare she helpfully proceeded to recite a long list of the available teas, including Earl Grey and Darjeeling. I also heard her say the word 'Schwarz' somewhere in the list and I pounced on it and said 'Ah! Schwarz bitte', thinking it couldn't possibly be any other type of tea, and I was pleased to find when she placed a large pot of the stuff on my table that it was indeed normal tea.

Then having safely negotiated my first linguistic hurdle of the morning, a plump woman who would have been in her late fifties emerged from the kitchen, approached my table and asked me a question auf Deutsch which I could not understand at all. I reprised my previously effective blank stare accompanied this time by a pathetically croaked 'Bitte?'. She repeated the same question and on seeing my still totally uncomprehending expression, she rushed off and returned a few seconds later with a Creatif Elefant Zimmerschlüssel and showed it to me.

A light came on in my head and I fumbled in my pocket for my room key, showed it to her and satisfied she went away leaving me in peace to enjoy my Frühstuck.

It was a buffet breakfast and I went over and retrieved a large plate and raided all the various goodies on offer. It was a really excellent breakfast with lots of different types of cereals, bread, Semmelns - delicious Bavarian rolls - jams, honey, cold meat, hot Würste - boiled sausages - and scrambled eggs - Rührei. I made a few visits to replenish my plate and had a go at the lot, noting that Germans call what we call jam 'Marmelade', and marmalade 'Orangenmarmelade'. I particularly enjoyed the scrambled eggs, Würste and the Semmelns, Marmelade and the lovely slightly salted butter.

Guests came and went from the room every few minutes, but I had the table to myself. When I finished at 09.30 I returned to my room feeling satisfyingly replete but also a bit non-plussed at having survived two linguistic challenges already.

I texted Patricia to tell her I would meet her at noon outside the Marienkirche, which we had previously agreed was a reasonably central place to meet. I sat on the bed and perused the little town map I had acquired at reception and plotted the quickest walking route to the Marienkirche from my hotel, and then checked out likely Sehenswürdigkeiten - tourist sights - within reasonable walking distance of the centre.

Treffen mit Patricia am Kaufingerstrasse

Following my very filling Frühstuck I snoozed for about a half hour and at 11.15 I was ready to go and brave the rain again. I put on my Regenmantel noting that my first rain jacket was still damp from the soaking it had endured the previous evening. The replacement Regenmantel had more waterproof qualities, but I hadn't really anticipated such constant heavy rain in early June, and had taken only a light showerproof jacket for the flight over, with my spare packed at the bottom of my luggage.

I locked the door behind me and instead of taking the lift walked down the stone staircase to the ground floor past the reception, where I noticed an attractive girl had replaced my friend of the previous night. I waved to her and she gave me a cheery 'Tschüss', which is the German equivalent of 'cheerio'. Pulling open the glass door I went outside into the rain.

I walked across to the Hbf to check the location of the Airport bus terminal in Arnulfstrasse for the arrival of a friend who was coming over for a few days in a couple of weeks, and who would be flying into Memmingen Flughafen. Memmingen is another one of those airports in far-flung outlying areas which is a Ryanair destination, and with their creative elasticity of description they call it Munich Memmingen, even though it is 110 kilometres west of Munich. It's a bit like describing Frankfurt Hahn airport as Frankfurt when it is over a hundred kilometres away from the city, and you have to pass two major cities - Mainz and Wiesbaden - to get there, but that would be a mere piffling detail to Ryanair.

Wandering across to the other side of the Hbf and into Bayerstrasse I went along a quiet back street heading in a roundabout direction to the Marienplatz which lies in the centre of München. I was a bit surprised to note that the streets appeared to be remarkably empty of traffic and people. Passing a few big hostels in the side streets off Bayerstrasse I noticed a lot of young people standing outside the front doors smoking. After ten minutes lazy walking along the side streets I finally arrived at Kaufingerstrasse, and strolled along the normally busy but now strangely empty street.

As I walked past the famous Augustinerbräu restaurant I noticed with surprise it was also closed. Casting occasional glances at my watch as I meandered along I gazed absently into the various closed shop windows. As I was so dreamily engaged, I suddenly heard a voice behind me saying 'John', and turning round there was Patricia standing staring at me. After exchanging our Freundliche Grüssen, we discussed our options for the day. Patricia told me she had heard that it was a religious Feiertag in München - a feast day - which explained the absence of people and the closed shops - we later discovered it was the feast of Corpus Christi.

A Visit to the Englischer Gartens - The Munich Surfer Boys

We thought our touristy options appeared pretty limited given the circumstances, and it was pouring with rain to add to our woes, but we headed off past the Marienkirche in the general direction of the Englischer Gartens through damp empty streets and past closed shops.

We reached the Gartens after about fifteen minutes and I asked Patricia if she would like to see the Munich surfer boys who often surfed on the Eisbach river. Patricia was intrigued at this suggestion as she had never heard anything about surfing in Munich before. The boys were indeed engaged in their favourite pastime, and the water was very swift and turbulent after the recent heavy rains, but the boys were enthusiastically tackling the conditions, watched by a few interested sightseers who obviously like us had nothing better to do on a rainy day in München.

I noticed the sign I had seen the previous year warning of the life-threatening dangers of surfing activity - 'Lebensgefährlich' - and that surfing on the river was 'Streng Verboten' had been removed - the authorities evidently bowing to the inevitable...

'Streng Verboten'- strictly forbidden - in rule-loving Germany is still a very common phrase, and casual visitors to the country could be forgiven for thinking that it perfectly encapsulates the rigid German mentality. However over the past twenty years or so, especially since reunification with the former East Germany, the people have experienced a resurgence of self-confidence, and although there are still relics of the old mentality, especially in the refusal of people to cross an empty road if the lights are against them, there appeared to be a much more relaxed and easy-going attitude these days.

One of the things that I found attractive about the German people was their sense of orderliness - 'Ordnung' - which was most noticeable in the almost complete absence of litter in the streets. The previous year in Regensburg we had enjoyed the Burgerfest, which is a three-day celebration held every two years in late June that involves the consumption of copious amounts of Würste and Bier, with the entire city centre closed to traffic and packed with people eating and drinking, listening to live music and generally having a very good time. However each morning the streets were clean and spotless, with hardly any evidence of the previous day's excess being visible.

It wasn't that the cleansing services were performing daily heroics, it was just down to the consideration that people gave to keeping their own streets clean, and ensuring any litter was placed in the appropriate receptacles. Occasionally you would see some litter or the odd broken bottle in the morning after a weekend of excess, but most of the time the city centre was a model of cleanliness. Coming from a throwaway culture like the UK where the streets were regularly strewn with discarded bottles and litter of every description, this fastidiousness was a most welcome and admirable aspect of Bavaria.

Chinesischer Turm

Patricia and I walked through the very damp Gärten to the Chinesischer Turm - Chinese Tower - an exact replica of the original tower that burned down after a particularly vindictive bombardment by the USAAF in 1944. The Chinese Tower was constructed in 1790 as an exotic feature of the new gardens, but is used nowadays to house brass bands which play Bavarian oompah music to people enjoying the delights of the associated beer garden. However it was closed as well, and with the rain still battering down there appeared nothing for it but to head back to town again.

The sprawling area of wooded parklands called the Englischer Gärten are amongst the largest public parks in the world and were created in the late 18th century, oddly enough by an American called Sir Benjamin Thompson, who although having been born in Massachussets had fought on the British side during the American War of Independence.

Understandably, following the outcome of the war Thompson felt his future probably lay elsewhere, and so he left the United States and ended up in Bavaria where he secured a position as a military advisor to the Archduke, who owned the land which was then used primarily for deer-hunting. As part of the military reforms that Thompson recommended, he advised that part of the hunting grounds should be set aside for the peacetime soldiery to engage in activities like small-scale farming and gardening, and so the idea of the Gartens was born.

Over the years the land was sculpted in the style of English landscape gardens which was a very popular style at the time - hence the name. The Gärten grew exponentially to encompass other areas of woodland in the city until they reached their present extent, stretching from the city centre out following the course of the Isar river to the north of the city.

A Strange München Monument

On our way back to the centre we stopped at a strange monument with a large collection of small stones that people had evidently placed on top. It was located near the parliament building at the entrance to an open walkway flanked by iron girders that looked like the bare bones of a bombed building. We noticed there was a long inscription on the monument which we attempted to decipher, but without much success given our very limited German, however it appeared to have something to do with the Zweiten Weltkrieg and we resolved to check it out on the internet later.

The Theatinerkirche

Continuing on our way we stopped for a few minutes to get out of the rain at the Theatinerkirche in Salvatorplatz which was built between 1663 and 1690. It had miraculously escaped damage by bomben during the war when almost the entire city centre had been destroyed, it sported ornate baroque architecture, and was fortunately open and kept us out of the rain for a few minutes.

Drying Out in Starbucks

We left after a ten minute perusal of the interior and went in search of a cafe for a sit down and cup of coffee and just to get out of the rain for a few minutes. However all the cafes we went to appeared to be closed as well, so Patricia recommended we go to a Starbucks which she had noticed near to the Blauer Bock. We passed the hotel which Patricia pointed out to me was completely covered in scaffolding as it was undergoing extensive renovations and repair work.

The Starbucks cafe in Rosental opposite the Viktualenmarkt was fortunately open, so we went inside, found an empty table and gratefully sat down. In contrast to most other Bavarian cafes and restaurants Starbucks doesn't have waitress service, instead you find a free table and then go up to the counter and order your preferred beverage, pay for it and then with your receipt go to the end of the waiting queue to get your order and carry it back to your table.

I joined the end of the queue behind Patricia and when my turn came ordered a large Kaffee mit Milch and then the inevitable happened, and the chap behind the counter pointing at the receipt he had just given me said something to me auf Deutsch. I had absolutely no idea what he had just said and with a sinking feeling said "Bitte?", and the second time I heard him say the word 'Toiletten', so I grasped he was telling me something about the toilet arrangements as he pointed at the receipt and then down towards the other end of the cafe. I had no idea what he had said but I didn't want to prolong the agony any longer, so I just nodded and went to the end of the queue to collect my coffee.

When I sat down I asked Patricia what it was all about and she told me he had said that entry to the toilets required a code which was printed on the receipt he had given me. I glanced at it and noticed he had circled an entry in ink at the bottom - WC-Code 5670. We wondered where the toilets were located as there were no obvious signs for them, but we presumed they had to be farther along and would of course be locked, which explained the reason for the code. My Kaffee mit Milch tasted okay, and there was also the additional relief of sitting somewhere warm and dry. After ten minutes sitting comfortably Patricia said she would have to go to the toilet, and taking her receipt with her she followed the sign for the Toiletten.

She returned ten minutes later laughing and recounting the Abenteuer she had experienced trying to firstly find and then gain entry to the toilets, which were much farther along the passage in which the cafe was located. She had walked along so far she thought she must have completely missed them, when eventually she came to a door which she opened and then traversed down a long flight of stairs before eventually arriving at a locked door where she finally negotiated entry with the code.

When we finished our coffees we reluctantly got up to leave, but I had to remind Patricia to retrieve her Regenschirm - umbrella - from the corner where she had left it to dry, as it looked like we were going to need it. We braved the pouring rain outside again and walked back to Kaufingerstrasse, where to our surprise and delight we discovered a piano quintet playing popular classical pieces under the shelter of an archway, complete with grand piano, double bass, violin, cello and flute.

They were playing very well and had gathered a small crowd of musical admirers around them. Patricia, who admitted to a fatal weakness for good street musicians, couldn't resist giving them a few Euros, but refrained from buying one of their CDs which were priced rather steeply I thought at 15 Euros.

The Hbf was our next destination to check the platform from where our train in the morning to Salzburg was due to depart. So we wandered through the rain to the Hbf grateful to be out of the rain again. Gleis 9 was the scheduled departure platform, but this also entailed a good 300 metre walk from the main platform area. Patricia mentioned that once before DB had changed the platform at the last minute which meant she nearly missed her train.

We double-checked the time of the train and then went back to our respective hotels for a few hours to change and dry out, having agreed to meet up later in the evening for a meal. After a shower, change of clothes and relaxing afternoon nap I was ready for another sojourn in the rain. I changed into my other Regenmantel which had been drying out as my replacement despite its supposed waterproof qualities was completely soaked. I wondered how much longer this Schlechter Wetter was going to last, as it had now been raining heavily and constantly for over 48 hours.

This time I didn't dawdle and walked quickly through the rain to the Marienplatz and met Patricia at 7.30pm at the monument in the middle of the square, and not wishing to spend any more time than was necessary in the rain we went to find a suitable restaurant.

Abendessen an 'Zum Franziskaner'

I remembered having a beer with Kristoffer my tuba-playing Horizonte colleague in 2009 in the Späten House opposite the Opera House in Max-Joseph-Platz. It was a nice place for a beer but as we were standing outside perusing the menu in the window, we thought the prices looked a bit steep, so we walked on and then discovered the brightly-lit frontage of 'Zum Franziskaner' just around the corner in Residenzstrasse. As it was raining heavily again and the prospect of getting soaked trying to find a restaurant didn't exactly appeal, so we opened the door and went inside into a large room with a high ceiling and lots of very dark wooden tables and chairs most of which were occupied. However we spotted an empty table near the door and removing our wet rain jackets, we gratefully sat down.

A tall young Kellnerin dressed in Bavarian Dirndl came over to our table, handed us two thick leather-bound menus and asked pleasantly auf Deutsch "Mochten sie etwas trinken?". I was pleased to be able to understand what she was saying, so I confidently replied 'Ein Helles bitte', and she nodded, and Patricia said 'Ich auch' - me too - and she went away again.

We congratulated one another on understanding what the waitress had said without resorting to the shameful 'Sprechen sie Englisch bitte'. The restaurant was a big busy place with an even larger eating area through the back, and appeared to be very popular judging by the number of people seated at the various tables. We perused the extensive menu for the next five minutes occasionally checking my little pocket Worterbuch for particularly obscure references.

I rarely strayed from what I knew I liked in such circumstances, so when the Kellnerin came over with our beers I ordered the Schweinesschnitzel mit Bratkartoffelen und Kraut - fried pork cutlets with sliced fried potatoes and cabbage. Patricia ordered Schweinekrustenbraten mit Krautsalat - crusty pork roast with cabbage salad. The Kellnerin noted our order down efficiently on her little pad, removed the menus and went away again.

She returned ten minutes later with two huge plates heaped high with extremely generous portions. I gobbled mine with alacrity, but Patricia couldn't finish hers as she said it was just too much for her. Even after eating such a large meal I still found sufficient room for some of Patricia's as well, which I thought tasted quite delicious, and I made a mental note of Krustenbraten for future reference.

The beer was Franziskaner Helles and tasted really good - decently chilled but not too cold, fresh-tasting and with an excellent light flavour, so feeling quite refreshed, when the waitress returned to remove our plates we ordered another couple of beers.

I was careful not to make the mistake of my very first day in Regensburg in June 2008 when myself and three other Horizonte students Dave and Laurie from Kentucky, and Christine from England had gone to the Oscar Bar in Rote Hahnen Gasse for our very first beers in Regensburg, and we asked for 'Vier Helle, bitte', being careful to note the difference between the singular and plural - Helles is singular, but Helle is plural - so you would say "Ein Helles bitte", but if you wanted more than one you say "Zwei...Drei...Vier Helle bitte".

When we had finished our first beers and wishing four more of the same I had confidently asked the Kellnerin 'Vier anderes bitte', which left her totally bewildered. I had checked my Worterbuch and it definitely said that 'anderes' meant 'another', however what I didn't know was that it meant another type of beer i.e. not the same ones we had just drank.

After a bit of confused multilingual discussion with the Kellnerin who didn't speak any English, we managed to get the same beers again and at the same time discovered what you are supposed to say when ordering more beer of the same type in Bayern. You should say 'Noch einmal, bitte', or if wishing to sound like a real Bayer 'Nochmal, bitte'. However one of the pitfalls of being familiar with the phrase means you run the risk of the Kellnerin assuming you can speak German...

Patricia and I relaxed with our beers and chatted away about this and that, mostly about mundane things like families and the weather in Seattle and Glasgow, and we found found the chat flowed remarkably easily with no-one dominating the conversation. We talked about our forthcoming German course in Regensburg and what each of us thought about the qualities of the various Horizonte Lehrers, and what we had thought of last year's course, and the time passed very pleasantly.

After an hour chatting we finished our beer and agreed to go and have a beer in another establishment, so I caught the eye of the Kellnerin, and when she approached I said to her 'Zahlen bitte'. She nodded and returned a minute later and presented us with our bill and asked us 'Möchten sie Zusammen oder Getrennt zahlen' - 'Would you like to pay together or separately'. We replied 'Getrennt bitte', so she totted up the separate meals, we paid her and she gave us our change from the leather purse which she carried.

In Bavarian pubs and restaurants it is customary to pay the Kellnerin who has served you, which means that you can give a tip depending on the quality of service you have received. Having really enjoyed the meal and the beer, we gave her a fairly reasonable tip and got ready to go.

We donned our coats again and went outside to brave the pouring rain again. I took the printed receipt from the table and checked it before putting it in my wallet. It was probably a little more expensive at 15.30 Euros for the meal and 4.20 Euros for a Helles half litre than we would normally have paid, and more or less the same prices as the Späten House, but as it was our first proper night in München and we didn't want to wander around being soaked, so we decided to be a little extravagant and splash out...in a manner of speaking...

The rain was still pattering off the streets, although not quite as heavily as earlier, and we wandered back down in the direction of the Marienplatz, but we hadn't gone very far when we spotted a young man sitting on his own in the rain playing a classical guitar, very impressively. We stopped for a few minutes to listen to him, and Patricia once again succumbed to her fatal weakness and gave him two Euros.

A Few Beers in Spockmeier

Wandering about Munich in the rain didn't seem to be a very attractive option of an evening and as we discussed what we should do next, Patricia suggested we go to Spockmeier, a pub/restaurant in Rosenstrasse just south of the Marienplatz she knew that she said had a very good reputation. Patricia's suggestion seemed like a dashed good idea to me, so we quickly made our way through the dark and empty Marienplatz and five minutes later stopped outside a brightly-lit glass fronted pub/restaurant. It looked fairly quiet so we went inside into another high-ceilinged room with lots of the ubiquitous dark wooden tables. We found an empty table near the door and sat down, and when the Dirndl-attired Kellnerin came over I said 'Zwei Helle, bitte', and a few minutes later she laid in front of us a couple of foaming half-litre glasses of Paulaner Helles.

We continued our conversation where we had left of in Zum Franziskaner and made fairly short work of our first beer, so I said to the waitress 'Nochmal, bitte', and when she bought over the beers and having laid them on our beer mats, she marked the mats with the number of beers we had ordered so it would be easy to count when it came to paying the bill. We spent the rest of the evening there chatting and drinking the excellent and reasonably-priced for München, Helles beer - 3.95 for a half litre.

Patricia Has a Slight Mishap

There were two floors to the place, with a smaller drinking area upstairs where the toilets were located. Wooden floors and tables seemed to be the order of the day for Munich pubs, the only exception in Spockmeier being the carpetted stairs. We ordered more beer and chatted away telling stories and at one point Patricia laughed so much she accidentally knocked over her half-full glass covering the table with beer. The staff rushed over with mops and buckets and cleaned up the mess in a few seconds accompanied by profuse apologies from Patricia. They handled it pleasantly and efficiently so we thought it must have been a fairly common occurrence.

Without really being aware of it, while we had been chatting the place had gradually emptied of patrons and it appeared we were the last customers, so at 12.30am we asked for Die Rechnung, paid the bill, gave the waitress a reasonably generous tip for her earlier efforts with the spilled beer and went outside. Patricia only had a short walk back to the Blauer Bock while I had a significantly longer stroll through the steadily falling rain and dark and empty streets back to the Creatif Elefant.

We said our goodbyes after arranging to meet at the Hbf in the morning, and I walked up Kaufingerstrasse back towards the station. I didn't feel at all uncomfortable wandering about München at that time of night although it was an unfamiliar city. I didn't see any police at all and there were a only a few people still about. I put it down to a combination of the inclement weather and the fact it was a Feiertag. I had read stories of people being assaulted on the München S-Bahn and U-Bahn networks, but there didn't appear to be any dubious or threatening characters hanging about like you would normally find in Glasgow at that time of night.

It was a good twenty minute walk back to my hotel. I had chosen the oddly named Creatif Elefant because it was so close to the Hbf, as I knew I would be arriving late on Wednesday, and didn't want the inconvenience of wandering about ein unbekannt Stadt late in the evening while lugging heavy cases. The owner of the hotel apparently had a slight obsession for all things Pachydermal - hence the name Creatif Elefant.

Both Patricia and I had been a little apprehensive about our lack of German Sprache, but we needn't have worried as nearly everyone we met in München spoke perfect English, and seemed happy to help us out when we fumbled our way through our stumbling German. I slept soundly that night, probably helped by the consumption of the several strong beers earlier. The hotel room itself was tiny with just enough room to move about in, but as it was located on a side street it was very quiet and peaceful outside, with no sound of heavy traffic roaring past.

All in all I thought it was a very reasonably-priced hotel with a convenient location next to the Hbf and an excellent breakfast, the only gripes being the small size of the room and the intermittent internet access.

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FRIDAY 4th JUNE - A JOURNEY FROM MUNICH TO SALZBURG

At 07.30 I awoke and gratefully noted the welcome appearance of the sun's disk shining weakly through the grey clouds into my room. A quick check of the Wettervorhersage on the Fernsehen and the weather looked set fair for the next few days with the morning clouds expected to clear at noon with sunshine and reasonably warm temperatures for the weekend. There was a news report indicating that the previous few days of constant torrential rain had caused considerable flooding, particularly in Trauenstein near the border with Austria, which just happened to be in the direction we were going...

I showered and shaved and then went down the stairs for Frühstuck. The room was busier but I found an empty table and sat down. The same waitress as the previous day came over and asked me if I wanted tea or coffee. I confidently replied with 'Schwarz Tee, bitte', and she returned and placed a large pot on my table while I was busy raiding the buffet. Knowing the drill by now I left my Zimmerschlussel on the table for the woman to take note, which she did, passing by and giving me a quick nod of recognition. There was no piano player this morning, but it didn't affect my enjoyment of the breakfast.

After Frühstuck I took the lift back to my room. I checked the news on the internet, but the signal kept coming and going, so I switched it off and packed my cases, including my still-sodden Regenmantel and trousers which I placed carefully in a plastic bag to prevent them soaking my other clothes, and having given the room the once over to make sure I hadn't forgotten anything, at 10.45 I closed the door over locked it and dragged my bags to the lift and went down to reception to check out. The girl I had seen the previous day was sitting at the desk and smiled pleasantly at me. She didn't appear to speak any English but I managed to stumble through with enough German to pay the bill without any linguistic traumas.

Waiting for the Train to Salzburg

It was still grey and overcast but the sun was making a very decent effort at breaking through and the clouds were definitely thinning. The streets were still rather damp, but were drying out a little. We had agreed to meet at Gleis 15 in the HBF, so I trundled my bags across the busy Arnulfstrasse, watching for stray Bahnstrassen passing by. I arrived at Gleis 15 a few minutes later, and as I was quite early I thought I would be really clever and anticipate where Patricia would appear from, so I went and stood at the entrance on Bayerstrasse.

The station had been transformed from the previous day into a bustling busy hive of activity, with people coming and going and rushing along as they seem to do in every busy railway station in the world. I had been paying so much attention to watching for Patricia from where I was standing that I failed to notice she had actually come in by a different entrance and had arrived at the agreed time at Gleis 15, where she had been patiently waiting for me and wondering where I was. Fortunately we were in plenty of time for the train and I had bought a Bayern Ticket the previous day for the two of us which cost only 28 Euros and was valid all the way to Salzburg.

The Bayern Ticket is great value for money. In Bayern up to five persons can travel off peak for one complete day throughout Bayern using the Gruppe Bayern-Takt and on any form of road and rail public transport, bus, train, tram, S-Bahn, U-Bahn, the only exception being the Inter-City Express trains. Solo travellers could also buy a Solo Ticket for 20 Euros which fulfilled the same function for one person. The tickets can be purchased from any of the DB automat machines at most stations, which mercifully are also in English, you just push the correct button to select your language. It can also be purchased over the internet and the ticket printed out at home.

Although Salzburg is in Austria, the Bayern Ticket is valid to there but not beyond. Salzburg actually was part of Bavaria up till the 14th century and then for a few years in the early 19th century was awarded to Bavaria by Napoleon as a reward for Bavaria's support of the French at the battle of Wagram in 1809 just a few miles fom Vienna, which of course Napoleon won, to the great chagrin of the Austrian Emperor Charles. Bavaria and Salzburg are still connected both in terms of the language and the hearty and easy-going nature of the people.

We wheeled our heavy bags along the platform to Gleis 9. The red and grey livery of the DB train hove into view up ahead at the platform, and we wandered along till we found a reasonably empty compartment and then dragged our bags inside and gratefully sat down. Patricia said she liked to sit facing the way the train was heading, and as there was plenty of room in the carriage I sat on the opposite side of the aisle facing the same way. I lifted up our heavy cases and placed them in the overhead luggage racks.

After ten minutes the train had filled up quite quickly with passengers, and a tall thin young chap stood at the empty seat beside me and said auf Deutsch 'Ist hier noch frei?', to which I gave him my well-practised 'Ja! Naturlich!' response and he responded 'Danke' sat down beside me.

A boisterous group of young women wearing stars and stripes neckbands and other US paraphernalia boarded the train at our carriage and sat through the other side of the glass partition. Then we heard the door open behind us and an equally boisterous group of Lederhosen-clad young men carrying crates of German beer traipsed through our compartment. There were about twenty of them and they seemed a jolly bunch singing and shouting in Bayerische. They didn't appear to be connected to the girls but sat in their compartment anyway. The train had filled up quite dramatically in the five minutes before departure, and was now quite full.

The sun had emerged from the thin veil of clouds and was shining quite strongly with the ambient temperature rising appreciably. I removed my fleece and sat in my shirt sleeves looking out of the window as the train pulled slowly away from the station at 11.00. We soon left the city centre behind and headed south out to the suburbs. After a couple of brief stops the train sped out into the sunny Bavarian countryside. We could hear the girls next door laughing away and enjoying themselves.

A Chat With a Chap from Freiburg

As I was gazing absently out of the window, my neighbour turned to me and said something auf Deutsch to which I gave my usual reply of 'Bitte?' He repeated the same question and with the noise of the train and the fact he was sitting on my 'deaf' side I just gave up and asked if he could speak English. To my surprise he not only responded in perfect English but with a marked North East England accent.

I naturally assumed he came from England and asked him what part he hailed from. But he said he was German from Freiburg near the border with Switzerland and he could also speak French as well. He said the girls next door were part of a hen party where one of them was shortly to be married and they were out to enjoy themselves for the weekend in Salzburg. We chatted away and I asked him how he got his distinctive accent. He told me he had spent three years at Hull University studying for an economics degree, and during that time he had picked up an amazing amount of north east colloquialisms. He had travelled fairly extensively - Mexico, USA, Africa, Cuba, the Yucatan and could speak fluent Spanish as well.

He now worked in Bonn for Toshiba but occasionally visited Regensburg where his firm had an office, and he seemed impressed that I was going to learn German there. He said it was a very nice town to which observation I could only agree. He was travelling to Trauenstein to visit his sister with presents for his two young nieces whose birthdays were the day after one another at the weekend, which was very handy he said as it meant that both would receive presents at the same time.

Although he wasn't from Bayern he gave me a few tips on Bayerische Sprache that he had picked up in Regensburg and München, but some of which I knew already after Babsi - my Lehrerin at Horizonte - had taught me last year. We chatted amiably throughout most of the journey which was very pleasant, but also a bit distracting as occasional glances outside the window at the scenery had given me a flavour of the wonderful view, with the Bavarian Alps fast approaching on the right. He took his leave at Trauenstein and waved goodbye, and a few minutes later the train took off for Freilassing, the last German town before the border.

The Bavarian Hen Party Gruppe

By this time the train had emptied considerably, but the girls were still next door making merry. A few minutes later the door from their compartmernt opened and a group of them came through carrying a basket filled with muffins and scones and asked me auf Deutsch if I would like to buy one for one Euro. I reached into my pocket and fished out a one euro coin and handed it over to her, picked a muffin from the basket, and after I had said my 'Danke Schön' one of the girls asked me a question, and I gave her my usual blank look, and then fell back on my 'Sprechen sie Englisch bitte?'. She replied in very clear and good English: 'Not very well really', and pointed out one of her companions who she said spoke better English, and shouted her over.

This girl came over and sat down opposite me and explained that the other girl was getting married and this was their last time together before the wedding, and they were going to Salzburg for a weekend celebration. I asked her why they were all wearing the stars and stripes, and she explained it was because the two had become engaged in New York City. She asked me about my accent with which she appeared fascinated. I told her I came from Glasgow, and she asked me if I knew Auchterarder, which I did, and she told me she had spent a year as a student working as a chambermaid at the Gleneagles Hotel, and she just loved Scottish people and the Scottish accent.

Naturally this piece of intelligence greatly enhanced the conversation and we chatted away for a few more minutes before she was called away by her friends again.

Patricia looked over and asked what all the talking had been about. I explained the situation and she expressed her surprise that I should just happen to be seated beside someone who spoke fluent English and then talk with someone else who had lived in Scotland. We relaxed back in our seats for the final part of the journey, admiring the beautiful scenery of sun-drenched green fields and soaring mountains. I had noticed that as we passed over some of the rivers they appeared to be quite high and swollen, which was hardly surprising given the amount of rain that had fallen over the past few days. I had seen on the news that Trauenstein had been particularly badly affected by the torrential rain and some main roads had been closed.

The train rumbled slowly across the Saalach river into Austria and then a few minutes later at about 1.10pm crossed over the Salzach into very picturesque and Sonnig Salzburg. Strangely there didn't appear to be any border formalities at all, which rather surprised us.

SALZBURG - Ankunft am Hauptbahnhof

As the train came to a halt I pulled down our bags and we walked outside onto the platform. The Hen Party girls all alighted behind us and giggled and laughed their way past us to the exit. The station appeared to be undergoing some major reconstruction with scaffolding and wooden walkways everywhere. We negotiated our way along the platform to the exit and then had to carry our heavy bags down a flight of temporary wooden steps. We turned left on leaving the station into Rainerstrasse and walked slowly along the road. The sun was shining brightly and the temperature was in the low eighties, so it felt very uncomfortable walking along the busy road dragging our heavy bags.

We should really have got a taxi, but we had thought that as the hotel was only ten minutes walk away it wouldn't be worth it, however as we sweated our way along the busy road with the traffic whizzing past us it appeared that might have been not such a good decision after all. We passed the Sound of Music tour bus parked at the side of the road opposite the Mirabelle Gardens, and stopped for a few minutes at the corner of Paris Lodron Strasse and Mirabelle to put our bags down and check the Salzburg map Patricia had brought with her.

Linzergasse and the Hotel Goldene Krone

I looked at the map and having checked we were heading in the right direction with the hotel being located in Linzergasse at the foot of the Kapuzinerberg - a prominent steep-sided wooded hill on that side of the river - I suggested we head up Paris Lodron Strasse and then cut across Wolf Dietrich Strasse to Linzergasse. Patricia agreed and we went up and then along to the right, and a few minutes later I spotted the sign for the Hotel Goldene Krone on the left.

We stopped outside the heavy opaque iron and glass door at the entrance, I pushed the metal handle down and was very thankful that the door easily opened. On entering we were relieved to find that it felt much cooler and comfortable inside. There was a woman hoovering away just past the reception desk, and when she saw us she stopped, put the hoover down and came across and stood at the desk expectantly.

I gave her my prepared speech in German about our reservations, and she responded in German and this time I was grateful that I didn't have to ask her to repeat it or to speak English. Although it didn't take very long for her to figure out that we were English speakers and so she started speaking English to us. She gave us the keys for our rooms which were on the first floor, pointed out the breakfast room just across from the reception, and then said rather disconcertingly she wasn't sure if our rooms were ready yet as they didn't have a maid...which evidently explained why she had been doing the hoovering herself.

We squeezed ourselves and our luggage into the small lift and pressed the button for the first floor, it moved slowly off and when it stopped a few seconds later we emerged into a dark unlit corridor and looked around for our rooms - Nos 2 and 4.

I found my room - No.2, inserted the key and opened it easily, but the light outside the door was very poor and we couldn't find the switch. As Patricia was putting her key into the lock for her room she told me that it wouldn't open and asked me to give her a hand. I tried the key as well to no avail and just as we were on the point of rushing back down to complain to the manageress I suddenly noticed that the door number was No. 1 but shaped in such a way as to resemble a 4, or at least that's what we thought. We looked around us and noticed the real No. 4 across the hallway, and naturally enough when she inserted the key the door opened easily and she quickly went inside.

My room although small, was certainly bigger than the room in the Creatif Elelfant in München and it looked out onto the Linzergasse where lots of people were wandering up and down the busy street. I opened both the small interior and exterior windows to let some air into the room and immediately set to unpacking the bags, and in particular placing my still sodden Regenmantel and trousers over a chair near the window to dry. I had a very refreshing shower after the hot train journey and even hotter walk to the hotel, and changed into a new shirt and trousers.

I switched on the laptop and noted with satisfaction that the wireless signal appeared to be much stronger as it immediately connected to the hotel network on inputting the code.

At 14.35 I made my way back down to the reception desk at the appointed time we had previously agreed. the manageress was there and asked me to fill in the usual hotel form, which I completed, and then Patricia appeared behind me and filled in a form as well. I asked the manageress auf Deutsch if we could buy the Salzburg Card there, but she said no and that we would have to go across the river and buy it in the Information Bureau. She took out a leaflet that had a map of the town and circled the location of the Bureau.

We thanked her and wandered outside into Linzergasse which was very busy with pedestrians and wended our way down the hill towards the bridge.

Linzergasse is a Füßgängerzone - pedestrian zone - where cars are only allowed for access, so apart from numerous bicycles and people there was no traffic to negotiate. On the way down the hill Patricia mentioned to me that she couldn't get a signal on her computer at all, so we resolved to ask about it when we returned. We walked slowly along stopping here and there at shop windows and to check restaurant menus, and generally just dawdled along appreciating the wonderful scenery with the Festung Hohensalzburg making a magnificent backdrop across the river.

The Hunt for the Information Bureau

We reached the bridge a the foot of Linzergasse, crossed over the river and wended our way into the centre of the old town looking for the platz with the Information Bureau. We passed through Mozart Platz and then Papageno Platz without seeing hide nor hair of the place, until eventually we reached the end of the town and stopped. We had evidently passed it by somewhere so we retraced our steps back up the hill to the town again casting frequent glances at the map. After a second fruitless reconnaissance of the old town produced no results I stopped at a nearby hostel and asked a chap just emerging for directions.

He pointed down towards a square we had missed. We thanked him and headed off again, but it appeared that he was either completely mistaken or I had picked him up wrongly because the Information Office was nowhere to be seen. We gave up at that point and walked back along the road again, and as luck would have it when we weren't looking for the place it magically appeared in front of us as Patricia pointed it out to me across the square and we went over and wandered inside.

We Buy a Salzburg Card - a Visit to the Stadt Museum

I went up to the desk and asked auf Deutsch to the woman at the counter if I could buy a Salzburg Card. She responded with the usual torrent of completely unintelligible German to which I had no choice but to engage her in English, and of course once again she spoke perfect English. She gave us the lowdown on the different types of card, the 24 or 48 hour one and told me that the card was valid from the moment we bought it. So we paid the 33 Euros each for a 48 hour card, signed and timed them and we were off.

The Salzburg Card was a plastic credit card sized thing that got you free entry to most of the museums plus free public transport, hefty discounts on concert tickets and umpteen other things as well.

We had kind of planned out a list of things to see and do beforehand so we knew roughly what we wanted to do, so we set off down the hill to the old town clutching our cards, then spotting the Stadt-Museum we went over and wandered inside, presented our Cards at the entrance, which they scanned like a barcode in a shop and we went upstairs. We checked the sign indicating that the opening hours for the museum were 9.00-5.00, so I told Patricia we wouldn't have much time to see everything as they were due to close in about half-an-hour. We strolled through the museum stopping here and there to view interesting artefacts. I didn't think it was that impressive for the advertised price of admission, but as we were getting it almost free it was okay.

Patricia was dawdling along examining something she found particularly interesting about a quarter to five, and I said to her that we had better get a move on as they would start closing in a couple of minutes. She didn't seem to appreciate this piece of important intelligence as she said the advertised opening hours were until 5.00pm. I told her having worked in similar establishments in Glasgow I knew about these things, and as the place had rapidly emptied other people evidently knew about them as well, so when we were approached by one of the officials at 16.50 who said the museum was now closing, we hurried downstairs and went outside again into the hot sun.

The square was packed with people with street artists and musicians seemingly everywhere and picturesque horse drawn carriages taking people to and fro. We went for a stroll around the old town passing through the little narrow alleyways which are called 'Gasschen', with loads of interesting-looking shops and restaurants on either side.

A Trip Along the Salzach

On checking the accompanying leaflet to the Salzburg Card we noticed that the boat ride along the river didn't finish till 19.00, and as that was included in the Card we decided to try that as well. Wending our way down to the river we arrived a few minutes later and with our magical Salzburg Card procured our tickets from the ticket office, and then stood in a long queue of people waiting for the boat to dock. It didn't appear to be a very big boat and we wondered how it could take so many people. However at least the sun had gone behind behind the towering Monchsburg hill and we were in the shade so it wasn't quite so hot, although we noted the ice cream shop nearby was doing a roaring trade.

The boat docked and the captain opened the door for us to enter and we all trooped on board. It turned out there was actually plenty of room as the boat had seating that was designed to maximise the available space.

We sailed against the swift current of the Salzach at a leisurely pace with the captain giving a running commentary on the various sights, happily for us in English as well. The river was running quite quickly and was more than two metres above normal because of the recent heavy rains he announced, and he had to be careful to avoid the large logs and branches that were being washed down from the hills. The boat ride lasted about forty minutes and was very pleasant and relaxing. Like an old ham he couldn't resist showing off at the end by performing a few twirls with the boat to the accompaniment of waltz music to great applause from the passengers.

We disembarked and as it was nearly 19.00 we went back to the hotel to freshen up before heading out for something to eat. A chap who I surmised was the husband of the woman we had met earlier was at the reception desk, and Patricia took the opportunuty to ask him about her lack of internet signal in her room. He replied in German that it was because it was such an old building and 'Die Mauer sind so Dick' - the walls were so thick that the signal couldn't penetrate. Not much help admittedly, but I suppose reasonable under the circumstances.

We went upstairs to our rooms and I lay down for a few minutes and relaxed before meeting downstairs and setting out once more into the street at 19.45. I had suggested to Patricia we try the Alter Fuchs restaurant - Old Fox - which we had passed and was just a few minutes farther up Linzergasse. It had been given five stars on TripAdvisor as a good place to eat with genuine Austrian cuisine at reasonable prices. Otherwise there was the Gabler Hotel restaurant at the foot of Linzergasse which looked reasonable as well.

A Meal at the Gabler Restaurant

We decided to head down the road to the river and see what was what. Patricia suggested trying a restaurant in Steingasse which had been recommended to her. So we strolled down the still busy Linzergasse through the warm evening air passing by crowds of people sitting outside eating and drinking and enjoying the atmosphere. We passed by the Gabler Hotel and checked the menu which looked okay, and then headed along Steingasse at the bottom of the hill, a narrow little lane with a few shops and wine bars.

After a five minute stroll along the narrow Gasse had failed to reveal any sign of a restaurant anywhere, and as we appeared to be heading into the wilderness so we turned back towards town again.

By this time we were rather hungry and so when we spotted the Gabler Hotel again we stopped outside checked the menu for a minute and then entered. It was busy but we found an empty table at the back and sat down. There was a large family with young children at the table next to us eating a hearty meal. We waited a few minutes for the Ober to come and serve us and he handed us a couple of menus. I was going to order a Helles to drink when I noticed on the menu there was a haus-brewed beer called Gablerbräu. I asked the Ober auf Deutsch if it was a Helles beer, and he replied that it was not a Helles but it was not cloudy, so I ordered it anyway as did Patricia.

The Kellner returned a few minutes laterand placed the two foaming glasses in front of us. The beer had the same golden appearance as a Helles but also had a distinct clean-tasting flavour as well and tasted delicious. I ordered my usual variation on a theme of Schweinesschnitzel, Patricia ordered a similar dish and we were given the usual very generous portions and thoroughly enjoyed the meal. I capped it off by ordering another Gablerbräu beer, and we sat for an hour or so just chatting and enjoying the atmosphere in the restaurant. It was very reasonably priced for a hotel and compared most favourably with München prices.

At 22.00 we headed out into the warm night air again and as we were both quite tired out after our long eventful day walked back up the hill to the hotel again. The outside door was locked but we inserted the key as previously instructed, it opened easily and we walked upstairs to our rooms. I lay awake for an hour or so checking my laptop for emails and reading the news before starting to fall asleep.

Walking over to the window I opened both the inside and outside windows, letting some slightly cooler air into the room, then lay on my bed listening to the sounds of the busy street with lots of people still milling about, before dropping deliciously off to sleep.

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SATURDAY 5th JUNE 2010 - UNTERSBERG CABLE CAR - HELLBRUNN - MOZART - FESTUNG HOHENSALZBURG

It was a gloriously sunny morning when I awoke at 7.00am and lay in my bed listening through the open windows to the sound of the bells from the church opposite the hotel announcing the new day, and occasional voices from the people wandering along the street even at such an early hour.

I had read reviews on the web from people who had stayed at the hotel, indicating that although it was a good hotel, they had found the noise of the bells to be annoying. However I found them to be quite comforting and calming although I wasn't sure if prolonged exposure might alter my opinion somewhat.

We had arranged to meet for breakfast at 08.00, so I got up washed showered and changed and went down to the breakfast room. There were about a dozen or so large tables in the room with only a few people seated at them, and as Patricia hadn't arrived yet I sat down at the nearest empty table. Patricia appeared a few minutes later sat down at the table and we exchanged morning greetings.

A young waitress came over and asked auf Deutsch if we wanted tea or coffee. We asked for coffee and a few minutes later she returned with a large white ceramic pot of coffee and placed it on the table. We surveyed the breakfast options and noted it was a buffet, so walked over to the food area in the corner of the room, I chose cornflakes with milk and sat down again. The chap we presumed to be the husband came over to our table and asked auf Deutsch for our room numbers which we gave him, and satisfied he went away again. The breakfast consisted of the usual fruit juices, bread and rolls, cold meats, jams, butter and various spreads and cheeses, and was very hearty and filling.

We ran out of coffee rather quickly and had to ask for another pot. With the coffee pot replenished we mulled over our options for the day. Our plan was to head to the Untersberg first and then check out the Mozart Museums later in the day, and then if we had time, possibly visit the Festung Hohensalzburg. Breakfast finished for us about 9.00am, and we went back to our rooms having set out our itinerary.

Waiting for the No. 25 Bus

At 09.30 we walked downstairs and went out into the warm morning sunshine, walking along busy Linzergasse to the river and crossing over to the bus stop on the other side. Noting that our bus - the No.25 - didn't arrive for another fifteen minutes, it gave us an opportunity to go for a quick wander around the old town. We meandered through a maze of Gasschens before rushing back to the bus stop just in time to catch the bus as it came along the road.

When the bus arrived it was a long bendy one so we jumped on in the middle but the driver appeared totally uninterested in people getting on. The bus was so busy there were no seats left so we had to stand holding on tightly to the straps. We wondered what the protocol was for buying tickets, although with our Salzburg Card we knew Salzburg public transport was free. We did see people getting on at the following stops and proferring something to the driver, but it wasn't clear whether it was a ticket or money so we just sat tight.

A few stops along the road and a jolly old fellow resplendent in Austrian hat and flamboyant moustache got on with some difficulty owng to some physical infirmity. He said something that sounded incomprehensible to me but which in a flash of inspiration I deduced to be 'Grüss Gott', which is a fairly universal greeting in Bavaria and Austria. As he appeared to have directed the greeting at me particularly I responded in kind and he nodded his acknowledgement. He was only going one stop and as he was alighting he gave me another incomprehensible farewell greeting which I gathered was 'Schönes Tag'. I returned the greeting and he got off and waved at me still smiling.

He seemed a cheery old soul...

The bus passed by the Hellbrunn Palace on the left which Patricia told me was on our list of free events on our card. We discussed whether we could alight there on the way back which we thought sounded reasonable so we agreed to do just that. A few minutes later we secured seats for ourselves as the bus gradually emptied of people.

The Untersberg Cable Car

Then we arrived at the Untersberg cable car stop and alighted. It appeared that everyone else on the bus was going there as well as we joined the crowd and headed across the road to the cable car ticket office.

The cable car was coming slowly down the mountain as we waited. Our Cards were presented and we were given our tickets. Neither of us had been on a cable car ride before and so we didn't know quite what to expect, but strangely enough somehow or other everyone managed to squeeze on to the car, which must have held at least fifty people. The doors closed and we set off - it appeared to us to be almost vertically straight up. We soon left the sunny village behind and headed ever upwards at what appeared to me to be a fair old rate of knots. The scenery on all sides was fantastic with the impressive mountains of the Austrian Alps spectacularly rearing up.

We passed one of the pylons for the cables and the car gave a sudden lurch as it passed by causing everyone to grab hold of the bars and handholds, so we were prepared the next time it passed a pylon. The air grew noticeably cooler the farther up we travelled, until eventually we reached the top and everyone alighted. Although it was about five thousand feet up and the air felt a lot cooler, it was still very pleasant. I had packed a jersey in my bag just in case, but it was clearly not going to be required. We walked outside to be met with breathtaking views of the surrounding countryside. On such a clear and sunny day we could see for forty miles in every direction, with the city of Salzburg in splendid array below us and little toy planes taking off from the airport in the distance.

The summit looked quite inviting up ahead, and as it appeared a relatively short climb of a couple of hundred feet, so we started climbing, but it became quite a hard slog so we stopped off at a convenient monument halfway, which we noticed on reading the inscription was a monument to the Austrian dead of both World Wars.

There was a large iron crucifix on the summit above us. Little colourful wildflowers were blooming all around, and we saw pockets of ice from the winter snows that had not yet melted. Crowds of people were toing and froing from one area to the next, and we saw groups of obviously fit and healthy hikers who had actually walked up from the foot of the mountain. It was difficult to avoid slipping in the snow and scree so we had to be careful. We took loads of photographs of the surrounding scenery including Berchtesgaden in Germany, one of the Fuhrer's favourite spots.

We dithered about for half an hour or so just admiring the scenery from various viewpoints. Patricia stopped for a few minutes to examine some of local wildflowers, and then we meandered slowly back down to the cable car entrance.

Back Down to Earth Again

The next return journey was due to start in fifteen minutes, so we sat down on a bench to rest. A long queue of people built up behind us for the return journey which was even more spectacular than the ascent, as we managed to secure a front window stance in the packed carriage. The steep descent gave the illusion of flying or falling down the mountainside. It took all of ten minutes to get back to the ground again, and I marvelled at the expert way the carriage was handled on the descent, coming in to land at just the right speed. We all disembarked and rushed outside into the hot sun, some people headed towards their parked cars while we strolled over to the main road to try and find the stop for the bus back to town.

As we walked along the quiet road we couldn’t see any sign of a bus stop up ahead, and we reached the end of the village still with nothing in sight, so we decided it must be at the other end of the village and retraced our steps.

Our logical deduction was that the stop couldn’t be far from the cable car ride, but once again we reached the other end of the village to find no bus stop. It was really hot by this time and we were a little fed up wandering about looking for the bus stop, so as there was nobody about to ask we went back to the cable car again, and then discovered in a shady nook under a few trees the elusive bus stop, not a hundred yards from the cable car station but slightly off the main road.

On checking the timetable we noted that the next bus didn’t leave for another fifteen minutes, so as it was very hot and we were quite thirsty, that gave us the opportunity to go to the shop and get something to drink. At that moment the bus appeared round the corner and pulled in and stopped. The driver got out and went over and stood under a tree and lit a cigarette, so we walked over to the little cafe/shop where we bought a couple of half-litre bottles of chilled Fanta, which we drank very quickly and assuaged our thirst.

A quick discussion on our options ensued and we agreed to stop off at the Hellbrunn Gardens as they were included in the ticket anyway, and we still had plenty of time. We boarded the empty bus and sat down, it quickly filled up with returning passengers from the cable car and then we set off back to town.

The Walk to the Hellbrunn Gardens

Halfway along the road Patricia thought she heard the announcement for the Hellbrunn bus stop and we pressed the bell and alighted, only to discover to our chagrin that we had arrived at the Hellbrunn Zoo which was a full kilometre away from the Gardens.

There was nothing for it but to walk, and so we strolled along the road in the brilliant sunshine, noting the curious smell of the animals from the zoo which we presumed must have been behind the wall across the fields. The Zoo was also included in the itinerary fro the Salzburg Card, but I had never been a particular fan of seeing animals caged for the delectation of humans, a viewpoint that Patricia shared, so the Zoo was crossed off our list of Salzburg must-dos.

The narrow road itself was very busy, with lots of cars looking for parking places, so it seemed that the zoo was a very popular destination on a summer Saturday afternoon. After fifteen minutes walking we came to the turnoff to the Hellbrunn Palace on the right, and we strolled alongside a tree-lined wall down to the entrance glad of the shelter from the hot sun. The sign directing us to the Hellbrunn Palace appeared ahead and we walked across the courtyard and saw the sign for the tour of the fountains and waterworks.

We walked across and presented our cards and were given a ticket with the tour due to start in ten minutes.

A Soaking at the Hellbrunn Fountains

There were quite a few people hanging about evidently waiting for the tour to begin, and at 1.20pm the crowd meandered over to the iron grill gate which was then opened, and we walked inside along the gravel path to a large stone amphitheatre which looked a bit like the ancient Roman amphitheatres only much smaller.

I led the way up the stairs to the back of the group and we sat on the stone steps looking down on the assemblage. There were about thirty or so on the tour and the tour guide asked us in German if anyone wanted to hear the tour auf Englisch and a few hands went up in the air including ours. So he interspersed his talk with English translations, describing the history of the fountains and waterworks and assuring us that we would get wet at some point during the tour.

He asked for half a dozen volunteers and of course having a premonition of danger there was no way I was going to volunteer for anything if I could help it, so I cowered behind a couple with a young child. A few courageous or foolhardy souls put their hands up and volunteered, and he arranged them around a long stone table seated on stone seats. He explained to us that the enormously wealthy Prince Archbishop of Salzburg who initiated the construction of the fountains and waterworks had a mischievous sense of humour, and when in the glorious days of the 17th Century of a quiet evening, he would invite his rich and elegantly-attired friends to view the waterworks, however he always kept a few surprises up his sleeve for them.

At that point our guide pressed a button on his portable machine and immediately a jet of water flew up from the centre of the stone seats on which the volunteers were sitting to screams of delight from the assemblage. Needless to say the volunteers leaped up from their seats with considerable alacrity at the application of very cold water to their nether regions and as the guide obviously sharing the wicked sense of humour of his illustrious ancestor took us down along the path to the next area, they must have wondered at the wisdom of volunteering in the first place. I kept well to the back of the queue as he demonstrated the delights of the water works, fountains and gardens both indoors and out.

Everywhere we went there were little tricks with the water and amazing feats of water engineering including a fascinating room that created its very own rainfall, and a miniature moving theatre powered entirely by water. He showed us a stag's head with antlers outside on a wall invited us over for a closer inspection. With the benefit of experience and a suspicious nature I kept well back, and my caution was vindicated when a few seconds later jets of water sprayed out from the points of the antlers soaking the unwary few who had ventured too near.

It was just as well it was a hot day as we were all given a soaking at some point or another, but it was good fun and very interesting. Patricia mentioned that the enormous expense of building the entire area would have been in marked contrast to the extreme poverty the people would have been experiencing at the time...After forty five minutes wandering around being soaked occasionally but not thoroughly so, the tour ended to applause from the drenched participants, who I think were probably more relieved that they weren't going to have to endure aother soakng, and he then announced that as the tour was finished we could use our tickets to visit the Hellbrunn Palace and Museum, so as that sounded quite a good idea we wandered across to the Palace entrance and went inside.

The Hellbrunn Palace

The palace was a grand house built in 1615 in a palatial style with wide corridors, large and spacious rooms with high ceilings and ornate Italianate decoration. A large mobile phone type thing was handed to us, it was operated by pressing a button in whichever room you happened to be in, and it had been programmed in several different languages, so wherever you went it would give a description of the room in your chosen language, which was very convenient. We wandered through the rooms and up and down the stairs marvelling at the intricacy of the artwork, before eventually leaving and going across to the exit and then walking up to the bus stop for the bus back to town. We had checked the bus timetable so we knew what time it arrived. The sun was still shining down on us from a cloudless sky and it felt very hot.

We sheltered behind the bus stop in the shade of some trees. The bus arrived a few minutes later and we boarded secured a seat and fifteen minutes later we were back in town again alighting at the bridge. Feeling a little hot and tired by this time we agreed to go back to the hotel to lie down and relax for an hour or so, before perhaps going back out for something to eat and maybe visiting a few more museums and attractions later in the evening. We checked the times of the various sights we wanted to see including the tour of the Hohensalzburg, and at 16.00 we strolled back to the hotel through the busy streets to the hotel, went back to our rooms and I gratefully flopped down on the bed.

A Visit to Mozart's Wohnhaus

I dozed for half an hour or so and then showered and changed and just lay on my bed listening to the sounds from the street outside through the open windows. At just after five I was ready to go again, and so I went downstairs to the reception desk but Patricia was nowhere to be seen, so I went outside the door into the warm evening sunshine and spotted her walking back to the hotel having secured an ice cream for herself from a little ice cream shop just along from the hotel, and which she appeared to be enjoying immensely.

We strolled down the road to Mozart’s Wohnhaus which was only five minutes from the hotel and using our trusty Salzburg Cards secured entry to the building. There really wasn’t that much to see other than a few rooms decorated in the style of the time and some Mozart memorabilia, but it was interesting all the same. After half an hour wandering through the various rooms we went outside back into the hot sun again and walked back to the river again, crossed over the bridge and wended our way up the hill to the funicular to take us up to the castle.

Patricia burbled on about some graveyard she had visited when she had been here a number of years previously, she couldn’t quite remember exactly where it was in town but she said it was a quite fascinating place and we should go and visit it if we could. I replied ‘yes, yes, of course we should...’ as if pacifying a small child who is insisting they have suddenly remembered something that had never existed in the first place. I thought she might have been remembering another graveyard in another big city, but we said no more about it and continued up the hill to the entrance to the funicular.

At the Top of Festung Hohensalzburg

The funicular was constructed along the same lines as the cable car with a very steep ride to the top but this time along a rail track. We joined on to the end of a queue outside the entrance and then we noticed that they were part of a tour group so we went inside and secured our tickets and entered the funicular. There were two funiculars and one rail track which split in the middle so they could pass one another. The car filled up very quickly, the doors closed and we were whisked unceremoniously to the top in just a few seconds. We emerged in the castle grounds and everybody else seemed to know where they were going and wandered off in various directions.

We noted the entrance to a door indicating where the tours of the castle started from and checked the map Patricia had acquired and just wandered around for half an hour taking in the breathtaking views from the castle of the surrounding countryside.

I mentioned to Patricia that we would be better making our way to the door for the tour as it was nearing 6.00pm, so we wandered inside a large room with a glass fronted counter where there was a sign indicating the next tour would begin in five minutes. We waited with the crowd and queued to receive our mobile phone guides and then followed the tour guide through the castle. He took us through various rooms explaining the history as we went.

Patricia had researched some of the history of the place before she left and so knew a bit about it. The commentary indicated that owing to its impregnable location the castle had withstood many a siege and even Napoleon had only managed to secure it through negotiation. We passed through the various rooms with each one giving a fascinating glimpse of life in a castle and additionally the importance of salt to the economy of the town - hence the origin of the name Salzach river along which the salt was transported to be stored in Salzburg. After 45 minutes the tour ended and we went back outside again. The sun felt just as warm and we strolled through the castle grounds admiring the view.

Patricia then found a partially restored room with very old architecture that she had found information about on the internet and we went inside. It seemed to be the cue for everyone else to follow us inside and the room was soon full of people milling about. After another traipse round the place we thought we had seen enough and we went back to the funicular for the journey back down again. It was just as quick as the ascent and we arrived at the bottom in a few seconds declaring ourselves well-satisfied with our choice of sights for the day.

Abendessen at the Sternbräu Restaurant

It being late evening we thought it was time for something to eat, so we walked through the town looking for something suitable, stopping here and there at various eateries to examine their menus before wandering off along the road. We strolled along the narrow and picturesque Getriedegasse, bustling with people at that time in the evening, passing Mozart’s fairly nondescript-looking Geburtshaus and noting the opening times for Sunday morning, because we wanted to make the most of the last few hours of our Salzburg Card before catching the train back to Munich. By this time we were very hungry as we hadn’t had anything to eat since breakfast, although Patricia had kept herself topped up every now and again with various snacks.

We arrived at a large Biergarten full of diners and stopped to examine the menu. It looked reasonable and having wandered about for half an hour we thought it as well to stop by and so we went inside the restaurant building which was completely empty. We asked a waitress auf Deutsch if it was okay to sit in the restaurant, and of course she responded in perfect English that everybody was sitting outside because it was such a lovely evening, but we could sit where we liked.

The restaurant was called Sternbräu and Patricia as usual gave the menu her usual ten minute perusal before selecting something she thought she might like. We ordered a couple of Helles beers and when she brought the beers over I plumped for Seelachs mit Bratkartoffelen - Salmon with sliced fried potatoes. Patricia confidently ordered her selection only to be told regretfully by the waitress that that particular dish was off that evening, so it was back to the menu again while the waitress went away again. This time I suggested Patricia order a backup just in case, so she selected Hirschragout mit Salatteller - deer stew with a plate of mixed salad - and then picked an alternative just in case. However this time there were no problems and we spent the next hour and a half leisurely eating and drinking.

The beer was excellent and I marvelled that Austrian beer was not very well known in the UK, probably owing to the dominance of German beers. We chatted away amiably about this and that, I ordered another beer for myself and then we finally asked for the bill about 21.45. We noted from the bill that the waitress had added an additional side salad and a couple of pretzels that we had not ordered, thinking they had been complimentary when she had put them on the table, but we didn’t feel like quibbling about it, so we gave her a not too generous tip and then headed back outside into the warm dark evening.

The sun had long since set leaving only a faint glow in the western sky, and the lights of the town gave the place an added lustre in the Dämmrung - twilight. I tried taking a few photos but it was difficult holding the camera still enough in the poor light. We were both very tired out after our long day and decided to head back to the hotel. We walked back across the river along the footbridge called Makartsteg to Schwartzstrasse and headed up past Mozart’s Wohnhaus, passing a few small pubs, then walked along Linzergasse before finally ending up back at the hotel just after 22.30.

We said our gute nachts and retired to our respective rooms. It was still very warm and I left the window open to get some air into the room but also to hear the sounds of the bustling street outside while I checked my emails on my laptop, before nodding off to sleep about midnight.

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SUNDAY 6th JUNE 2010 - THE MIRABELLE GARDENS - THE DOM - MUNICH - REGENSBURG

At about 05.30 I woke for a call of nature, and looked out the window at the sun shining along the street on the beautiful early morning. I went back to bed again and snoozed off and on till about 08.00, occasionally being woken by the sound of the bells from the church. I still found the sound of the tolling bells to be comforting and didn't mind them at all.

I showered washed and changed and was ready for Frühstuck by 8.30am. Patricia was already seated at a table as she had risen earlier. I asked the waitress for a pot of coffee and then went over to the buffet for my cereal and lots of bread cold meats and jams. We ordered more coffee and then set out our plans for the day. Patricia said she would have to get some more money from an autobank, so we agreed to find a bank first. Mozart’s Geburtshaus was our next priority and then we would see where the fancy took us. We had to check out of the hotel before 11.00, but we thought that would give us enough time to see the Geburtshaus, and Patricia also wanted to see the Dom - cathedral - as well.

Our train for Munich wasn’t due to leave until 13.10 which would give us a few hours to see some more of the sights. I suggested to Patricia that after we had checked out we could ask if we could leave our bags in the hotel till we left.

When we were due to arrive at Munich Hbf we expected to catch the 15.40 to Regensburg which meant we should arrive at 17.15, and that would time it nicely for the ten-minute stroll to the Residence where we were expected to present ourselves at 17.30.

We went back up to our rooms to pack. It took only ten minutes to pack all my things in my bags, but I left my laptop till the end making a final check on the time of our connection at Munich on the excellent DB website, and then went downstairs to meet Patricia who was waiting for me at reception, and we went outside into the warm morning sun armed with our Salzburg Cards.

Patricia Tries the Autobank

We strolled down the Linzergasse and turned off at the Gablerbräu Hotel down a side street. We found an autobank at the bottom of the road opposite the Sound of Music tour bus stop, and Patricia went over to negotiate with it.

After a few minutes she told me that strangely she couldn’t get access to any of her funds and it would give her no money, so we decided to try another one a little farther on. This produced exactly the same result which perplexed Patricia greatly as she said she knew she had transferred sufficient funds for the trip, and there was plenty of money in the account because she had checked it in Munich. She said she had enough money with her for the next couple of days, and I suggested we wait till we arrived in Regensburg before trying the autobank there, but I noticed she was quite worried about it.

We wandered through the Mirabelle Gardens and I noticed a sign advertising a free music concert for later in the morning at 10.30, so we decided to come back and hear it once we had visited Mozart’s house. We went across the road and then down to the river crossing over the Makartsteg again appreciating the view across the river to the fortress on top of the hill.

A Visit to Mozart's Geburtshaus

We walked up to the Getriedegasse passing the Sternbräu restaurant we had visited the previous evening. The Gasse was very busy with loads of Japanese tourists taking in the sights, and who I noticed were obviously heading in the direction of the Geburtshaus as well, so we hurried across in front of them and went inside before the tour group could catch up with us. Our trusty cards secured entry for us and we secured the ubiquitous tour aides with us as we walked up the narrow stairs listening to the commentary provided. The house was very interesting and provided an insight into how people actually lived at the time.

There was a lot of Mozart memorabilia and loads of period musical instruments including Klaviers and viols. There were curators seated in most of the rooms to ensure nothing was purloined or touched, and there were prominent signs indicating the taking of photographs was forbidden. The final room there was a slide show with a history of Mozart’s various journeys through Europe which was very interesting and informative.

We left the building just as it started to fill up with hordes of Japanese tourists, declaring ourselves suitably impressed.

It being after 10.30, we thought we’d better go back to the hotel to check out and then go down to see the Dom, so we walked up Linzergasse to the hotel. Our packing was finished in a few minutes and we went down to reception to check out. Patricia was there having already paid her bill. I handed over the 118 euros for two nights which I thought was quite reasonable. I told the bloke in German that I had found the hotel to be ‘Rühig und Angenehm’ - 'peaceful and pleasant' - and he thanked me most graciously. Being on a bit of a linguistic roll, I then asked him in German if we could leave unser Gepäck until we were ready to go, and he showed us over to a small lounge that had been closed and which had a couple of cases already left there from other guests. We left our bags in the room and went back outside into the hot sun.

I checked the receipt he had given me and pointed out to Patricia that it was entitled ‘Frau Devine’. We speculated that they probably thought we were a married couple and were perplexed why we stayed in separate rooms although we had booked under separate names. We thought it would give them something to talk about for a while anyway.

A Stroll Through the Mirabelle Gardens

Once again we strolled down Linzergasse then along past the Gabler Hotel and down to the Mirabelle Gardens. Patricia mentioned that she had seen a reference to a museum in the Gardens that we could use our cards to gain free entry. As we entered the gates I could hear music in the distance and we followed the sounds over to where a crowd of people were standing underneath some trees surrounding a small wind band dressed in Austrian costume who were playing a lively march tune. We joined the group and stood in the shade of a convenient tree. It was very pleasant standing there listening to the music, as long as we stayed out of the hot sun.

The setting for the Gardens was quite entrancing with the combination of the trees, flowers, fountains and the Hohensalzburg in the distance across the river providing a spectacular backdrop. We listened to a few tunes, but they all seemed to be variations on a similar theme of Austrian military marches, so after fifteen minutes with occasional glances at our watches we slowly moved off.

Patricia pointed out the entrance to the museum across the way, but we didn’t have enough time to visit it and see the Dom as well, which was what she really wanted to see. So we walked through the floral archway where Julie Andrews and the kids had danced along singing doh a deer in the film. We didn’t try and emulate that feat, and just walked briskly through to the exit of the Gardens with the fading strains of the wind band in our ears.

A Quick Visit to The Dom

We walked quickly across the bridge and wended our way through the Gasschens up to the Dom which suddenly loomed up in front of us and we went inside. The Sunday mass was still going on so we slipped quietly into a pew at the back. It felt beautifully cool in the magnificent cathedral. The place was half full of Sunday worshippers and we sat quietly and listened to the ethereal and beautiful singing of the choir. The interior architecture of the Dom was very decorative with large stone columns soaring up into the high roof. With the bright sun shining through the stained glass windows the whole effect was one of light and spaciousness. I would have wanted to stay and listen to some more of the beautiful singing but we were pressed for time, so we left and went back outside into the hot sun again.

Patricia's Brigadoon Cemetery

As we were strolling down the road Patricia pointed out a gate we had passed earlier where she said was similar to the one she remembered from years ago housing the cemetery, so we walked over and through the gate and Patricia shouted in triumph that the place was indeed the one she recalled and pointed out to me the strange iron crosses on the gravestones. We walked around the peaceful cemetery for a few minutes before the necessity of getting back to the hotel intruded on our reverie and we left and went back down to the river.

Patricia said that she was really pleased she had found the cemetery as if she hadn't she would then have wondered if she had just imagined the whole thing.

We quickly walked back up to the hotel along the busy Linzergasse, went in through the front door and into the room where our luggage was waiting. I asked the chap at reception if there was a toilet we could use and he pointed to the one outside our former rooms on the first floor. We wanted to arrive at the station half an hour before the train was due to leave to give ourselves plenty of time, because we still had to buy the Bayern Ticket from the automat machine. There was no-one at the reception desk as we dragged our heavy bags outside and walked down Linzergasse for the last time.

Salzburg Abschied

Our heavy cases bumped and rattled off the cobblestones in the street as we turned right into Bergstrasse and then we arrived at Mirabelleplatz. Just as we were approaching the bus stop I heard the sound of a bus approaching behind us. Patricia asked if that would take us to the Hbf, and I replied that it would indeed, and so we put on a spurt and just managed to reach the stop and board before the doors closed. We gratefully put down our heavy bags and I leaned against the pole as the bus trundled along keeping our Salzburg cards handy just in case.

Helpfully the bus announced the approach to each stop, so it wasn’t too difficult to hear the voice announcing ‘Hauptbahnhof’, and we alighted and dragged our bags along past a portakabin that served as a temporary ticket office, and then over to a lift which at least meant we wouldn't have to drag the bags up the stairs. I couldn’t see any sign on the electronic board for our train, but we went over to the DB automat machine to buy the ticket. It was reasonably straightforward as we pressed the English translation button and managed to secure our Bayer ticket without too much fuss.

Patricia paid for it this time as I had bought the ticket on the journey from Munich on Friday. She seemed a little surprised when I told her the ticket would be valid all the way to Regensburg. Normally the price for the both of us travelling from Salzburg to Regensbsurg would have been in the region of 100 Euros, but for only 28 Euros we had unlimited travel for the day.

There were a couple of Austrian trains sitting at the platforms, and then a DB train arrived at platform 24 and the passengers alighted. There was no obvious sign of where our train would be leaving from, although it seemed reasonable to assume it would be one of the platforms at the end near where the DB train was sitting.

Leaving Patricia with the bags I went downstairs to the portakabin to ask which platform our train left from. I prepared my speech in German and confidently popped the question 'Auf welchem Gleis ist der Zug zu München bitte?', and was pleased to note her reply was a short and simple 'Gleis Vier und Zwanzig'. I gave her a quick 'Danke schön' and quickly went back up to the platform where I noticed Patricia had secured a cool drink from a machine on the platform, although she said it had taken her a few minutes to work out how the thing operated.

Apparently on putting money into the slot a combination of numbers was then entered to secure the desired drink. I went over and noticed there wasn't much of a selection but bought a small satchet of orange juice. It didn’t last long as I was very thirsty after walking with my luggage in the hot sun, but it was cool and refreshing. We boarded the waiting train found an empty carriage and sat down.

The Train to Munich

The train set off on time and as it rolled slowly across the bridge we waved goodbye to Salzburg. It had been a wonderful couple of days and I was glad that we had taken the opportunity to visit the town and do all the various things with the Salzburg card.

Salzburg was very touristy and completely different in topography to Regensburg. It was a very pleasant and picturesque town with wonderful scenery and lots of things for tourists to see and do. I would have preferred to have stayed for a week or so to get a proper flavour of the place, but for a flying visit three days was just fine. The weather of course had been wonderful, and we wondered what it might have been like if it had been raining like it had been in München. We certainly wouldn’t have been able to appreciate the stunning views from the top of the Untersberg or the Hohensalzburg.

That part of the trip was now over, and as we said our farewell and left the soaring mountains above Salzburg behind us we looked forward to the next phase of our journey, the visit to Regensburg. I was staying there for four weeks and Patricia for two, and ostensibly we were there to learn German, but for me the principal attraction was the forthcoming Weltmeisterschaft football tournament and the prospect of the feast of football to come.

The train rolled through the Bavarian countryside of forested hills and rolling green fields and I dozed off every now and again. The journey was quiet and uneventful and within a short time we were pulling in to München hbf where once again we struggled off with our heavy bags. Patricia was quite hungry by this time, it being more than an hour since she had something to eat, so I watched the bags while she went to the shop and bought a few snacks for the journey. I never really got that hungry travelling and hardly ever ate between meals so it didn’t bother me not having something to eat for a few hours.

The 15.44 was waiting at the platform and we lugged our bags along and found one of the double-decker carriages and entered. I managed to secure our heavy bags in the small luggage space at the end of the row of seats. We found a couple of empty seats on opposite sides of the aisle and sat down. The train filled up quickly and soon most of the available seats were filled.

The Journey to Regensburg

The train moved off with the seats opposite still free but when we reached Freising twenty minutes later I was joined by an old couple who had evidently just returned from holiday and flown into the airport. They both sat down and said a friendly ‘hallo’ to which I responded in kind. It is fairly normal in Bavaria for travellers to greet one another, although it would never do in Scotland, where fellow travellers studiously ignore one another unless absolutely necessary.

The train appeared to remain an inordinately long time in Freising and then over the intercom there came an announcement in German the only word of which I could decipher was 'Verspätung' which I knew meant 'delayed'. At this unwelcome announcement a loud collective groan went up from the passengers, and I wondered what it meant, so I turned round and asked the old lady sitting beside me: 'Was hat er gesagt bitte?'. She of course responded in a torrent of Bayersprache and I had to resort very quickly to my 'Sprechen sie Englisch, bitte', but she didn’t speak any English at all and neither did her husband, but a lady behind us kindly translated although her English was very limited.

They asked me where I was going and I replied 'Regensburg', and then they asked me where else, and a little nonplussed at the question I replied 'Nach der Horizonte Residenz' - 'eine Sprachschule' I helpfully added. This appeared to perplex them completely until it finally dawned on me that they thought I was getting a connection at Regensburg for another destination, it not occurring to them that anyone would want to stay in the town. It transpired from the subsequent conversation that the old couple would miss their connection if the train was delayed by half an hour.

After a twenty minute wait the train moved off again and all seemed to be going well until we arrived at Landshut, about half way to Regensburg. A young girl in her early twenties came on the train and joined us and after asking the usual noch frei formalities she sat down in the only vacant seat opposite the old couple. They immediately engaged her in conversation and it emerged that she was a maths student at Regensburg University as she babbled away happily with the old couple, however again we appeared to be spending rather a long time at the station and to more sounds of dismay from the passengers another announcement with the dreaded word ‘Verspätung’ was heard.

Patricia told me later that she managed to decipher from the conversation that there was something wrong with one of the doors which wouldn’t close properly. After ten minutes or so the train moved off again and as we sped through the countryside I noticed the old couple casting anxious glances at their watches and discussing their plans with the young student, but I only caught a few words here and there.

Regensburg Endlich

The train eventually pulled in to Regensburg Hbf only twenty minutes late and as I retrieved our luggage I hoped the old couple would catch their connection. We struggled off the train with our bags and set off on the last leg in the hot sun to the residence. On the road we passed comfortingly familiar sights and buildings and it just seemed like we had come home again. After ten minutes slow meandering through the narrow streets dragging our bags behind us again bumping and rattling off the cobblestones we reached Neupfarrplatz, where I suggested to Patricia she could check her bank balance at the Sparkasse atm.

So we stopped and went inside and Patricia was relieved to be able to withdraw some money from her account. We speculated on the reason the banks in Salzburg had caused difficulties, but couldn’t come to any firm conclusions. I took the opportunity to take enough money from my account to cover the course fees, and we went back outside again into the hot sun and walked along Gesandtenstrasse to the Horizonte entrance.

Ankunft an Horizonte Sprachschule - Bernhard, Sabine and Carla

We somehow managed to squeeze into the lift with our luggage, arrived on level 4 and went through to the reception desk. Bernhard and Sabine were there with another girl I didn't recognise and they were busy inducting a new student, a tall attractive girl with waist-length long blondish hair. Bernhard spotted me and nodded over and when they were ready both he and Sabine exchanged greetings with us. Sabine introduced us to Carla, who was evidently the new Hausmeisterin replacing the Japanese chap Johei. She looked quite young and enthusiastic with short dark curly hair.

I tried talking in German but I was finding it very difficult to understand their replies. Bernhard was most anxious to ask me the burning question of the day which was what I thought about Germany’s chances in the WM - 'für wem bist du?' he asked. 'Für Deutschland naturlich' I responded, which seemed to please him no end. Sabine then got down to the serious business of which class to allocate us to, and I abased myself and begged her to put me in a particularly low class as I had been very 'Lauf' in neglecting my German studies during the past year.

This revelation caused a little consternation until I realised I had said the wrong word, and had meant to say 'Faul' meaning 'lazy', but saying 'Lauf' meaning 'running' had totally confused everyone as they tried to figure out what running had to do with my language studies, but which linguistic faux pas I hoped would further my dastardly cause.

Sabine considered for a moment and then said a decision would be made the following morning and I should present myself at the office counter at 08.45. She handed us our zimmer keys as more new starts began arriving at the desk for them to deal with, and so we said a cheery 'Bis Morgen' to them and wheeled our bags over to our rooms.

Horizonte Sprachschule

Horizonte was established in the mid-1980s by Bernhard and Martin, and provided a range of German language courses, from complete beginner to someone with good written and oral German language skills. The school was open to everyone who wished to either learn or improve their German.

The school employed a number of teachers - Lehrers - and provided a programme of extra-curricular activities for the students, involving trips to Munich, Nuremberg and other interesting towns in the surrounding region. They also taught the course members elements of Bayerische Sprache - the local incomprehensible Bavarian dialect - and provided lectures on German history and culture and the like.

Bernhard

I had not made Martin’s acquaintance and he seemed a distant shadowy figure who always operated in the background, while Bernhard engaged more with the students and the day-to-day running of the place. Bernhard could speak very good English when he wanted, but usually always tried to speak German to the students. He would have been in his mid to late forties and according to one of the Lehrers could speak four or five languages. He seemed a friendly-enough bloke, but initially appeared aloof and reserved until he got to know you better, then he was much more approachable.

He lived somewhere outside town, about five kilometres away he told me and cycled to the school and back every day.

Most of the Lehrers I knew at the school spoke English, Spanish, French and a few other languages as well, which was naturally a big help in dealing with such a diverse array of different nationalities. Accommodation for the students was provided either in the on-site school residence, or with a local German family. Many of the students came from Europe, particularly Spain, the Czech Republic, Poland, France and Italy. There was also a significant preponderance of students from the US and South America, and a few Ukrainians and Russians. The largest proportion of students came from Japan. There were a few Chinese added to the mix, so it was a real melting pot of nations.

The school tried to insist on everyone speaking German in the school to assist in learning the language. However this rule was not often adhered to, with many people using English as the common language. The Japanese certainly spoke Japanese amongst themselves, but most of the students had at least a smattering of English, and tended to use that language at social events and in everyday out-of-class-usage. I certainly found it useful that so many students spoke English, as my rather limited German would have curtailed most conversations. I could get by with most introductory phrases but anything more complex and I tended to get left behind. The Lehrers were very professional and friendly, not tending to involve themselves in student matters, leaving that side of things to the Hausmeister.

Ehemalige Hausmeister Johei

The previous two years the Hausmeister had been a chap from Japan called Johei, who had been in Bavaria a number of years and was studying German at University and hoping to get a job in Germany. He had a good relationship with the staff and Bernhard and was responsible for keeping order in the residence, looking after the students and organising social evenings. He had left earlier in the year to pursue his studies at University and Carla from Italy had replaced him.

I had found Johei’s German to be nigh on incomprehensible on account of his thick Japanese accent, but for the most part we got on fine, although I always found it embarrassing to have to ask him to repeat everything he said because I just could not make it out. I told him it was because I was half-deaf, which at least preserved his ego if nothing else. He was also credited by the school as speaking English, but if anything his English appeared no better than his German. At least I had the excuse of not understanding him when he spoke German to me, but on the few occasions when he spoke English to me I used to sweat over possible interpretations.

Sabine

Sabine would have been the equivalent of the office manager, and took the students around the town when they arrived, giving them a guided tour auf Deutsch of the various sights. The first year I had no idea what she was talking about as we followed her through the town pointing out the various sights to us and giving us a running commentary in German.

I was sure it must have been interesting as everyone else seemed to appreciate it and even asked questions. I managed to grasp a little more on my second visit, and this year I hoped to get a little more yet. Sabine would probably have been in her mid thirties, was exceptionally nice to everyone and had the patience of a saint. On the first year’s tour we had been accompanied by a young chap from Albania, who proceeded to disrupt the tour for everyone else with his juvenile antics, until one of the older students turned round and in very robust terms told him to shut up, but Sabine had carried on talking unconcernedly, whereas I had merely wanted to put my boot up his juvenile backside.

Patricia and I had been allocated rooms right next door to one another - nos 10 and 12 - just opposite the computer desks. It being well after 18.00 we agreed to unpack shower and change before meeting up for an evening stroll around town and something to eat in about an hour or so.

My immediate impression of the room was one of disappointment as it looked as though a coat of paint wouldn’t have gone amiss, there were lots of dirty smudges and marks on the bare white walls. The bed was as usual adorned with the ubiquitous light summer duvet and the flimsy thing that passed for a pillow, which Patricia later insisted to me had been purchased from Ikea. The toilet and shower were clean though and the room appeared slightly larger than the one I had been in the previous year.

I unpacked my clothes and hung them up in the spacious wardrobe, then using my adaptors plugged in my mobile phone and switched on my laptop, and was gratified to note it immediately recognised the Horizonte network and after I put in the code connected to it, and being close to the source it was a good strong signal. I had never been at that end of the residence before, and on my previous visits had to use a cable that the school supplied for a 15 Euro deposit to connect to the internet, as the rooms were so far from the source signal. I plugged in the fridge - Kuhlschrank - and it hummed into life. I noted that there was a Fernsehen on the big table and I wondered whether it worked, with an eye for the football later in the week.

I showered and changed and after checking my emails was ready to go. We had arranged to meet at the kitchen so I locked my door and wandered along the corridor and went in to check on the facilities. Nothing had changed in the intervening year with the same setup as before with the coin-operated washing machine and dryer in the corner. I would have to do a laundry in the next couple of days as I had worn most of my shirts given the very hot weather over the past few days, but I still had two or three spare ones left to do me the first couple of days.

Ein Abendspaziergang

At that point a young girl of Asiatic appearance came in and asked me 'Bist du neu?' - 'are you new?' I replied simply 'Ja' and then a conversation ensued in halting German from my part, although she appeared to be quite proficient. It appeared she was from Australia from somewhere on the west coast near Perth and was over here for six months studying German. Our conversation was cut short by the appearance of Patricia, and the girl moved away and joined her youthful companions at the dinner table. Patricia asked who I had been talking to and I filled her in as much as I knew.

We checked the code for the glass door entry to the level 4 residence worked, noting it hadn’t been changed in two years, then walked downstairs and exited into the Pustetpassage checking that our keys to the residence worked ok. There were only a few people around at the time in the evening, but I noted that the Gaffel pub just opposite was closed. We walked out into the warm evening sunshine along Gesandtenstrasse towards Neupfarrplatz.

It was a quite beautiful evening, warm, dry and sunny, and a complete contrast to the weather of our first few days in München. We meandered through the town and down to the Steinerne Brucke, passing familiar sights along the way, with people strolling about in a leisurely fashion enjoying the ambience of the evening. Regensburgers never appear to hurry, and everything is taken at a quite leisurely pace. There is none of the hustle and bustle of a city like München say where people and traffic seem to constantly move past you at a great rate of knots, or make you move out of the way if you stand still for more than a couple of seconds.

For Regensburgers it would be just too unseemly to rush along the road, and because there are so few cars in the city centre, the only fast moving objects are the multitudinous bicycles which everyone in Regensburg seems to get about on.

Regensburg city centre is flat with hardly any inclines, so it is really easy to cycle about, and naturally most everyone does. There are also numerous places to visit by bike in the surrounding countryside and it is a great way to get around. Horizonte had an arrangement with the big bike shop in town - Stadtler - where you could hire a bike for 10 Euros a week if you were a student at Horizonte. It was a really good offer and Patricia and I had discussed doing some cycle tours about town, but I had an eye on the forthcoming schedule for the Weltmeisterschaft, where with three games a day every day for a week I didn’t think there would be much in the way of opportunity for any cycling adventures.

We crossed over the bridge accompanied by crowds of people and bikes, the bridge having been closed to all vehicular traffic now for over a year because of structural concerns. The far end of the bridge was undergoing some form of shoring up or reconstruction and was shrouded in scaffolding. The bridge was still in remarkably good condition despite over eight hundred years of constant use, a tribute to the skill of the workmen and engineers who constructed the thing in the first place.

A Stop at the Einhorn Biergarten

We walked over the bridge commenting on the high water level of the Danube following the recent heavy rains, with the dark brown water rushing and swirling under the bridge, it certainly didn’t look any shade of blue today. Cutting down left past the picturesque tree-lined Alte Linde Biergarten we walked along Badstrasse next to the river. Sabine had mentioned to us that a new Biergarten had opened in Badstrasse just along from the Goldene Ente Biergarten, so we thought we might as well check it out while we were here.

We passed the Goldene Ente and came across a tiny Biergarten called Einhorn fronting a terraced two-storey house just a few yards farther on. We stopped and perused the menu outside and as we were hungry and it looked reasonable we chose an empty table and sat down. A waitress came out of the door and approached our table and handed out two menus and we ordered two Helles beers. She went away and brought back a couple of foaming beers in glasses the name of which I didn’t recognise - Erl Bier. We had a quick taste and thought it was a bit light and warmish but otherwise okay.

Patricia engaged in her usual ten minute perusal of the menu with frequent references to my Worterbuch for translations of some of the more obscure items. She eventually plumped for something which tickled her fancy while I stubbornly stuck with Schweineschnitzel. The Kellnerin came over to take our order and having ordered my mundane dish with no problem she regretfully informed Patricia that her chosen dish was off so it was back to the lengthy selection process again. This time she picked a backup just in case but ordered a Malloreddus, a pasta dish made from semolina and water that she recognised, and mercifully this time there were no problems.

There was an old chap sitting across from us at the next table reading a newspaper, but he had evidently been eavesdropping on our conversation and he said something to us in English about the Biergarten having only been open for the past few days and the beer being called Erl. We thanked him auf Englisch and when the waitress appeared with our dishes he said'Guten Appetit' and returned to perusing his newspaper.

The food was very tasty - geschmack, and it was most pleasant sitting by the side of the Danube eating and drinking on a warm summer’s evening. The old fellow beside us finished his beer said 'Wiederschauen' to us - Bavarian for 'Wiedersehen' - and wandered off.

When he had gone we speculated on whether we had been saying anything particularly derogatory about the place while he had been listening in, but dismissed the possibility as we had commented only on the quality of the beer. We finished our meal and asked for the bill which came to 21.90 Euros. It was only 2.60 Euros for the beer which compared very well with München prices which were nearer 4 Euros. We left just after 21.30 and wandered across to the Eiserne Steg bridge next to the Goldene Ente commenting on the good quality of the food but being a little disappointed in the beer.

We crossed over to the other side and strolled up to busy Arnulfsplatz and then turned left along Ludwigstrasse strolling past the little shops and cafes with people sitting outside at tables drinking beer or coffee and just generally relaxing. It felt very pleasant just strolling through the town, and it felt like after only a few hours in town we had slipped into relaxed Regensburg mode already.

We walked past the Oscar Bar on the right and then through the Pustetpassage to the residence entrance. We were both pretty tired out after the long day, having risen early in the morning in Salzburg and then travelled through the afternoon in the heat to Regensburg. We retired to our rooms and I checked my emails, grateful for the fast and reliable internet connection.

I opened the window to let some air into the room looked out to the west where the faint glow in the sky betrayed the last light from the setting sun, then lay on the bed with my laptop perched on the little table beside me, and entered some details into the Word document I used for my Blog before nodding off to sleep.

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MONDAY 7th JUNE 2010 - NETTO - OMA PLUSCH - THE ALTE LINDE

I woke at 07.00 feeling a little tired, switched on my laptop and checked the Wettervorhersage which looked set fair for the week, with high temperatures in the eighties and sunny weather. I got up showered shaved and washed and was ready to go out to Netto at 08.00.

I thought about knocking on Pat’s door but decided not to bother her and went downstairs and into the Pustetpassage. There were a few people drinking coffee at the Italian cafe next to the residence, it was a beautiful morning as I walked along Ludwigstrasse to Arnulfsplatz. Netto was right next to the Kneitinger pub and was reached by walking through a short passage, and it was easy to miss it if you hadn’t been there before.

It was surprisingly busy even at that early hour, but I selected my goodies - butter, bread Bavarian style, vine tomatoes, a litre of milk, Lyonner paprika cold meat, and a litre and a half bottle of my favourite zucker-frei Zitronen-Limonade. I carried the lot precariously in my arms because Netto like the other supermarket at the Hbf - Norma - didn't have any baskets and only had trolleys for customers to use, which are really too big and awkward for just a few groceries.

I arrived at the the queue at the checkout desk. I had my 20 Euro note ready just in case I had erred with my calculations, but I needn’t have worried as the whole lot came to only 5.95 Euros. As Netto didn't issue free plastic bags I had brought my own plastic bag with me, and I quickly loaded everything into it and then left having safely negotiated the first visit without any linguistic incidents.

Back at the residence I put my goodies into the Kuhlschrank and then prepared for class. At 08.40 I gathered my stuff together and went to the reception desk where there were lots of new students milling about.

I managed to catch Sabine’s eye and she came over to me smiling as usual, she was always such a happy person. She emmed and ummed and then stopped one of my former Lehrerins - Gabi - and left my fate in her hands. Gabi asked me what I wanted and I told her auf Deutsch that although I knew a lot of German words I had trouble with the Grammatik and making a coherent Struktur in a sentence. She considered the matter for a few minutes and then allocated me to Susie’s class in Room 1.

I thanked her and skipped into the room where there were three other girls already seated, said a cheery Morgen which was politely returned, picked a vacant seat and plonked myself down. A few minutes later and a couple of other girls came in and sat down. The Lehrerin - Susie came in and introduced herself. She was a big jolly Bavarian girl probably in her late thirties with a confident and pleasant demeanour. She asked me to introduce myself to the class in German, which I did successfully and then she wrote down the names of the other class members: Edgar, a young chap from Mexico, Carolina, a girl from Chile, Hyo Won, a girl from South Korea, and finally Eriko and Yuki two girls from Japan.

I noted that my new classmates were no older than 21 or 22 at most, so I felt a bit like Methuselah. The class was very relaxed and Susie was very good at keeping things moving along. The two Japanese girls giggled a lot and spoke German with indecipherable accents.

Edgar’s German wasn’t really very good at all and the little German he spoke was with a very heavy Spanish/Mexican accent. Carolina who sat next to me spoke German with a very heavy Spanish accent. Hyo Won spoke reasonably clearly and was evidently a lot more fluent than the others in the class, although I thought she seemed to be a little aloof. It didn’t take Susie very long to determine the serious limitations of my Grammatik, as she gave us an exercise on the use of 'Habe' with verbs in the Perfekt tense and their proper location in a sentence.

It looked like it was going to be long hard morning of learning Grammatik and Satzstruktur. However the class was very relaxed and Susie was very good at explaining things to us auf Deutsch whilst keeping things moving along and everyone happy.

Like the other Lehrers at the school she discouraged the use of dictionaries, and whenever we encountered a word we didn’t know - which was quite often - preferred to have the word explained auf Deutsch to the class, either by herself or some lucky person who just happened to know the meaning.

Anastasia aus Moskau

At the Pause at 10.30 - tea break - I spotted Patricia in the corridor outside who was talking to the strikingly attractive tall young woman with very long blondeish hair I had seen on Sunday at the counter checking-in when Patricia and I arrived. Patricia then introduced me to Anastasia aus Moscow, who spoke excellent English and was in her class. We spoke briefly about our classes as Patricia had been concerned that she be allocated a suitable class as she had been required to change class the previous year, but this time she felt like Goldilocks and expressed her confidence that she was in the right class even after only an hour or so.

Anastasia spoke English with a marked Russian accent, and my first impression was that she seemed a very nice and pleasant person. Patricia and I agreed to meet at 1.00pm for lunch as we would be meeting up later in the evening at the Alte Linde Biergarten with the other students.

Märchen

After Pause Susie mercifully dispensed with the Grammatik and asked if anyone knew what Märchen were - fairy tales. The rest of the class looked blankly at her and sensing the opportunity to ingratiate myself with the Lehrerin, I chimed in with Rapunzel as an example. As is usually the case when I try to do things to advance my own cause, I found myself hoist by my own petard when the class looked at me enquiringly not having heard of Rapunzel before, and so Susie asked me to explain to everyone auf Deutsch what Märchen were.

Being well and truly caught in a trap of my own making I made a stumbling attempt to explain what a fairy tale was auf Deutsch, whilst trying to recall some of the names of the fairy tales I knew and of course what the German translations would be. I threw in 'die gebrüder Grimm' to blank stares, and then 'Hans Christian Andersen' to more blank stares, and then in a flash of desperate inspiration I said 'Schnee Weisse und die sieben Zwergen' - Susie corrected me 'Schneewittchen' - Snow White and the Seven Dwarves - which elicited an 'Aaah' of understanding from Hyo Won, and then mercifully Susie took over again.

The lesson was spent learning the names of the various Märchen in German - 'Rottkäppchen' - Little Red Riding Hood - 'Es war Einmal' - Once upon a Time - '...und sie haben immer nach glücklische geleben' - and they lived happily ever after.

The German language has some curious names for things - 'Meerjungfrau' in English 'Mermaid'. This is a typical German amalgam of three words most conveniently rolled into one. 'Meer' means 'sea', 'jung' is 'young', and 'Frau' is 'woman', literally 'young woman of the sea'. Alternatively you could just use 'Nixe'. 'Fee' - 'Fairy', 'Holzfäller' - 'woodcutter', 'eine Hexe' is 'a witch', from which we get the English expression 'to put the hex on someone'.

The rest of the lesson involved learning all the various words from 'Märchen' and was very interesting...well at least I didn’t have to concentrate on Grammatik...

Patricia and I Go To Oma's

I met Patricia at 13.00 at the kitchen and we made our way downstairs. We didn’t have any particular plan of where to go but it being a pleasant warm afternoon we walked along Gesandtenstrasse anyway. I suggested we go to Oma Plusch in Pfarrergasse and see what was on the menu as I knew they had special offers on at lunchtime, so we turned off Neupfarrplatz and walked down along the narrow Pfarrergasse to Oma's. Oma Plusch meaning Grannie Plusch, was one of my favourite Regensburg pubs. It was much frequented by locals, so was always a good choice for good food excellent beer and watching football, however I read it had recently changed ownership and wondered if the character of the place had changed.

The interior was just the same and I recognised one of the waitresses from last year so it didn’t appear to have changed at all. We sat down at a table near the window and the waitress came over, handed us the various menus and asked what we wanted to drink. We ordered the Helles which was Lowenbräu Passau and when she brought the two glasses over I was pleasantly pleased to note that the quality of the beer was just as excellent as ever.

Bavarian Beer - Helles

It was a close thing as to which beer in Regensburg I thought was the best. There were loads of pubs in the town offering different types of beers.

My favourite pub - Murphys Law in Spiegelgasse - sold the superb Eichhoffener Helles on draught, the Alte Linde Biergarten served a very drinkable Kneitinger Edelpils Helles, and the local Bischofshof brewery produced an excellent Helles beer. Additionally the Spitalgarten Biergarten just across the Steinerne Brucke which is the oldest brewing establishment in the town, produced its own excellent Helles beer.

With such a variety of excellent beers from which to choose, selecting a favourite was difficult, but I thought for sheer flavour and quality the Lowenbräu Passau in Oma Plusch just tipped the scales by the merest whisker. The beer has no connection with the better-known Lowenbräu brewery in Munich which itself has recently been bought over by another Munich brewery - Späten.

I drank Helles almost exclusively in Bavaria. It was without doubt the finest beer I had ever tasted, and was difficult to brew properly. It had a light distinctive flavour that was less hoppy and bitter than Pilsener type beers, and I found it to be most palatable and agreed with my constitution. I found wheat beers, or Weizen as they are known, to be too sweet and irritated my stomach. I could drink a couple of half-litres at a time, but any more and they left a cloying sweetish taste in my mouth.

However there were places to avoid in Regensburg.

Thurn und Taxis

These were the Thurn und Taxis tied houses which served Thurn und Taxis beer, which was universally considered to be of very poor quality. The fabulously wealthy Thurn und Taxis family whose descendants currently reside in St. Emmeram’s castle in the centre of town, originated from Lombardy in Italy, and their name in Italian was 'Tasso' meaning badger. When the family moved to Vienna in the Middle Ages, Tasso was transmogrified into 'Taxis' which was a corruption of the German word for badger 'Dachs'. In the 1600s they adopted the name 'Thurn' meaning tower, and became Thurn und Taxis with the badger being incorporated in the family coat of arms. The family then made their fortune providing European postal services for a few hundred years or so.

The current Fürstin or Princess - the flamboyant Gloria - had sold the town’s Thurn und Taxis brewery to Paulaner of Munich a few years back. Paulaner then promptly closed the brewery and transferred production to Munich, producing a greatly inferior range of beers, but still with the name Thurn und Taxis. However in 2005 a new brewpub opened on the site of the old brewery that was closed in 1995. It was still owned by Paulaner, and produces Thurn und Taxis beers but only for consumption on the premises. The murky waters of Bavarian brewing have been muddied still further by the nefarious influence of the brewing conglomerate Heineken who recently bought a 49%!s(MISSING)take in Paulaner.

Over the past few years the quality of Bavarian beers has been compromised by ‘targets’ set by the accountants who seem to run corporations these days, in order to ‘improve’ sales. What that means in essence as everywhere else, involves cutting corners in the brewing process, with the increasing use of ‘Hopfen Extrakt’ rather than proper hops. The extract produces a hint of bitterness in the flavour which affects the taste and quality of the beer. Some breweries still stuck to the time-honoured brewing process, but there was an increasing usage of the extract among the bigger breweries - Paulaner being a particular sinner.

Rahmschnitzel an Oma's

Meanwhile back in Oma Plusch we perused the menu. I looked at the daily special menu but the waitress pointed out it was only available from 18.00 so I ordered my favourite - 'Rahmschnitzel mit Pommes frites' - fried cutlets of pork in a creamy mushroom sauce with chips. On discovering that the waitress spoke very good English Patricia asked her if there was anything she could recommend. She obligingly suggested one of the dishes of the day on the menu and Patricia said that would be fine. She went away again and we sat and chatted about our various classroom experiences in the morning, exchanging views on the merits of our Lehrers and classmates.

We had a very pleasant meal there and we left just after two o'clock after giving the helpful and friendly Kellnerin a decent tip. The sun was shining from a cloudless sky and everything was just perfect. We went back to the Residence and Patricia went to the kitchen to do a laundry while I spent the next couple of hours sweating over my Hausaufgabe for the following morning.

Ein Abendsbesuch an Der Alte Linde Biergarten - Sebastian

The school had arranged an evening get-together for everybody in the Alte Linde Biergarten at 7.30pm. At 4.00pm I finished my Hausaufgabe then went back to Netto again for some cornflakes and milk which I had forgotten in my earlier visit. I returned to the residence and checked my emails and typed some more of my blog.

I met Patricia at the kitchen at 19.00 and we went downstairs and waited for Anastasia at the entrance. She arrived a minute later and greeted us, then we all strolled along Gesandtenstrasse stopping occasionally to look in shop windows. There was a shoe shop on the left in Neupfarrplatz which held a particular fascination for Patricia who liked shoes, she gazed at the various wares on display for a good few minutes before heading off again.

We kept up a steady flow of conversation with Anastasia in English, with which she appeared quite comfortable, although she spoke with a heavy Russian accent accentuating the ‘h’ at the beginning of a word pronouncing it 'khev' instead of 'have'. She was a very pleasant person and appeared to be quite happy being in our company as we exchanged information about ourselves.

We went through the town and then down to the Steinerne Brucke crossing over the 800 year-old bridge and reaching the Alte Linde - Old Linden Tree - a few minutes later. We wandered inside past the entrance where a burly chef was busy cooking meat on skewers over a large grill and which smelt very enticing. Patricia spotted Sabine sitting at a table with a few of the others from the school, we waved over and sat down saying hello. I sat beside Sabine who immediately engaged me in conversation.

We were now having to converse in German as per school instructions, which I found very difficult as I could hardly hear what Sabine was saying to me as I was half-deaf and she tended to speak very quietly, and so I kept asking her to repeat everything - 'wiederholen, bitte?'.

I said hallo to Sebastian, the young chap from Bremen who took students on excursions. He was studying at Regensburg University and played guitar in a rock band in his spare time. He greeted me warmly having remembered me from my previous visits. He related a very amusing story to everyone of his time spent as a child in El Paso Texas where his father had been stationed when he was in the Bundeswehr - German army. His father had dressed him in Lederhosen which as he said wasn’t exactly everyday dress for the kids in El Paso, and which gave the local urchins some considerable amusement to Sebastian’s great discomfiture.

We noticed a group of Bayers sitting at a table just opposite us, and one of them had just been given a very large glass of dark beer indeed - Sebastian told us it was a five-litre glass and would either have been to celebrate his birthday or his stag night. Even though he was a big chap he seemed to be having a fair bit of difficulty lifting the huge glass to take a drink. It looked to be a dark Weisse beer in the glass, and we wondered a) how long it would take him to drink it, and b) to recover.

The Biergarten was very busy for a Monday evening with lots of people sitting at the tables drinking beer, but the good weather might have been a significant factor in bringing people outside.

A couple of more students came in and sat down at our table - a small young chap from the French-speaking part of Der Schweiz who told me his name and which I almost immediately forgot. He appeared comfortable speaking in German but he had an indecipherable French/Swiss accent which I had great difficulty understanding. He was accompanied by an intense-looking young girl with long dark hair who was also from der Schweiz. She sat in the seat opposite me and engaged me in conversation, and at least I was able to understand what she was saying, she told me she had been at the school for a few months, but this was her last week.

A few minutes later another tall dark-haired young chap appeared and sat down beside us. Sebastian introduced him to us as Florian, one of the local volunteers who took the students on tours. It appeared he had replaced my nemesis Wolfgang, who on my previous visits had taken us on forced marches and ascents up steep and inaccessible peaks, where inevitably I would be lagging at the back unable to keep up. Although he probably thought it was a benign pace he was setting, it appeared to me to be more like a forced march through trackless wastes, or a stiff climb straight up the south face of the Eiger.

In the first year I had visited Regensburg Wolfgang had taken us on a trip to Passau, a lovely wee town which lies on the border of Austria and Germany at the confluence of three rivers - the Danube, the Inn and the Ils - where we attended an organ concert in the cathedral which was played on the largest church organ in the world. Then afterwards at lunchtime we wended our way to a sunny Biergarten next to the river where we enjoyed a nice relaxing lunch. Innocently we had thought what a nice and relaxing way it was to spend a sunny day, just relaxing quietly in a Biergarten.

However he was only softening us up for the main event, a stiff climb 300 feet almost straight up to the Schloss Adler above the town. A trail of broken bodies from our group had littered the steep path to the top, with people collapsing exhausted in a heap on the grass when they eventually reached the summit, and Wolfgang fresh as a daisy ready for the next phase...

Florian would have been in his mid thirties and seemed a nice chap, but I didn’t get much opportunity to speak to him. I noticed Patricia was making a valiant effort to speak German with him while I struggled trying to speak German with Sebastian.

Sebastian was from Bremen near Hamburg in North Germany, but he insisted that as his father was a Bayer, so he thought he could be considered to be a Bayer by proxy. We talked a little about football and he told me he was a Sankt Pauli supporter - a team from Hamburg. We had another couple of beers and with the soothing balm of excellent beer my German seemed to have improved somewhat - well at least I thought it had - then people started moving off about 22.30, so we asked for the bill, paid and wandered back along the dark streets to the residence feeling pleasantly pickled.

Back at the residence I opened my window wide to let some cooler air into the room, which wasn’t always the best idea at night, as the light usually attracted moths and other similar fluttery night creatures. This night was no exception as a couple of large moths flew in to join me and fluttered about the room annoyingly, until I finally turned off the floor lamp plunging the room into semi-darkness, lit only by the faint glow from the window. The moths either grew bored and flew off to find somewhere more interesting, or found some quiet corner in the room to snooze.

I lay on the bed for half-an-hour checking emails on my laptop before eventually dropping off to sleep.

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TUESDAY 8th JUNE 2010 - CAROLINA AUS CHILE - PAM PAM - MURPHYS LAW

The following morning I woke at 07.30. The sun was shining from a blue cloudless sky, and at 08.20 I went to the kitchen to get a plate for my cornflakes, and as I passed the big table opposite the kitchen, I noticed the Australian girl sitting there with some other young girls having breakfast. I gave them a cheery ‘Morgen’, which cheery salutation however did not elicit any significant response from them other than a bored and indifferent glance in my direction. I retrieved a suitably-large-sized plate and repaired to my room and ate my cornflakes mit Milch.

There were two types of Bavarian milk - the Vollmilch and the 'halb-fett Milch', and the largest capacity I had found in any of the supermarkets was the one-litre carton. I really liked the Vollmilch although it must have been seriously pasteurised, as the expiry date was usually over a week in advance of the date of purchase.

I went along the corridor to the class at 08.50, bought a Kaffee mit Milch for 0.50 from the coffee machine outside the office, and walked past the office counter where Jadschi was chatting to one of the students, but she gave me a wave and I went into the room.

Eriko and Hyo Von were already seated chatting away and in sharp contrast to the girls at the big table earlier, gave me a cheery ‘Morgen’ when I came in and sat at my desk. The morning lesson started with a recapitulation of the words we had supposedly learned the previous day. Susie handed a slip of paper to one unfortunate person who then had to describe the word auf Deutsch without of course mentioning the actual word and the rest of the class had to guess the answer. I cursed mentally at having forgotten nearly all the vocabulary of the previous day, and so didn’t shine at all. However Hyo Von saved the day for us by getting most of them right, while I sat looking blank.

Then we got down to the nitty gritty of the morning Grammatik dealing with the different genders of nouns and their accompanying adjectives. Susie split us into groups of two and gave us an exercise in the various endings associated with the different genders. In order to use the right ending of an adjective you have to know the gender of the noun and to my question of how we could do that, Susie explained that we would just have to learn them all, which we thought was a pretty tall order. The endings of the indefinite article and adjective also changed, depending on whether the context was Dativ, Akkusativ or Nominative, and could be anything from 'der', 'die', 'das' to 'den' or 'dem'.

This was the most confusing aspect of German for me, as well as the sentence structure which required the verb to be at the end.

A Conversation With Carolina

My partner for the exercise - Carolina aus Santiago in Chile who also spoke very good English, had a good grasp of the basics of the exercise and helped me considerably, providing most of the correct answers. Her vocabulary wasn’t great and she spoke German with a heavy Spanish accent, but she had a better grounding in Grammatik and she seemed a very nice person.

I asked her auf Deutsch - as per school protocol - why she was learning German, and she explained she had come to Regensburg with her husband Hans, who was also from Chile to learn German and attend a course in a small Bayerische town near Passau on making glass art as she was an artist.

I expressed surprise that she should be married at so young an age as she was only 21 years old, and asked if her husband with a suspiciously German-sounding name was from Bayern. She explained that Hans was the son of a German who had emigrated to Chile years ago, and naturally he wanted to learn to speak his father’s language properly. She wasn’t staying in the residence and explained that they had hired a nice flat round the corner in Wahlenstrasse that was considerably cheaper than staying at the residence.

She asked me what I was doing learning German and I explained my current circumstances as a recent retiree with a bit of time to do different things. She seemed surprised that I was in the class as she said I appeared to know a lot of German words, had a very good vocabulary and pronounced German very clearly. I explained my background as having been exposed to German words for years through lieder and opera when I worked in a Music Library in Glasgow.

Susie interrupted our conversation and got back to the exercise. She had allowed us to talk, as the others were still working on the exercise, and of course we had been conversing auf Deutsch as well.

The rest of the lesson proceeded on the subject of Grammatik, but Susie tried to make it interesting, livening up the subject as best she could and helping the Japanerins with their pronunciation, sometimes asking them to repeat a word or phrase several times over until they got it right. She had to do the same with Edgar who was willing and nice, but whose German pronunciation was heavily accented, but he took it all in good humour and smiled a lot, while the two Japanerins whispered to one another and giggled. At Pause on my way down to the Tabak shop to buy a paper, I noticed Anastasia was engaged in earnest conversation with Sabine, standing at the office counter, but thought nothing of it at the time.

I went down to the little Tabak in Gesandtenstrasse, picked a copy of Bild from the rack, went inside and gave the woman behind the counter a hearty 'Grüss Gott' which she graciously returned, paid for the paper and went back to the residence.

It was a pleasantly warm day, with only a few fluffy clouds in the sky, and the weather was set fair for the next few days or so - warm and sunny until at least the weekend.

I took my copy of Bild back to the class to read it. Bild wasn’t really considered by most Germans to be a newspaper at all, being the German equivalent of the Sun with the same screaming headlines and right-of-centre political bias and pictures of young ladies with very few clothes on, which were sometimes actually on the front page. However the only alternative paper for me was the Mittelbayerische Zeitung - the Guardian newspaper of Bavaria - a serious ‘heavy’ newspaper printed in Regensburg, with definitely no pictures of scantily-clad young ladies, but lots of difficult-to-understand words, requiring the constant use of a Worterbuch.

At least with Bild you could get the gist of the story from the headline and accompanying pictures, and for me the added attraction was that it only cost 0.60 cents.

Carolina came and sat down beside me again and we resumed our interrupted conversation, only this time in the absence of Susie treacherously auf Englisch, with which language she seemed quite comfortable, however we switched quickly back to German again when Susie entered the room.

After the Pause Susie gave us an exercise in describing different types of people and their clothing - 'Kleidung - ein dicker Mann, er hat eine lange Nase, sie hat die blauen Augen, Mantel, Rock, Hose' and the like. She then described the various colours - 'Farben - blau, grün, gelbe, schwarze', and the changes of the endings depending on the noun used. When the lesson finished Susie asked me if I could prepare a presentation to the class the following morning on a subject of my choice, just five or ten minutes long she said.

I went back to my room after class and ate a couple of sandwiches for lunch before settling down with my Worterbuch and laptop to prepare my presentation and do my Hausaufgabe. I chose music as the subject of my presentation, and it took me a few hours to finally finish a couple of hundred words.

I had grave misgivings over the quality of the Grammatik, and of course not having access to a printer I had to laboriously write it auf Deutsch on a sheet of paper and then rehearse it all to see if it lasted the required five minutes or so. Having spent such a long time working on my presentation I decided to leave my Hausaufgabe till later. I had arranged to meet Patricia and Anastasia at 6.00pm to go for a stroll round town and have 'etwas zu essen'.

Abendessen an Pam Pam

At 18.00 I went to the kitchen again to meet Patricia. There was a small group of girls sitting at the big table playing cards, including the Australian girl I had met when I arrived. They barely gave me a glance as I walked past them. Patricia appeared a few moments later and we walked downstairs to the entrance to meet Anastasia. She was staying in a room on level 2 and arrived at the door a few minutes later.

We walked through the Pustetpassage with no real idea where we were going to go. I mentioned a nice Italian restaurant in the Bismarkplatz - L’Osteria Amalfi where I had eaten a very nice meal two years previously.

We chatted about whether we wanted to eat Bayerische or Italian as we strolled along the road. Contrary to school instructions to speak only in German we treasonably spoke English. Anastasia seemed quite confident and comfortable speaking English, which she told us was much better than her German. Patricia and I both were grateful that she spoke English so well as our German was not good enough to maintain anything other than a very basic and halting conversation.

As we strolled in the warm evening sun towards Arnulfsplatz we passed the seats outside Pam Pam, a nice Italian restaurant just off the Haidplatz. There was no-one sitting there so we stopped and had a look at one of the menus on the table. As the menu looked reasonable we plonked ourselves down.

Both Anastasia and Patricia said they would like to sit outside which didn’t bother me at all. A Kellnerin came out and asked if we wanted something to drink, and without thinking I immediately ordered a Helles, Patricia and Anastasia ordered one as well. Then I noticed on the menu that the beer was the same one as Patricia and I had drunk in the Einhorn Biergarten on Sunday evening - Erl beer. We didn’t think it had tasted very good, but when the waitress brought our foaming glasses we were pleasantly surprised to find it was completely different, perfectly chilled and fresh-tasting, so we put our not-so-good beer to a bad pint - not a very auspicious start for a new Biergarten. I ordered linguine and the others ordered different types of pizzas.

The linguine was excellent and Patricia and Anastasia made encouraging remarks about the quality of their very generous pizzas. We relaxed sitting in the warm evening air chatting about this and that and just watching people passing by in the street. Anastasia told us a little about herself. She lived in a flat in Moscow with her mother and worked in the centre of the town as an Assistant Manager for PriceWaterhouseCooper - a large American conglomerate providing financial services.

She had a bright and enquiring mind, a ready laugh and seemed to be a happy and confident person, and although at 26 years old she was considerably younger than the pair of us, she seemed to enjoy our company.

Patricia and I hadn’t really known one another other than a brief couple of days the previous year in Regensburg, but we had been corresponding fairly regularly by email over the past few months, and we had spent a few days traipsing about Munich and Salzburg together, so we had come to enjoy one another’s company, appreciating and understanding one another’s little foibles and nuances.

Patricia had worked in computer software design and came originally from New York, but now lived near her son and grandchildren in Seattle. She was a good listener, had a ready laugh and made interesting conversation. She had also retired and now had the luxury of having the time to do the things she wanted. We had a similar outlook on worldly matters and tended to agree on most things.

Anastasia is Bitten By the Bug

Anastasia told us she had been complaining to Sabine that morning because she had found bedbugs in her room on level 2 on Sunday night. Apparently she had woken up during the night to find blood on the sheets, and when she had switched on the light she noticed horrible blood-swollen insects crawling about the room. Anastasia of course being utterly fearless, had chased them round the room with a large spoon squashing them when she caught them, and spattering the floor with the blood they had been gobbling. We were of course horrified at the revelation of bedbugs in the residence.

Patricia said she had worked in a hostel for a few years and knew how difficult it was to get rid of the pests once they had established themselves. She told us they were the very devil to get rid of, and you basically had to throw everything out and burn the furniture because they lived in the cracks in furniture and gaps in floorboards, and then it was necessary to seal the room and heat it to an inordinately high temperature to kill the little blighters.

I teased Anastasia, calling her 'unclean', but she took it in good part and seemed quite non-plussed by her experience, and said she had now moved into another room on level 2, which she hoped didn’t have any bugs. She also mentioned that Sabine had told her they had the same problem the previous year and thought they had finally eradicated them.

After a very enjoyable and conversationally entertaining meal, at 19.00 we asked the Kellnerin for die Rechnung. The beer cost 3.10 which was about a Euro cheaper than Munich prices, and the whole amount for the three of us came to only 31.70, which was really excellent value. We paid 'getrennt', giving the Kellnerin a reasonably generous tip and wended our way slowly back to the Residence.

An Evening Visit to Murphys Law

We went back to our respective rooms and I sat down for an hour and set to completing my Hausaufgabe. Having finished it eventually after a lot of struggling, at 21.00 I meandered downstairs and went across Gesandtenstrasse to Murphys Law in Spiegelgasse for my first visit of the trip.

As I was passing Mike's small Biergarten area at the rear of the pub, I noticed there were a few people sitting at one of the tables. I went down the steep stairs into the dark pub and into the bar. There were only a few people there at that time, but Mike was working behind the bar and gave me a cheery hello when I sat down on my favourite stool at the bar.

We shook hands and exchanged greetings and knowing what I wanted without having to ask, he started pouring a half litre of Eichhoffener Helles. He placed the foaming glass on the counter in front of me, I picked it up, gazed at it reverently for a moment and took a deep satisfying draught, put the glass back on the counter and then let out a long satisfying sigh of deep contentment, firmly declaring it to be one of the finest beers I had ever tasted - it felt good to be back. Mike seemed quietly pleased at my endorsement of his beer.

Murphys wasn’t a 'tied' pub, meaning Mike could negotiate a better deal for the beer he sold, and it meant he could change the beer if it suited him. Eichhoffener was a small local brewery and didn’t have many outlets in town, but they certainly knew how to brew an excellent Helles. Mike told me he had been preparing the pub for the forthcoming Weltmeisterschaft with TV sets in every corner, so it seemed. There were two huge screens in the big lounge, and he explained that because of his satellite setup he could show two different games at the same time which no other pub in Regensburg could manage. He had also set up a TV point in the small Biergarten upstairs for guests to watch the games in the evening.

There were two TV sets in the bar, the main one just above the dartboard and a smaller screen in the far corner, so he was well prepared. He had also printed little WM booklets with every game detailed with the time and the date in their respective groups, with the Murphys Law logo on the front which looked very impressive. He gave me a couple of them which I put in my pocket.

I had another couple of pints and chatted occasionally with Mike when he wasn’t serving customers or dashing upstairs to attend to the Biergarten, as he was on his own with no Kellnerin to help him. There were only a few people in the bar, it being a warm Tuesday evening as everyone else would have been enjoying the warm weather in one of the Biergartens, and so would not be very likely to want to be inside a dark Keller bar. Mike said he preferred it when it was raining, then the bar was usually busy. He said the pub had been completely packed out the day Bayern had played in the recent European Cup Final, when they unfortunately lost to Inter Milan, and it had been standing room only in the bar, so he was hoping for a similar response during the World Cup.

He had arranged staffing rotas for the pub to be open for every game, even the early kick off ones during the day as well, as the pub was normally only open from 6.00pm till 2.00am.

A Couple of Englanders in Murphys

At 22.30 a couple of young chaps came in to the bar speaking English with English accents, sat down on a couple of empty stools next to me and engaged Mike in conversation.

As naturally happens in Murphys Mike expertly and effortlessly drew me in to the conversation with them. The tall young chap with short blond hair was a Formula 3 racing driver and seemed to consider himself a bit of a ‘babe-magnet’. The chap who was with him seemed a very nice and modest fellow and was introduced to me as Dave. He would have been in his early thirties, hailed from Kent and had been working as an electrician in Regensburg for the past five years. He told me he loved working and living in Regensburg and would never consider going back to the UK. The other chap was called Colin and he had been in Regensburg for a few years having arrived to do a German language course at Horizonte.

That interesting revelation led to an exchange of opinions on the various merits or otherwise of learning German at the school. Mike interjected his view that he had spent a few years in Regensburg, and spoke the language very well and had never taken a single German lesson since he came and so questioned the value of learning German at the school. He said he had started working in a bar when he arrived, and was plunged straight in at the deep end speaking hardly a word of the language, but just picked it up as he went along.

I had heard Mike speaking German a few times, and his grasp of the Sprache was very good indeed, he had also married a local girl and now had three young children, so his roots in town were fairly well established. The problem as far as Mike could see was that most people in Regensburg spoke Bayerische, which was a dialect of German, whereas in the Sprachschule students were taught Hochdeutsch, which is a bit like coming to Glasgow and learning to speak Oxford English. I could readily attest to that observation given the number of people I had heard speaking Bayerische, and whom I could barely understand. The problem from my point of view, was resolved by the number of people who spoke very good English.

Discussion continued along those lines and time passed quickly by until I noticed it was almost midnight and I had drank four half litres of beer. As a ‘Stammgast’ - pub regular - Mike had set up a tab for me behind the bar, which meant I didn’t have to pay for each round, and just paid at the end of the evening which was very convenient, and as the whole bill came to only 10.24 Euros, it had been a very cheap night. As customary I left a tip which Mike put into the glass jar behind the bar and which was shared with the staff. I took my leave of the boys, waved cheerio to Mike and went out the back way to the street and back to the residence.

It was a lovely warm evening with not a cloud in the starry sky. I got back to my room checked my emails and reflected on the events of the day.

It looked like I was in the right German class for my level of Grammatik. It was a good class and Susie was a very good Lehrerin, keeping the lesson ticking along, but exercising great patience with the slower ones in the class, and taking pains to ensure everyone’s pronunciation and especially that of the Japanese girls was correct. Eriko, who I thought was the older of the two Japanerins, spoke German reasonably well but did have difficulty with her accent and pronunciation. The other Japanerin - Yuki - was excellent with her Grammatik and was very neat and precise, but her accent was almost impenetrable for me, and as I was half-deaf that didn’t help either. Both girls seemed very nice and friendly.

Hyo Von was certainly the best in class at both written and oral German, but like many young modern girls she liked to give the impression of finding everything around her just too boring for words. Edgar smiled at everybody, but his level of German was pretty basic and his pronunciation was indecipherable at the best of times, but he was just such a personable bloke and you couldn’t help liking him. Carolina was my favourite, she had an attractive personality, and was open and friendly and wise beyond her twenty one years. Her Grammatik was very good although her accent was a bit like Edgar’s but she spoke much clearer German, and she could speak excellent English. I thought myself quite lucky to have landed in such a good class.

It appeared that Patricia and I had found a welcome new friend in Anastasia. She had an open and attractive personality, and a confident outgoing demeanour. She was very good company and spoke excellent English, which was a big help for me anyway, and I hoped she wouldn’t be distracted by the lure of hanging out with the younger set in the school, although somehow I didn’t think she would.

Regensburg was such a pleasant town and Murphys Law just had to be the best pub in Bayern, with great beer, friendly staff and a tremendous atmosphere. Mike - the owner, who hailed from County Wexford - had bought the place a few years previously, and had turned it into a superb sports bar. It was the regular haunt of the large expat population in Regensburg as well as being popular with the local Bayers and especially the younger set at the weekends.

Irish pubs seemed to be all the rage these days, almost every self-respecting foreign town had at least one to boast of. Regensburg had two - the other one was called the Irish Harp, and was located at the bottom of Brückstrasse just opposite the Steinerne Brucke. It had the obligatory Irish beers - Guinness and Murphys on draught, which were sold in 0.4 of a litre measures, which was just less than a half litre. It was dark inside and looked the part, having lots of wooden furniture and being festooned with ersatz 'genuine' Irish bric-a-brac, and occasionally had live music on in the evenings - mostly German musicians singing sixties/seventies songs or trying to replicate Irish folk music. The few times I had been in - not very successfully either.

They added a Euro on to the prices of drinks whenever a band was playing - to pay for the musicians - but this was fairly standard practise in pubs with live music in Bayern. Since my first visit to Bavaria two years previously it had been a bit of a mystery to me why Bayers would want to drink Guinness or Murphys when they had such a wonderful variety of Helles beers of their own. Perhaps it was the lure of something different and exotic, and certainly the brand of the Irish pub - ersatz or otherwise - had been successfully exported around the world over the past fifteen years or so.

I started nodding off about 01.00, and fell into a long contented slumber.

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WEDNESDAY 9th JUNE 2010 - VALHALLA - MURPHYS LAW

Up early again! Another glorious day, warm and sunny. At 08.00 I went along to the kitchen armed with a few 1.00 euro coins carrying a couple of large plastic bags full of clothes to do a washing, having only a couple of clean shirts left. However when I got there I found there was no washing powder available, so like the Grand Old Duke of York I had to retreat back to my room with my unwashed washing.

I went back to the kitchen ten minutes later to retrieve a bowl for my cornflakes, and the girls were sitting at the big table again and to my polite ‘Morgen’, I received only the merest of disinterested glances from them. I began to wonder if I had somehow unwittingly offended them. I didn’t dwell on the possibility too long and went back to my room and finished my breakfast. At 08.50 having washed and dried the bowl and spoon I traipsed along to the class.

A Quick Chat With Jadschi

After I had bought my morning coffee I spotted Jadschi at the office counter and went over to speak to her.

She was the office secretary and would have been in her late twenties, and was the one who corresponded with the students by email on the arrangements for attending the school. We had exchanged emails several times over the past few months since my enrolment, and I discovered she could speak very good English, and had read some of the Rebus novels which were set in Edinburgh and the surrounding area. They were hard enough for a native English speaker to read because of the number of Scottish words liberally strewn throughout, so my admiration for her had greatly increased. She was also very nice and personable, and we chatted auf Deutsch - rather slowly on my part - about the forthcoming Weltmeisterschaft.

Jadschi didn’t think Germany would win and when asked who she thought might be the likely winners, lowered her voice in case of prying ears and whispered treasonably to me: 'Ich drücke die Daumen für Portugal' - lit. 'I press the thumbs for Portugal'. I replied 'Wirklich!', and she nodded looking round her just in case. I told her the secret was ours alone and no-one would ever know the truth...

My own treasonable tip was either Brazil or perhaps Spain, who were current European Champions and were playing good football, but they often flattered to deceive at the World Cup. Jadschi retreated back to the office and I went into class and sat down at my desk. Everyone was seated except Carolina who arrived a few moments later, gave me a smile and sat down beside me.

When Susie came in, jolly and cheery as usual, she gave us a variation on the normal morning recap of the previous day’s vocabulary. She set up a projector with a grid like a crossword with various letters randomly scattered. She divided us into teams of three and explained the rules to me. Susie would give us a clue to the word she wanted by describing it and the first one to get it would win until completeing the grid.

It was an interesting variation of the usual format, interjecting a competitive element into the exercise, but again I didn’t shine particularly well having failed to recap the vocabulary owing to an evening spent in Murphys. However it was good fun and we enjoyed the game. The theme of the morning lesson was more Grammatik associated with 'der Schmuck' - jewellery - and personal adornments, 'Ohringen' - earrings, 'Halskettelen' - necklaces and the like.

The lesson passed quickly and at Pause after coming back from the Tabak for my daily Bild, I spoke to Patricia and Anastasia and asked them if they were going to Valhalla in the afternoon. Patricia said she had put her name down for the Ausflug, but Anastasia had been there before and said she wasn’t going, but added that she would like to meet us later in the evening for something to eat. I mentioned to Patricia about the lack of washing powder, and she told me there had been none when she did her washing the previous day, but had washed the clothes anyway. I said I would mention it to Carla when I saw her.

I Give a Presentation to the Class

Back in the class we spent the next forty minutes on more Grammatik before Susie gave me my big moment and asked if I could do my presentation. Everyone looked expectantly at me as I pulled out my A4 sheet of paper with my presentation. I started confidently enough, reading from the prepared script, but I hadn’t got very far before Susie interrupted me, saying I would have to go slower and allow time for everyone else to understand and ask questions. So I read it a sentence at a time, giving a brief history of my association with music - mostly classical, but adding that I liked most types of music with the notable exception of my pet hates - Rap and Hip-Hop, which I found to be obnoxious, aggressive, mysoginistic, and worst of all completely unmusical into the bargain.

Having given the class a long and I was sure, most interesting lecture, I waited for the expected barrage of questions from my fascinated audience, only to be met with total silence. Susie asked if anyone had any Fragen - questions - for me, but only kind Edgar, who with his limited German probably understood only a small part of the lecture, piped up and asked if it was only classical music we had in the Music Section of the Mitchell Library. This then led to a class discussion on the different types of music and everyone's preferences and my lecture was forgotten.

Afterwards Susie handed along the sheet of paper with the details of the Ausflug to Valhalla in the afternoon which she had forgotten to give us earlier, and when I chimed up that I had been there before asked me to explain to the class what it involved. I gave a rather rambling and stumbling explanation of Valhalla being a copy of the Parthenon in Griechenland, built by King Ludwig in the early 1800s, and being filled with the busts of the people he admired, although I had to ask Susie the German word for ‘bust’ - which of course turned out to be nothing simpler than 'Büste'.

Hyo Von looked at the paper with a bored expression before passing it along dismissively to Carolina. Apart from me, there were no takers from our class for the trip, to Susie’s evident disappointment. We were to meet at 13.30 at the door downstairs which didn’t give us a lot of time for something to eat for lunch. After class finished Susie asked me if she could get a copy of my presentation so she could make corrections to it. Knowing I had made a plethora of grammatical errors I handed it over to her with some misgivings.

Back in my room I decided to take the laundry crisis into my own hands by zooming along to Netto to buy some washing powder, before rushing back to the residence to change for the trip to Valhalla.

A Boat Trip to Valhalla

I met the group including Patricia, at the main door in front of the school in Rote Hahnen Gasse - Red Chicken Lane - and accompanied by Sabine we strolled through the sunny streets of the town and down to the river, reaching the ticket office ten minutes later. We stood around while Sabine bought the tickets. The three Polish ladies were there as well. Apparently, according to Patricia who somehow knew these things, they were German teachers from Poland and they were at the school to refresh their German skills. They would have been in their mid to late forties and seemed quite nice but very intense and studious, they were in the same class at the school, and tended to do everything together.

Wolf was there as well. He was from Colombia and was quite a small chap and probably in his mid to late twenties, but he always spoke in clipped declamatory tones, affected to wearing reflective sunglasses a lot of the time and hung around with the rude girls at the big table. He told me his father had been German - hence the name Wolf, but didn’t volunteer any more information about himself. I wasn’t sure whether he spoke any English as he spoke only Deutsch to me, and of course his German was much better than mine. I had first met him in the lift and we had exchanged greetings.

Sabine secured our tickets and we made our way down the gangway and onto the boat. We hurried to secure a seat in the shade, but they had already all been taken so we elected to sit outside in the sun. Patricia gave me some sunscreen for my face and arms to keep the worst of the sun off and the boat set off along the river.

After ten minutes of sitting in the hot sun, the discomfort became too much for us and we sought shelter on the lee side of the boat. Standing in the shade for a few minutes brought immediate relief and we stayed there for the rest of the journey, which was very short as we were travelling with the swift current. It seemed strange for the river to be so high in such heat, but of course the river would have been fed by the recent heavy rains, and was still swollen and fast. After twenty minutes the brilliant white imposing edifice of Valhalla hove into view up ahead and we prepared to disembark. Sabine gathered everybody together and we left the boat in a chattering group and wended our way slowly up the hill.

A Bit of a Climb to the Top

I mentioned to Patricia that the first year I had been there we had taken an alternative route through the woods which avoided the steepest part, but having imparted such tantalising information, needless to say I couldn’t find the path again. We did notice a sign indicating ‘Waldweg’, but it looked closed off so we carried on slowly up the hill. A few of the younger ones sprinted on ahead, but with the benefit of experience I lagged at the back. All the same I found the climb very tiring especially in the hot sun, and by the time we reached halfway I was heaving and gasping for breath, so we took the opportunity to stop for a breather.

Patricia didn’t appear to find the going as uncomfortable as I did, being used to hikes and long walks in the hills around Seattle. I steeled myself for the rest of the climb and eventually made it to the top and leaned against a cool marble pillar fighting for breath.

Sabine called everyone together, it appeared we hadn’t lost anyone on the climb, but some, including myself, were looking distinctly worse for wear. I wasn’t sure what was the worst aspect, the climb itself or the hot sun beating down mercilessly. I was very unfit though, not having been out on my bike since the previous year. Sabine marshalled us through the entrance and into the cool interior.

Valhalla was a copy of the Parthenon in Greece that King Ludwig of Bavaria decided to build on the banks of the Danube, for no other reason than he was particularly eccentric and had lots of money that he didn’t know what to do with. So what better way to spend it than with a monument that would house marble busts of the famous people from every walk of life that he admired. Reflecting 19th century values, most of the busts on display were inevitably of male personages, with only one or two females dotted here and there - Catherine the Great Empress of Russia being one - but of course she was from Germany originally.

Sophie Scholl and the Weisse Rose

One of the latest additions was Sophie Scholl a student in Munich University who along with her brother and a few friends had been a member of the Weisse Rose resistance organisation during the latter part of the Nazi era. As resistance organisations go it wasn’t a particularly successful one, the group being involved only in the printing and distribution of anti-Nazi leaflets, but she did display remarkable courage in the face of Gestapo interrogation, and her calm acceptance of her fate when confronted with the dreadful prospect of being beheaded for her activities earned her a lot of silent admiration - well nobody else dared to speak out.

She is regarded nowadays by Germans as a heroine for her anti-Nazi activities, and is used as a bit of a convenient sop by some people to hide behind, pointing to her example to refute the allegation that all Germans slavishly followed Hitler till the end.

However she is one example of the exception demonstrating the rule, as after her death there were no Weisse Rose offshoots anywhere in Germany carrying the torch of liberation from Nazi rule. But it pleases many people that at least one person in Germany - or perhaps two, as her brother was executed as well - was prepared to stand up to the Nazis, and so they can comfort themselves that not every German is tainted with the original sin of being born German, and then having to spend the rest of their lives adopting a mea culpa attitude to the rest of the world.

We spent about twenty minutes wandering around gazing at the busts. There really wasn’t much else to see and I thought it would be a significant improvement to have a little more information about the individuals represented there. Patricia pointed out to me the different sculptural styles of the busts, with the later twentieth century ones adopting a more minimalist style with less clearly defined features. I certainly concurred in her assessment and preference for the older style, and we agreed that there should at least have been a consistency in style. We went outside and took a few photographs from the top of the wonderful view of the flat surrounding countryside bathed in glorious sunshine.

We went round the back to visit the toilets, and then Sabine attempted to gather us all together, because we had to get back down to the jetty in half an hour to catch the boat back to Regensburg.

Sabine hat uns verloren in den Wäldern

As usual our lot were so busy chattering away that organising them proved an impossible task, so some started meandering down the hill of their own accord, but Sabine told me and patricia that she knew a way back down through the woods, so we followed her along to the Waldweg exit behind the building and went into the woods.

Sabine confidently assured us she knew where she was going, so Patricia and I followed her down a long path through the trees. At least it was a lot cooler in the woods. Sabine took off her shoes to walk along, and I asked her if it didn’t hurt to walk along with sharp stones and pine cones on the way, but she said she preferred walking Barfüss, and was quite used to it. We wended our way slowly down the hill with me taking anxious glances at my watch as I noted the time ticking along.

As we sauntered along, I idly wondered what would happen if we missed the boat and whether there was another boat we could catch, and at what time it left and then when we would get back to the Residence.

I caught up with Sabine who was some way ahead of me and asked her casually auf Deutsch whether she knew where we were going. Sabine was normally never fazed by anything, but she replied rather tersely 'Ich weiss nicht' - 'I don’t know', and I asked whether we were 'verloren' - lost - 'wie Hansel und Gretel in der Wald'.

Sabine merely laughed but she did steal an anxious look at her watch and still walking Bärfuss, markedly quickened her pace. I waited for Patricia and told her I thought Sabine wasn’t sure where we were, and it did appear we had strayed much farther along the road to the right away from the jetty. A few minutes later we reached some houses at the bottom of the hill and found a path leading back to the jetty. We hurried along the path, and then to our relief we caught sight of the Polish ladies up ahead waiting for us.

We were just in time as the boat docked a few minutes later at 16.45. We boarded, and because we were so late and being at the back of the queue, we had to settle for a seat at the front of the boat sitting in the sun.

Sabine Orders a Radler

At least we had made it, and with Sabine sitting behind us I teased her about getting us lost and what a story I would have to tell back at the school. Sabine just laughed and when the Kellnerin came along a minute later she ordered a Radler.

Even though I was quite thirsty I didn’t order anything as it was Thurn und Taxis beer and neither did Patricia. However when her Radler arrived a couple of minutes later, Sabine got her revenge by extolling the virtues of having a long cool drink sitting in the hot sun, and how refreshingly cool it tasted. A Radler was a mixture of half Helles beer and half lemonade, and was designed to quench the thirst of Radfahrers - cyclists - without getting them drunk after a lot of exercise.

The journey back took longer as we were sailing against the current, but after twenty minutes the twin spires of the Dom hove into view in the distance, and fifteen minutes later we tied up at the side of the river and disembarked. The sun was still shining as we slowly wended our way back to the residence.

A Delicious Ice-Cream

As it was so hot we couldn’t resist stopping at a little Italian ice-cream vendor in Kohlenmarkt that Patricia recommended and we bought a cone each.

The ice-cream was wonderfully cold and tasted delicious. It was one of the Regensburg attractions that there were so many of these little ice-cream shops almost all owned by Italians. The little ice-cream parlours were dotted all over the centre of town, and handily placed to tempt you as you passed by on warm days. They had loads of enticing flavours, chocolate, mint, vanilla - my favourite - raspberry, strawberry, banana, and mixtures of different types as well. It was just so easy to stop and buy one as the window was open to the street and the sight of the ice cream was irresistible.

We savoured our ice-cream as we walked back along past the Rathaus and then along Tändlergasse, and into Hinter der Grieb past Kaminskys cafe and then into Rote Hahnen Gasse.

I had sung the praises of Kaminskys to Patricia a few times and as we passed by we took a quick peek at the menu which we agreed looked quite enticing, and so she said to me that we should go there at some point. I heartily concurred, but as it was now nearly 18.00, and we had agreed to meet Anastasia to get something to eat at 20.00, and as we still had to shower and change and do our Hausaufgabe, it didn’t give us a lot of time to get ready.

So we went back to our rooms past the inevitable group of girls seated playing cards at the big table who barely gave us a glance as we walked past.

Patricia's Time Slows Down

I quickly finished my Hausaufgabe and was ready by 20.00.

I went along to our meeting point at the kitchen and waited for Patricia to arrive. At 20.05 and there being no sign of her I went back to her room and knocked on the door. She answered immediately and expressed surprise when I mentioned it was after 20.00 as she had checked her watch and thought she had plenty of time. On looking at her watch again she noted it appeared to be running about seven minutes slower than mine, so she concluded that the battery must be running down and resolved to have it changed in the morning.

Abendessen at Oma Plusch

We went down to the entrance where Anastasia was already waiting for us, and gave her the whole sad story of Patricia's watch while strolling along busy Gesandtenstrasse in the warm evening air. We reached Oma Plusch a few short minutes later went inside and sat down at a vacant table near the window. There were a few people seated at the various tables, some of whom were smoking which was a bit of a surprise as it was Streng Verboten to smoke in pubs and restaurants unless the establishment was declared to be a Rauchklub - smoking club - requiring some form of membership, usually a token payment of a Euro or something similar.

It didn’t bother us as we were sitting over at the window, and the Kellnerin came over and handed out the menus and took our order for something to drink. We all chose Helles and a few minutes later she reappeared with three half foaming litre glasses on her tray.

I took a long satisfying drink - it really was a most excellent beer, properly chilled, refreshing and geschmack. Patricia and Anastasia discussed the various options on the menu - I had already chosen mine - Rahmschnitzel mit Knodel. When the waitress came back a few minutes later to take our order I confidently ordered my Rahmschnitzel and then was completely thrown when the Kellnerin asked what type of Knodel I wanted and reeled off a few unintelligible names.

I didn’t know what they were but plumped for Semmelknodel.

Nothing escaped Anastasia’s eagle eye though and she immediately commented that I didn’t know what Semmelknodel was. I was forced to admit I didn’t actually know what it was but I wasn’t particularly fazed as I concluded it must be a variation of mashed potato and something else - well according to the Worterbuch Knodel was mashed potato and Semmel was some kind of Bavarian bread, so I thought I couldn’t go far wrong.

Patricia and Anastasia placed their respective orders and the Kellnerin went away again. Having successfully negotiated the ordering process with no mishaps we resumed our conversation.

Anastasia Spills the Beans

Anastasia told us a bit more about herself. Her father was a doctor and her mother was a lawyer but they had since separated and now she stayed in a flat in Moscow with her mother. It appeared she had grown up in something of a privileged background and had been abroad quite often with her parents when she was younger. They had been living in Algeria when she was due to be born in 1983, and her mother had flown back to Moscow so that she could be born in Russia - an important consideration for people with a love of their country.

Despite all the upheaval in her younger years Anastasia appeared to have grown up to be level-headed and a straightforward and honest person with a delightful sense of humour.

She appeared to really enjoy the company of two people who were probably older than her parents, and she seemed quite relaxed to be with us. Patricia and I warmed to her open personality despite the age difference. Our meals arrived and we tucked in whilst still maintaining the conversation. Anastasia had something of the romantic Russian soul in her and was very fond of 'love stories', and related to us in her delightful Russian accent synopses of her favourite novels and films - usually ending with '...and khee fell in love with kher, and eet was soooo beautiful...'

With such enjoyable conversation time passed quickly and we finished our drinks and asked the Kellnerin for the bill. We paid getrennt and with a drink thrown in it was great value for money - only 6.30 euros. We each gave the Kellnerin a decent tip and wended our way outside. It was still reasonably light with the evening glow of the Dämmrung in the sky as we strolled down Spiegelgasse, at which point I made a sharp left turn to go into Murphys while the other two said they would go for an evening stroll round town before retiring to the residence.

A Few Pints in Murphys - Max

I went down the narrow stairs into the bar which was quite empty with only a few people dotted at tables here and there.

Max was on duty behind the bar as I sat down at my favourite stool. We exchanged greetings and I asked him how his studies were proceeding. Max poured me a Helles whilst relating his academic progress. He was studying a management and economics course at University and was in his third year, and everything appeared to be progressing very well, and to supplement his income he worked in the bar occasional evenings during the week. Max was another of many Bayers who spoke excellent English.

He was a tall slim very pleasant young man with short dark hair and a ready smile. Naturally the principal topic of conversation was the impending Weltmeisterschaft, and Max was most anxious to secure my opinion on Germany’s chances, so he asked me what I thought. I told him I didn’t think Germany would win, but I thought Ozil the young German player of Turkish parentage who played for Werder Bremen would be a star for the team. Max agreed and said he thought they might make the semi finals with a bit of luck, and again like many Bayers he seemed anxious to know what I thought of England’s chances.

I gave him the oft-related spiel that I thought England as usual would most likely be weighed down by the burden of their own expectations and had no chance of winning the tournament.

Max appeared most relieved that I didn’t appear to think very much of England’s chances. It seemed strange to me that the Germans always seemed to be afraid of England for some reason or another. Whether it was a legacy of two Weltkriegs I wasn’t sure, but there was definitely German angst about England. And considering that after all England had only ever won the thing once in 1966 when it was held in England, when they had every advantage including a Russian linesman to help them, and had never even appeared in a single final in 46 years of trying, so I didn’t think there was very much to worry about there, and this was certainly not as good a team as England had taken to tournaments in previous years...but there was always a chance...

Rooney was England's best player, but he had been injured in a European match earlier in the season and didn’t appear to have fully recovered.

Max noticed me perusing the new Murphys menu and mentioned that Mike had recently raised the prices, and a Helles was now 2.70, which was a rise of 20 cents, but he said it was the first rise in prices in about five years, so it wasn’t unreasonable he thought.

Tim aus Manchester

At that point in the discussion Tim from Manchester appeared and sat down at the bar and immediately recognising me said hallo.

Tim was an English ex-pat studying mathematics at the University, and probably would have been in his late thirties. He was about 5 foot 10 with thinning hair and organised the monthly quiz in Murphys, which was conducted in both English and German and was very popular with the patrons. Tim was a very clever bloke and a good conversationalist. He was also heavily involved in the activities of the University Theatre group.

He had a very pleasant demeanour and could discourse knowledeably on just about any subject under the sun and was always interesting company. He was originally from Manchester and supported Manchester City so many years of disappointment in football terms occasionally larded his conversation.

We sat the rest of the evening talking football with Max occasionally chipping in when he had a moment. Eventually I noticed that it was almost 1.00am and I had consumed the best part of five beers, so I asked Max for the bill and left a decent tip which he jingled into the jar. Before I left Tim asked me if I wanted to come and see the new play being put on by the University theatre group - Weltuntergang - the going down of the world - written by a chap who he told me had died in a concentration camp during the war. He waxed lyrical about the project and laid it on thick so I said I would be more than happy to go along and watch it.

He waved and I went outside into the warm and still night air. I made my way back to the residence through the quiet Gasschen.

The residence was quiet with everyone else seemingly abed, so I settled down on my bed and dropped off into a deep and contented dreamless slumber...

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THURSDAY 10TH JUNE 2010 – REGENSBURG - ZUM AUGUSTINER ABENDESSEN

Wäscherei

I woke early on another glorious Sonnig morning and washed showered and shaved and went along to the kitchen at 08.00 with my laundry armed with a couple of Euro coins. Thankfully the washing machine was available and I quickly bundled my clothes inside and inserted the coins and washing powder, the machine hummed into life and satisfied I went back to my room for breakfast. A plate of cornflakes and delicious Vollmilch and I was ready for the day.

After I finished I took the plate back to the kitchen washed and dried it and went back to my room again. I sat down with Wednesday’s vocabulary and made an effort to learn as much as I could before the class started. At 08.50 I gathered up my folder locked the door behind me and walked along to the class. Having bought my usual morning cup of coffee from the machine outside the door I went in and sat down at my desk. The girls gave me a cheery 'Morgen and Edgar just beamed benevolently at everyone.

Everyone was seated at 09.00 prompt so when Susie came in we were ready to go. This time I was ready for the vocabulary test, and when she handed out the slips of paper my preparation gave me a rare chance to shine as I knew most of the words and was actually able to describe them reasonably accurately.

Yuki - Der Sterne

Hyo Won was also very good at remembering the vocabulary, but the undoubted star of the morning show was quiet Yuki, who didn’t say very much but seemed to know everything. She had one of those electronic dictionaries on her desk which received a lot of use, and she studiously noted everything down on her notepad. Having dispensed with the vocabulary test Susie got on with the business of the morning lesson which was 'Kleidung' – clothing - and 'Aussehen' - appearance, hair styles etc. I knew some of the words so was able to contribute occasionally.

A Broken Dryer

At Pause I rushed along to the kitchen to retrieve my laundry. The programme had finished and I bundled the lot into the dryer, but for some reason the blasted thing obstinately refused to work. I checked the plug and switch and noted there were no lights on, so I concluded it was ganz kaput, and so there was nothing for it but to take my damp clothes back to my room. I distributed them on chairs using the spare clothes hangers from the wardrobe and hung them from various vantage points in the room, and fortunately as it was such a hot and sunny day so I thought it wouldn’t take them too long to dry.

I whizzed back to class and we resumed where we had left off with the Kleidung description. After class finished I met Patricia and Anastasia in the corridor and we made a tentative arrangement to meet up for Abendessen later in the evening. The school had arranged a Stadtrallye in the afternoon, which was basically a stroll round town describing the various sights, but I decided to give it a miss and go for a stroll on my own.

A Stroll in the Sun to Netto

Retrieving a couple of spare plastic bags I headed downstairs, walked along the quiet Pustetpassage past the little Turkish kebab/pizza takeaway where I had bought a late-night pizza when I arrived in Regensburg in 2008. I strolled along narrow Rote Hahnen Gasse to busy spacious Haidplatz where the popular Goldenes Kreuz open-air cafe was filled with people sitting at tables under wide shady canopies enjoying Mittagessen in the warm sun.

Walking along Ludwigstrasse past Pam Pam restaurant I stopped at various shop windows before arriving at Arnulfplatz where I waited at the pedestrian crossing at the corner. I was always surprised when cars and buses always obligingly stopped for pedestrians, which was not always the case in Glasgow. I crossed over went past the bus stops and into Netto.

I bought some Brotchen, Tomaten,and a couple of packets of my favourite Lyonnais cold meat. However I was disappointed to note that there were no bottles of Zucker-frei Limonade, and so had to make do with the equivalent 1 ½ litre bottles of orange. Mercifully there were no linguistic problems at the checkout and I bundled the lot into my two plastic bags and strolled slowly back to the residence enjoying the warmth of the hot sun on my back.

I went back to my room past the crowd of girls at the big table who were as usual completely engrossed in themselves to the total exclusion of everyone else. I thought they were terribly rude. Back in my room I checked my washing and was gratified to note that some of the shirts were dry. The trousers however were still quite damp, so I positioned them on top of the central heating unit beside the window to catch the afternoon sun. I made a couple of Brotchen with cold meat and tomato and started my Hausaufgabe for the day.

It took me a couple of hours with extensive references to my Worterbuch and the internet, but I eventually managed to finish my Hausaufgabe and I took the opportunity to iron a couple of the shirts I had washed earlier. With the sun still shining outside I prepared to go for a quick stroll. I skipped past the kitchen, but there was no-one around and I went downstairs to the ground level, pulled open the door and went outside into the hot sun.

I stopped for a few minutes in the shade of the glass overhang at Bucher Pustet, the big bookshop immediately below the residence and perused the CDs on the racks. The selection was very eclectic indeed with everything from pop to classical and spoken word at very reasonable prices. I had bough a few CDs the first year, but with the constraints on space in my luggage and taking note that I would have to buy presents for my nieces and nephews I resisted the temptation to buy anything, and walked farther along the street towards Neupfarrplatz, a couple of hundred yards farther along.

Neupfarrplatz Synagogendenkmal

It was really hot in the sun as I walked along Gesandtenstrasse, and I moved across to the shady side. The street was really busy with lots of walkers and cyclists, and the occasional city bus negotiating it’s way slowly through the crowds.

Wandering into Neupfarrplatz I noticed lots of children eating ice cream bought from the nearby little ice cream shop. They were sitting on the strange white concrete monument which was built in 2005 by an artist called Dani Karavan to commemorate the site of the Jewish synagogue which was destroyed by the Nazis at Kristallnacht in 1938. On the wall of the nearby Neue Pfarre Kirche is a plaque, written in German naturally, detailing the history of the site and its the former synagogue. I tried to decipher it, but my German just wasn't up to the task, but I got the gist of it.

Regensburgers appeared to have been somewhat ambivalent towards the Jews over the years, sometimes protecting them from external excesses and pogroms which ravaged Europe at times but on other occasions displaying considerable intolerance usually as a consequence of jealousy and envy.

There had been a thriving Jewish community in Regensburg since Roman times, and Regensburg had been the city to which many Jews had fled to escape persecution elsewhere, however despite years of peaceful tolerance the Jewish community was always subject to the dubious vagaries of political and religious attitudes. They were always an easy target and most of the time required powerful patronage to survive, eventually matters came to a head in 1519 with the death of the Emperor Maximilian 1st, the Holy Roman Emperor, who had extended his protection to the Jewish community, and to whom in return they paid considerable taxes for the privilege.

When he died some of the local burgers lost little time in blaming the Jews for their economic woes, aided and abetted by preachers who fanned the flames of intolerance with fiery and thunderous denunciations from the pulpit, accusing the Jews of murdering Christian children in their barbarous rituals, and denouncing them for their perceived usury and avarice. With such a formidable array of official opponents it was understandable that the majority Christian opinion went against them, and they felt a little unwelcome, and the few hundred Jews who lived there were expelled from the city.

The Jewish Quarter of about thirty houses and the synagogue interior were destroyed and a chapel to the Virgin was established on the site by the now happy and Jewless locals. It took another 150 years before the local burgers decided that perhaps it might not have been the Jews to blame after all, and in 1669 they were allowed to reside in the city again.

They co-existed peacefully with the locals again for another few hundred years, even erecting a new synagogue on the site of the old one, until it was burned down and destroyed on Kristallnacht in 1938. These days Regensburgers rarely mention what went on during the Nazi era particularly in relation to the persecution of the Jews, heads are bowed and eyes cast downwards, people preferring to mention Johann Maier the priest at Regensburg Cathedral who was a long-term opponent of the regime, and who was hanged by the Nazis in Moltkeplatz on the 24th of April 1945 as American tanks approached the city. Around his neck the Nazis placed a plaque with the words 'Ich bin ein Saboteur' A memorial plaque to him is on the wall at Dachauplatz.

When walking through the old town you occasionally come across little gold plaques underfoot bearing the names oif Jews who were deported during the war, and usually ending with the word 'Ermordet'. During excavations in the area of Neupfarrplatz in 1995-1997, several excellently-preserved cellars of the old Jewish houses were discovered containing many valuable artefacts and original documents detailing the history of the Jewish Quarter.

Regensburg Dom

I went down to the Domplatz noting the scaffolding on the outside. It seemed to me that they must have been working on the exterior for years as the scaffolding had been there when I first arrived in June 2008, and it looked like a very extensive project. The twin spires of the Dom – cathedral soared over 300 feet into the sky, although these were later additions to the original which had been constructed in stages over six hundreds of years since the 13th Century before finally being completed in the late 19th century. The towers which were added in the 19th Century gave height and grandeur to an already magnificent edifice, and could be seen from miles away. There had been a religious building of one sort or another on the site since the early 700s, but for one reason or another they had been knocked down or burned down, so the present structure was an amalgam of styles but mostly Gothic.

On hot summer mornings the interior was deliciously cool, but the cathedral today is probably better-known for the Domspätzen – the Cathedral Sparrows – as the male voice choir is known. It is the oldest cathedral choir in the world, having been founded in the 10th Century, and managed most famously by the Pope’s elder brother Georg for the better part of thirty years, until he retired from the post a few years ago.

I had read about the choir before I arrived and although having no particular leaning towards the Christian faith despite having been brought up as a catholic, I had attended the Sunday Hochmesse at 10.00 when the choir gave a performance of choral singing throughout the mass which was really wonderful. After the mass finished I certainly didn’t have any hankering to return to catholic ways, but it was probably the nearest thing to a proper spiritual experience I could have had.

This visit to Regensburg I was determined to go every Sunday morning to the Hochmesse just to hear the choir. Patricia and I had visited the Salzburg Dom the previous week and had listened to the wonderful singing of the choir there, and she had been completely sold by my description of the Domspatzen, so although she was similarly unenthused by religion of the organised variety, she was really looking forward to the visit to the Dom on Sunday as that would be her only Sunday in Regensburg this year.

I strolled through the narrow Gasschens down towards the river, crossed over the busy bridge to the road leading to the Alte Linde and passing by noticed how busy it was at that time in the late afternoon with people sitting at tables outside under the Linden Trees. I was tempted to go in and sit under a shady tree with a cool beer, but I had agreed to meet Patricia and Anastasia for etwas zu essen at 19.00, so I heroically steeled myself to walk on by, and so continued along Badstrasse passing the Goldene Ente and the Einhorn beer gardens, before arriving at the Eiserne Steg which is the little iron footbridge across the Danube.

Across the other side and I was sweating with the heat as I made my way up to Arnulfsplatz to Bismarkplatz and then turned along Gesandtenstrasse before arriving back at the residence again. The entire stroll had taken about an hour or so, but because of the heat I felt very tired indeed. I went back to my very warm room and poured myself a large glass of cool orange from the bottle in my fridge and lay down on the bed for a few minutes. Without noticing I nodded off and woke up about an hour later at six o’clock.

After a quick shower and change I checked the internet especially the Wettervorhersage, which looked very promising for the next several days, just in time for the Weltmeisterschaft which was due to begin the following day.

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Photos

Munich - Vi Vadi
Vi Vadi in the rain

Munich - Zum Franziskaner
In the rain

Munich Creatif Hotel Elefant
In the rain

Munich
a Hotel

Munich - Kaufingerstrasse
Raining...!

Munich - Arnulfstrasse
raining again...!

Munich - Arnulfstrasse
The Airport bus stop

Munich - Englischer Gartens
The boys in action!

Munich - Englischer Gartens
Still going strong...

Munich - Englischer Gartens
The water was fast...

Munich - Englischer Gartens
The surfer boys

Munich - Englischer Gartens
A wet Chinesische Turm

Munich - Englischer Gartens
Another view of a wet Chinesische Turm

Munich
A strange walkway

Munich
Theatinerkirche in the rain

Munich
Augustinerbrau in the rain

Munich
Hofbrauhaus in the rain

Munich
A better class of street musicians

Munich - Spockmeier
Spockmeier in the Rain

Munich - Arnulfstrasse
We had a pint there...

Munich - Arnulfstrasse
Waiting for a bus...

Munich - Arnulfstrasse
It was hot...

Munich - Kaufingerstrasse
I was actually looking for Spockmeier...

Munich - Kaufingerstrasse
Still looking...

Munich - Kaufingerstrasse
haven't found it yet...

Munich - Kaufingerstrasse
The famous Augustinerbräu

Munich - Kaufingerstrasse
It's nice in the Sun

Munich - Kaufingerstrasse
It was a lot busier in the sun

Munich - Kaufingerstrasse
It looked cool and inviting...

Munich - Kaufingerstrasse
I could have done with a seat

Salzburg - Mozart Platz
The elusive Information Bureau

Salzburg - Mozart Platz
A sunny Mozart Platz

Salzburg - Mozart Platz
Salzburg likes Mozart

Salzburg
A fountain

Salzburg
An arty view of the fountain

Salzburg
The fountain again

Salzburg
One of many Gasschens

Salzburg
But at least it was sunny

Salzburg - Mozart Platz
A harp and accordion being expertly played

Salzburg
The boat ride

Salzburg - Mozart Wohnhaus
It had to be a music museum

Salzburg
The boat again

Salzburg
Along the Salzach

Salzburg - The Salzach
It is a nice river

Salzburg
Linzergasse

Salzburg
The view is nice

Salzburg
Linzergasse again

Salzburg
Nice place to view the city

Salzburg
Salzach Bridge

Salzburg - Untersberg
Wow!

Salzburg - Untersberg
Looking down on tiny Salzburg

Salzburg - Untersberg
Top of the cable car

Salzburg - Untersberg
Untersberg View

Salzburg - Untersberg
Amazing!

Salzburg - Untersberg
Can it get any more spectacular?

Salzburg - Untersberg
Another view of Salzburg

Salzburg - Untersberg
looking to Berchtesgaden

Salzburg - Untersberg
Man in a Strange Hat

Salzburg - Untersberg
Another Spectacular!

Salzburg - Untersberg
Just had to take another one

Salzburg - Untersberg
It was hot!

Salzburg - Untersberg
More Wow!

Salzburg - Untersberg
On the way down

Salzburg - Untersberg
Near the end

Salzburg - Hellbrunn Gardens
A Clever little thing with water

Salzburg - Hellbrunn Gardens
It doesn't get any better than this waterwise

Salzburg - Hellbrunn Gardens
A Stag's head with more water

Salzburg - Hellbrunn Gardens
Still quite clever

Salzburg - Hellbrunn Gardens
Waiting for the water...

Salzburg - Hellbrunn Gardens
Waiting for a bus

Salzburg - Hellbrunn Gardens
Water water everywhere...

Salzburg - Hellbrunn Gardens
The fish didn't seem impressed

Salzburg - Hellbrunn Gardens
The bus must be along any minute...

Salzburg - Hellbrunn Gardens
Still no bus...but a nice view

Salzburg - Hellbrunn Gardens
Another clever little watery thing!

Salzburg - Hellbrunn Gardens
A wedding party riding along...

Salzburg - Hellbrunn Gardens
They seemed a bit statuesque

Salzburg - Hellbrunn Gardens
The water gets about a lot

Salzburg - Hellbrunn Gardens
I'm not volunteering for anything

Salzburg - Hellbrunn Gardens
Surely somebody will stick their hand up...

Salzburg - Hellbrunn Gardens
She was a bit wooden as well

Salzburg - Hellbrunn Gardens
The volunteers are waiting...

Salzburg - Hellbrunn Gardens
Well it wasn't that bad was it?

Salzburg
The sun shone

Salzburg - Linzergasse
...at the river

Salzburg
A stone monument at the bridge

Salzburg
The river again

Salzburg
Evening along the river

Salzburg
The boat at night

Salzburg
Night again

Salzburg
Great, even at night

Salzburg
Okay that fountain one last time!

Salzburg - Hohensalzburg
Yes!

Salzburg - Hohensalzburg
The Hills are alive...

Salzburg - Hohensalzburg
Looking down...

Salzburg - Hohensalzburg
Just Great!

Salzburg - Hohensalzburg
Still great

Salzburg - Hohensalzburg
I'll definitely go back

Salzburg - Hohensalzburg
Looking east

Salzburg - Hohensalzburg
The view

Salzburg - Hohensalzburg
Another cracking view

Salzburg - Hohensalzburg
It just gets better...

Salzburg - Hohensalzburg
...and better

Salzburg - Hohensalzburg
It was a lovely evening

Salzburg - Hohensalzburg
It was worth the trip!

Salzburg - Hohensalzburg
Wow!

Salzburg - Linzergasse
Nice view from my hotel window

Salzburg
On the way to the Mirabelle Gardens

Salzburg
The dreaded Sound of Music bus

Salzburg
The bridge

Salzburg - Mirabelle Gardens
The Gardens are very picturesque

Salzburg - Mirabelle Gardens
Still picturesque

Salzburg
Sternbräu in the sun

Salzburg - Linzergasse
...for the last time

Salzburg - Mirabelle Gardens
Aaaah!

Salzburg
A Gasschen in the sun

Salzburg
Another sunny street

Salzburg - Mirabelle Gardens
More sun...

Salzburg - Mirabelle Gardens
The band were hot

Salzburg - Mirabelle Gardens
I think I can hear Julie Andrews...

Salzburg
The boat...

Salzburg
Nice and sunny

Salzburg - Mozart Geburtshaus
Mozart lived near here

Salzburg
The Dom - Sonntag Hochmesse

Salzburg
The Dom again...it was cool

Salzburg
Patricia's mythical cemetery

Salzburg
I thought it was really funny...

Salzburg
I just had to get that fountain

Regensburg Strassendenkmal
Street memorial for deportees

Regensburg - Alte Linde
A Bayer with a mighty thirst

Regensburg - Alte Linde
Giving a long lecture on life...

Regensburg - Alte Linde
Three hours later...

Regensburg
Kaminsky's - simply am besten...

Regensburg - Pam Pam
Anastasia and Pat perusing...

Regensburg - Pam Pam
Still perusing...

Regensburg - Pam Pam
I perused the menu too

Regensburg - Valhalla
Even farther entlang...

Regensburg - Valhalla
Farther entlang...

Regensburg - Valhalla
Valhalla at last!

Regensburg - Valhalla
It's a long climb...

Regensburg - Valhalla
Lots of things to see...

Regensburg - Valhalla
Even more...

Regensburg - Valhalla
It was Sonnig

Regensburg - Valhalla
I'll definitely go back again...

Regensburg - Valhalla
It's a nice view though...

Regensburg - Valhalla
Back the way to Regensburg

Regensburg - Valhalla
A boat on the river

Regensburg - Valhalla
Like Hansel and Gretel we got lost in the woods

Regensburg - Valhalla
Okaaaay, where is the boat Sabine?

Regensburg - Valhalla
Away in the distance...

Regensburg - Valhalla
It was hot and Sabine bought a Radler...

Regensburg - Bismarkplatz am Nacht
It's the place to be of an evening...

Regensburg - Murphys Biergarten
Where is everybody?

Regensburg - Pub at the River
Called 'Mood' apparently...we only passed by...

Regensburg - Horizonte Door to the Underworld
Where it all happens Tangowise

Regensburg - Car
Wow! That is a car!

Regensburg - Gesandtenstrasse
It's a nice street

Regensburg - Serbian German Pub
We never went there, but it looked interesting

Regensburg - Anastasia - A Strudel
She was very proud of that dish!

Regensburg - Spaziergang entlang die Donau
Anastasia testing her camera

Regensburg - Spaziergang entlang die Donau
The Einhorn Biergarten...we never went back...

Regensburg - Spaziergang entlang die Donau
Across the river

Regensburg - Spaziergang entlang die Donau
There was nobody in...

Regensburg - Spaziergang entlang die Donau
Another one I have no idea why...

Regensburg - Spaziergang entlang die Donau
Near the Campingplatz

Regensburg - Spaziergang entlang die Donau
A seat at last!

Regensburg - Spaziergang entlang die Donau
On the way back home...

Regensburg - Spaziergang entlang die Donau
From the top of the tower

Regensburg - Spaziergang entlang die Donau
It looked interesting...

Regensburg - Spaziergang entlang die Donau
Die Donau

Regensburg - Spaziergang entlang die Donau
I have no idea why I took this photo

Regensburg - Spaziergang entlang die Donau
It was cloudy

Regensburg - Spaziergang entlang die Donau
It was a Russian Wedding Party

Regensburg - Spaziergang entlang die Donau
Nearly home again...

Regensburg - Spaziergang entlang die Donau
The Scottish Church

Regensburg - Spaziergang entlang die Donau
Patricia trying to stop Anastasia spending more money...

Regensburg - Patricia's Abschied
Auf Wiederschauen

Regensburg - Steinerne Brucke
A film crew

Regensburg - Murphys Law
Interior - dark and atmospheric

Regensburg - Murphys Law
Still dark...

Regensburg - Murphys Law
My stool in a dark corner

Regensburg
We went for a walk

Regensburg
Near the Hbf

Regensburg
This shop really does exist...

Regensburg
At the Hbf

Regensburg - Horizonte
View from my room looking east

Regensburg - Horizonte
Looking south to Gloria's place

Regensburg - Horizonte
The Mull Rota

Regensburg
A street

Regensburg - Murphys Biergarten
The boys were engrossed in the game...

Regensburg - Horizonte
View from my room looking west

Regensburg
The Kneitinger pub - I was tempted

Regensburg
On the way to a pub

Regensburg
A Biergarten

Regensburg
An Irish busker on the bridge

Regensburg
The Pustetpassage

Regensburg
View of the river from the tower in the sun

Regensburg
Another nice street

Regensburg - Gesandtenstrasse
The street of the diplomats

Regensburg - Gesandtenstrasse
It's the setting sun that does it for me...

Regensburg
Batistuta going to a pub

Regensburg
They look nice in the sun

Regensburg - Weissbräuhaus
Not as good as Eichhoffener

Regensburg - Goldene Ente
After the ball

Regensburg - Goldene Ente
We could have stayed all day

Regensburg - Goldene Ente
Perfect!

Regensburg
The river from the tower

Regensburg - Sax
Where we sang Flower of Scotland

Regensburg - Sax
The Price List

Regensburg
Streets always look better in the sun

Regensburg
...er I'm not sure why...

Regensburg - Augustiner
Unser Abschiedessen - Edgar and Carolina pretend they are looking for money to pay...

Regensburg - Augustiner
Unser Abschiedessen - gruppe

Regensburg - Horizonte
Mein Zimmer before the Abschied

Regensburg - Kebab Shop
The very best kebabs in regensburg...

Regensburg
Another nice street

Regensburg - Steinerne Brucke
The south end

Regensburg - Wurstkuchle
It's very famous apparently...

Regensburg - Steinerne Brucke
On a sunny day...

Regensburg
Hollande Strasse near the Steinerne Brucke

Regensburg - Horizonte
Class of June 2010 - Carmen, Eriko Tall Old Man, Hyo Von, Yuki

Regensburg - Horizonte
Another view

Regensburg - Horizonte
...and another

Regensburg - Horizonte
Edgar just had to get in on the act...

Comments

[Archie]

Beer count
At the time of writing your beer count is rather modest but I'm sure this will rise exponentially when your friend from Glasgow arrives!

[John Burke]

Hi Hello How Are You
God you can talk. Love to do the cable car. Probably best to get the 15.44 to Regensburg so I can get checked in before getting hammered watching Brazil hump Poretugal and then Chile humping Spain. Speak to you before Friday.

[Jenni]

German superiority
I see you have owned up at last to the perfecting another language by living there for a while and just go for the beer ! Lets face it this is a land of perfectionists whose English is more precise than ours. As always you meet people with a story to tell and its always interesting. that's what's so good about meeting other people. I take it you are back now and supporting Germany or are you going for Brazil ? Night out still to be arranged....