Wandering the Streets: Regensburg, Germany
The Regensburg Cathedral
Recently I wrote that I was starting this series. Regensburg is a beautiful city in Bavaria. It is my sister-in-law’s favorite city and the home of one of her nieces, whom I first met when she was a baby many years ago. Though she is not, I think of Petra as one of my German nieces. It is also now the home of one of our son’s best friends. So, though I had been to the city several times in the past, it was the first on my list of cities to visit on this trip.
Peter Götz' main store in Regensburg.
From Wikipedia: Regensburg is a city in south-east Germany, situated at the confluence of the Danube, Naab, and Regen rivers. With over 140,000 inhabitants, Regensburg is the fourth-largest city in the State of Bavaria after Munich, Nuremberg, and Augsburg. The city is the political, economic, and cultural centre of Eastern Bavaria and the capital of the Bavarian administrative region of Upper Palatinate. (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regensburg)
I drove directly to Regensburg and Petra and Peter’s home on the city outskirts from the Munich airport after I had landed and gotten my little rental car on October 11th. It was a rainy day, but Petra drove me into city center to walk around a bit and to stop in and say hello to her husband Peter, who owns several tobacco shops in Regensburg and surrounding cities. I had my camera, but didn’t take many shots because it didn’t seem to be working correctly. This was my first realization of how little I had used my Olympus OM-D E-M1 over the past several months, since I didn’t recognize that the clutch on my 12-40mm lens was slipped to the “Manual” position! Duh!
On the following day, Petra drove me into town and dropped me off so I could spend the day walking around the city. This day was a chilly, overcast one but, at least, it wasn’t raining!
As much as I know that Europeans ride bikes more than we do, I was on this trip, nonetheless, struck by just how MUCH more! Even Petra's husband Peter rides a bike from their place just north of Regensburg into the city to work. It was refreshing to see and something on my list to get back into my life!
There were groups of students walking around the city and chanting, so I went to Peter and asked him what was up. It is, apparently, a tradition that a few weeks into a new semester, first year university students - in this case, my pictures are of groups of first-year medical students (dentistry) - go through a kind of initiation. At each stop, the students must drink a beer and this went on for about three hours!
I'm always impressed with the glorious flowers at most windows in German homes and buildings. And, here, even in chilly October, they were in full and beautiful bloom!
