Dagmar now works for Amazon books and Chris has started an online secondhand vinyle record selling business at www.homeofrecords.de
Chris and Lil sampling some traditional Bavarian food and wheat beer.
Regensburg is on the banks of the Danube River so it was an important route in Roman times. Some of the squares still retain the names of the produce sold in them during these times, like the fish market, fat street (for making candles from tallow), corn market, and coal market.
Some of the wealthy trading families built 5 or 6 storey towers, each trying to outdo the other, and about 20 of these still remain today. Often the ground floor housed the family chapel where they would pray before heading off for the day. The upper floors housed the family treasures and they could also barricade themselves into the towers if they felt under attack.
St Peter's Dom rises above the city with its two spires and was built of an unusual green sandstone in German Gothic style during the 14th and 15th centuries.
One of the bridges crossing the river was damaged by a Dutch ship captain when he ran into the support structure of the bridge. His ship caught fire and completely destroyed the buildings on the bridge. The locals who live in the old part of the city have a lot of problems getting to and from their dwellings as the second bridge is not strong enough to support heavy vehicles.
On another part of the river is the stone bridge that was built in the middle 1100s and was used by knights on crusade to the Holy Land.
We visited the St Emmeram Basilica which was decorated in the 'over the top' rococo style but smelt of old musty bones. It was quite creepy with its cement statues of skeletons and lots of old tombstones in the walls and floors of the cloister.
We had to try the traditional sausage and sauerkraut at the sausage shop that has been selling them for about 500 years. The old city is a UNESCO Heritage site.
An unusual place was the St James Church which is also known as the Scottish Church. It had an archway with all sorts of grotesgue carvings, for which there are many theories about what these represent. It was actually a part of the Irish Benedictine followers.
One day we took a bus to Walhalla outside the city. This was built by Ludwig 1 to store busts of worthy Germans and was built to look like the Parthenon. From here we walked through the Bavarian forest back to Regensburg. It took us four hours and we never met anyone else walking the trails. About 100 metres before the end of the trail Lil slipped on some ice and damaged her ribs. She now cannot carry a back pack, sneeze, cough or laugh!
