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Sunday, 11 June continued). After lunch on the ship, our walking tour of Regensburg started at 14:45 with a local guide. Since the ship was docked in the heart of the old city center, it was only a short walk along the river to our first stop, the Salzstadel (salt barn). This large building originally was a warehouse for salt transported on the Danube, but now houses modern shops and a restaurant. Just in front of the building was a sausage restaurant that our guide claimed was the oldest in Germany.
Heading up from the river, we came to a building with a very large painting of David and Goliath on its facade. Our guide (who apparently liked superlatives) told us it was the largest wall painting in Germany. We continued on to the old Rathaus (part from the 14th century) with a tall clock tower (Golden Tower)(1250). A little further on we entered the main square, Haid Platz. The largest building there was the old hotel, Zum Goldener Kreuz. At one time (16th-19th century) this was Regensburg's imperial inn, frequented by emperors, kings, and nobles. Our guide said it was the 1546 of a tryst between Emperor Charles V (then age 46) and an 18-year-old commoner. She bore the emperor a son, named Don Juan de Austria.
The guide had pointed out that the wealthy residents of Regensburg had adopted the Italian practice of building towers to flaunt their affluence (as in San Gimignano), and we had seen towers on several public or commercial buildings. Now she led us into the courtyard of what had been a typical salt merchant’s home. Sure enough, the home had a tall tower with no particular function except to impress.
We walked past the house Oskar Schindler (Schindler’s List) and his wife lived in after the war (1945-1949). Then we visited some interesting Roman remains, a stone gate and tower from the old city wall, now incorporated in a later building. The Romans arrived here around 90 A.D. and soon built a fortress in what is now the Altstadt. Regensburg was an important city for many centuries. It was the first capital of Bavaria and also the site of the Imperial Diet (Reichstag) of the Holy Roman Empire for more than 140 years (1663-1806). Our tour continued on to St. Peter’s Cathedral (1273-1520; spires from 1869). St. Boniface founded the original bishopric in Regensburg in 739 and had his cathedral built on this site. The present Gothic church is the fourth cathedral there and incorporates some elements of the earlier Romanesque church destroyed by fire. It has beautiful stained glass windows, many from the 13th and 14th centuries.
Our walking tour ended in the Cathedral at 16:20. Although the guide had pointed out the Old Stone Bridge (Steinerne Brücke), we really hadn’t had a good view of it from the side, so I wanted to walk down the river bank for a good shot. Jane was getting tired, so I took her to the old sausage restaurant by the Salzstadel.
Some of our shipmates were seated around an outdoor table, and I joined them while Jane went in to buy some sausages. She came back without any, though, because the smallest serving listed on their sign was for six sausages with sauerkraut. We only wanted a taste to compare the Regensburg wurst with Nuremberg’s wurstel. Katy had told us of the competing claims of the two cities to have the best sausages. One of our shipmates kindly gave us one of his sausages and we each ate half. (Jane then accepted another sausage from him.) We both concluded that we liked the wurstel better, though probably only because of its smaller size. (Also, we’d had those on a delicious roll.)
Jane stayed there while I went to take my pictures. I even ran across the bridge for a shot from the other side. The bridge was built between 1135 and 1146. A bridge this size (about 1,000 feet) was a marvel at the time, opening a major new trade route to Italy and bringing wealth to Regensburg. Much like Rothenburg, though, the city later declined to such an extent that they couldn’t afford to replace their old buildings, thus wonderfully preserving more than 1,300 medieval structures in the Altstadt. Fortunately the city was barely touched by bombs in World War II. I went back to the sausage restaurant to collect Jane and we walked the short distance back to the ship, arriving at 17:10. After dinner there was a very entertaining performer who played lively Bavarian music and was a great comic, too, even though he didn’t speak English. The ship sailed at 23:00. |
