Sunday: October 6
Regensburg, Surprising Sun
This was a full day, full of interesting weather. I say that it
was full because it is now 8:45 (with entertainment starting at 9:00), and this
is the first chance I’ve had to write up the day’s events.
The weather forecast was a mixed blessing. The good news was that
it was supposed to have no rain. The bad news was that it was going to be
fairly cold—cold and damp.
The ship docked in the center of town while we were having
breakfast. Unfortunately, it was also foggy, so we couldn’t see anything that
wasn’t near. We met up with our guide outside the ship. I wore my heavy fleece
shirt, my down sweater, and my knit hat. I forget whether I put on my down vest
under my jacket, but I don’t think so. I was sort of OK, but just slightly
cool.
Halfway through the walking tour, a lady who was using a walker
somehow fell and hit her head. As a former EMT, Amy hurried in with the guides
to see if she could assist. The woman had a bleeding wound on the back of her
head, but she seemed to have sustained no serious injuries. I figured that the
best that I could do would be to keep out of the way.
We ended the tour at the cathedral just a few minutes before 10.
It so happens that there was a 10am mass about to start, as it happened to be a
Sunday. So Amy and I (and a few other people from our tour) decided to go to
Mass. It was, of course, in German. I could follow along with the rhythm of
Mass, but I could understand almost none of the words. My sense was that the
first reading was from Genesis and was the creation of Eve from Adam. I’ll have
to check out the readings when I get home and see if I’m right. (I
was.) On the other
hand, I almost dozed off during the lengthy homily, as I couldn’t understand it
to save myself.
The cathedral is not heated, and I was slowly getting colder and
colder. After mass, we couldn’t play tourist in the cathedral because they
still had a later mass to prepare for. We went down to the river to where the
bratwurst place was. Some people were planning to have lunch there, but I was
at that point rather chilled, and I really wanted to get back to the boat, get
in where it was warm, and have some hot soup and coffee. By the time we got in,
and got settled, it was 12, and lunch was being served.
We had no activities in the afternoon. There was free time until
6:30 to explore the town. After lunch, I was almost falling asleep at the
table, so I went back to the room and crawled under the comforter. About 5
minutes later Amy came in. She wanted to explore the town, so I crawled out
from under the sheets and got dressed. This time I wore my heavy shirt, my down
vest, and my down sweater.
I suggested that we cross the iron bridge and then cross back
over on the historic stone bridge. There are a number of long thin islands that
the bridges cross over. We crossed over one river branch and started up the far
shore. However, when we got to the stone bridge, we found that we couldn’t get
up to the bridge, we could only pass underneath it. So we had to continue
further up the island, around a hotel, and back, and then we could get on the stone
bridge. We watched a pair of kayakers playing in the fast-moving and swirling
water.
Not surprisingly, the afternoon was significantly warmer than the
morning. I had to take off my vest and stuff it in my fanny pack.
Halfway across the bridge, there was a
beggar woman
who was
singing some sort of a-cappella song in who knows what language. Amy was
impressed and made a donation to her can.
Back in the old town, we visited a gift store and picked up a few
things. I ran across some sort of
rally.
There was a police car (lights
flashing), a lot of people chanting some slogan and holding banners, and then a
final police car. I saw several Stars of David, but I couldn’t tell if they
were pro-Israel or against them. (From what we saw later, they were pro-Israel.)
Then, as it was past 1:00, we checked out the inside of the
cathedral, since the Masses for the day were over.
It was sort of like a miracle. When we photographed everything
possible inside the church, we went outside, only to find...blue sky and bright
sun! It was amazing. We wandered away from the river to a park like area (that
we couldn’t get in to), and then back by the cathedral and to the river.
It was between 4:30 and 5, so we got a plate of six sausages and
sauerkraut. Amy wanted a pretzel, but they were out. Amy liked these sausages,
but I preferred the ones in Nuremberg. It might also have been the mustard.
Here, it was some sort of honey mustard, and I think the one in Nuremberg was
spicier.
Amy didn’t want to walk far after eating, so she went back to the
boat. I wanted to enjoy the sunshine, so I went
back over the stone bridge,
up
the far side, and back over the iron bridge. I crossed one stream on a
pedestrian bridge that was a “love lock” bridge. It was sort of strange. It was
a steel truss bridge, but a person went jogging by, and I found that the bridge
was bouncing, sort of like it was a very small suspension bridge.
I got back to the boat. Amy wasn’t in the room, so I figured that
she was up in the lounge. I had just taken off my jacket and stuff, when Amy
came in. It turns out that she just got back to the boat (so I had actually
beat her back). She had gone a short distance past the boat, and she had found
some sort of castle-like villa/chateau. So I put my down sweater back on,
grabbed my camera, and we went back. There was a small park associated with it
that you could enter, but you couldn’t go into the yard around the building.
Still, we got a bunch of pictures.
It was about 6:20, and I went up to the lounge to type things up,
and Amy and I ran into
Theresa and Jo,
so we just joined them and chatted about
the day. This lasted until the port talk, and then there was dinner. At the
start of the port talk, he gave us some bad news/good news. He started saying
something about the water being unusually high, and so something was canceled.
The good news was that the sun deck would be open starting tomorrow. (The sun
deck had been closed on the canal and just before because the top of the ship
had been flattened so that we could get under low bridges.)
I was concerned that maybe the ship would be trapped, or that
some of the shore excursions were going to be canceled. I wasn’t sure what he
said was being canceled. From what people told me, it wasn’t nearly as bad as I
had feared. The “bad news” was that opening the sun deck today had been
canceled (actually deferred until tomorrow). We apparently have two low bridges
to go under before we are clear. They aren’t normally “low”, so they would
normally raise the railings etc and open the sun deck at Regensburg, but the
water was high enough that they couldn’t do that until we leave Passau
tomorrow. Fortunately, while the water appears to be high enough that we need
to keep the boat flattened, it isn’t so high that the boat is trapped.
After dinner, I only had a few minutes to type before the
Bavarian band
started up. They played polkas and such, a tune on the alpenhorn,
and a bunch of audience participation things. It was a duo, and the guy not
playing the accordion played the spoons in a sort of dance, as well as doing
some sort of clapping dance that was vaguely like clogging. It was only the two
of them, but one could definitely hear a tuba and other base instruments. I
asked him about this afterwards, and it was done electronically, controlled by
the base notes on his accordion. In other words, when he fingered certain base
notes on his accordion, rather than making a sound directly, it was sent to
some electronics and generated a tuba sound.
It is now past 10:30. Fortunately we can sleep in slightly
tomorrow morning, as our tour isn’t leaving until 9:15 or 9:30.
