Vilshofen - with a day trip to Regensburg

Ursula informed us that it had been -15 degrees celsius overnight. Hmmm. Slightly cold! Thank goodness for central heating!

We decided to take the train to Regensburg for the day. We caught the train to Plattling, and then had to change for Regensburg. We travelled through lots of snow covered country, and through quite a bit of fog too. We realised part way through the day that it wasn't snow falling on us from time to time - it just didn't seem quite snow-ish, maybe more ice-ish - but it was in fact frozen water vapour. Somehow different. But it wasn't snow.

Regensburg is a lovely university city, and is situated on the Danube. Oskar Schindler lived in Regensburg for a time. The Altstadt (Old City) is a lovely maze of pedestrianised narrow cobbled streets and squares.

We really had very little idea where to go once we got off the train at Regensburg, so just basically followed the crowds down a main road leading from the station. Amazingly we managed to end up heading in the right direction!

We went to the Regensburg Historical Museum first, where Tim took lots of photos of Roman artefacts once again. Regensburg is a former Roman settlement, and we then went to see the Porta Praetoria - an arch in a Roman wall that was part of the Roman fortress, Castra Regina, after which Regensburg was named.

We wandered on to the Dom St Peter, apparently one of the most important Gothic cathedrals in Bavaria (according to the Lonely Planet Guide, though it neglects to say why).

The next stop on our walking tour of the old city was the Steinerne Brücke (Stone Bridge) which is the oldest in Germany, and only recently was closed to cars. It spans the Danube.

We then walked to see a Jewish memorial in the centre of a square, and hoped to visit an underground museum that was just near it, which had excavations from the Castra Regina, and the mediaeval Jewish quarter (discovered when the square was dug up in 1995 to install electrical outlets for the city's annual Christmas markets!). Through a series of misunderstandings about when it was open, and where to get tickets to it from, we missed out on visiting it, which was slightly annoying, especially as we had been hoping to get some souvenirs for Tim's work colleagues from there.

We visited a few shops, had lunch in a lovely pizzeria - where they cooked the pizzas in big stone ovens, and then we managed to almost not get lost on the way back to the station.

That night, back in Vilshofen, Ursula cooked a traditional wiener schnitzel with potato salad for us, as it was our last night with them. We thought it was most amusing that when Ursula wanted to cool the cooked potatoes for the salad, she stuck the bowl of them outside the back door in the snow!

Tim and Winfried went out to the local watering hole again that night, but I stayed home and went to bed early. Apparently there were more free drinks, plus Tim was made an honorary member of the local's table.