Vilshofen - Nürnberg

We left for Nürnberg the next day, and spent a good part of the day travelling. There was not much of note on the journey, apart from when we went past the BMW factory near Regensburg, which was absolutely enormous.

When we arrived in Nürnberg we found the youth hostel, which Tim had booked for us to stay in as it was "in a castle" (cue trumpets sounding) except that when we got there, because it was in a castle it was a bit of a dive. It was unfortunate that in the whole of Germany, the only youth hostel where we had to share a bathroom was there, when we were on the home run, feeling travel weary, and in need of something slightly more upmarket than we were presented with. It also didn't help that in the room next to us (and we shared the bathroom with them) were four giggly American teenage girls who were apparently there with a school group. Talking in high pitched voices and giggling in the middle of the night seemed to be a fun thing to do for them... not so for us...

We went for a walk around the centre of Nürnberg that afternoon to explore and had a late lunch at McDonalds. McDonalds in Germany is a bit different to McDonalds in Australia, evidenced by the fact that you can buy McBeer. They also differ in their opinion of whether a thickshake is a drink or a dessert, with the Germans being in the dessert camp on that.

We also went to see the German National Museum, which was largely boring, though we did get to see a number of portraits by Dürer. I continued to be disappointed by the German lack of interest in displaying traditional pieces of embroidery in their museums.

We went out for dinner that night, because the fare on offer at the youth hostel didn't seem at all enticing (says us, who had McDonalds for lunch!).

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.

Vilshofen

We spent a day at "home" on this day, just catching our breath. I knitted and Tim read.

We did go out for a morning walk around Vilshofen though, and took photos of some of the sights, and I bought some wool to make this scarf for Tim.

This is the main street of Vilshofen, still decorated for Christmas. I wonder who decides what colour the buildings are - is it individual building owners? And what would they do if the owner next door painted theirs a clashing colour?!

The Vils River flows through Vilshofen, and the ducks were having a bit of "fun" swimming in the close-to-freezing river - there was a frozen layer over most of it.

This is a benedictine monastery in Vilshofen, as seen from Winfried and Ursula's house. In the afternoon, Ursula took us for a drive to see it, and we also went inside to see a mission museum, of artefacts collected from Africa by missionaries from the monastery. The following two photos were taken from the monastery carpark.

After the monastery we went to an Aldi-style supermarket (Ursula was astounded that we actually have Aldi in Australia) - very much a variety supermarket, with food as well. I had offered to make dinner for them that night - a stirfry - and we had to get supplies, as it was not something Ursula normally cooked, and she didn't have any sauces that I would normally use.

I can't remember which day it was, but it could have been this day that in our travels we dropped over to Austria for petrol - it was about 25 euro cents cheaper than in Germany, and wasn't that far away. So I can say I have been to Austria. For petrol.

In the evening we went with Winfried to his favourite local watering hole, and one of Winfried's friends, Rudi, had spent some time in Australia when he was younger. He spoke English and was very pleased to be able to practise it with us! The publican was delighted to have some Australians in his establishment, and kept giving us drinks on the house.

Vilshofen - with a day trip to Passau

In the morning after breakfast Ursula took us to see Passau from a lookout, one which we had been to on our last visit to Vilshofen.

Passau is quite close to Vilshofen, and the Danube flows through it, meets the Ils and the Inn rivers and then flows on to Austria. It is quite lovely.

The lookout was at the Vesta Oberhaus, a 13th century fortress which gives a great view of Passau.

In the foreground is the Danube, and the background is the Inn River.

Up on the opposite hill from the lookout is the Wallfahrtskirche Mariahilf, a baroque abbey built between 1627 and 1630.

This is me with Ursula, trying to be warm!

A not-very-good photo taken from the car as we were going down the hill from the lookout.

Ursula dropped us off in Passau, and we went exploring. There are lots of narrow cobbled lanes in Passau, great for photo opportunities!

We wandered through some delightful shops of art and craft made by local artists and artisans (nice tasteful stuff, not your touristy kitsch stuff), and then visited the Passau Museum of Glass. This is an amazing rabbit warren of 35 rooms full of glass and crystal jugs/glasses etc. It takes an age to get through all of them, so filled in quite a bit of time.

We then walked back to the train station through the main shopping precinct and after quite a wait where the station staff didn't quite seem to know what was going on, managed to get a train back to Vilshofen.

Ursula had once again organised kuchen for afternoon tea. Mmmm!

That evening, after a slightly rushed dinner (Ursula is a great cook), Winfried had organised for us to visit the Vilshofen Volunteer Fire Station, because Tim was a member of the volunteer bushfire service here in Sydney. We had known about this before we left, so Tim had organised to take a bushfire helmet to give to them as a present (it took up quite a bit of space in his suitcase!) and they returned the favour and presented Tim with a German fire helmet, which glows in the dark! They thought the bushfire helmet was very flimsy and plasticky, and would melt too easily - Tim had to explain that if you were close enough to the fire for your helmet to melt you were too close!

Possenhofen - Vilshofen

When we went down for breakfast in the morning there were lots of people in a room who looked like they might be going walking or climbing. A lot of them must have arrived in the morning but some of them had stayed the night before.

After breakfast, once we had packed up, cleaned up and paid up, we got on the road.

Before I finish with Possenhofen though, I want to note that I have enormous regrets that we never took any photos at Possenhofen - unfortunately it was pretty much too dark when we were walking through from the station to the youth hostel (and on the way we were always hurrying to get the train). But I have memories (which have probably been embellished in my mind's eye of course) of the trees covered in lacy snow, unlike anything we saw elsewhere on our trip to Germany. It was quite beautiful. We do have one photo on our phone, but the quality is not great, and we also don't have a way to get the photo from the phone to the computer...

But back to the trip: All went fine until one of the freeways we had planned to take turned out not to be finished yet! However, we successfully negotiated our way through the outskirts of Munich and got onto the right road to get to Vilshofen.

Vilshofen is a small town on the Donau (Danube), in Eastern Bavaria, near the Austrian border. When we were in Germany the previous time, with a group of school students, the students were billeted out to families in Vilshofen, and we became friendly with the German teacher in charge of the stay - Winfried, and his wife Ursula. We had arranged to stay with them this time.

Landshut, where we stopped last time on our way to Vilshofen, was about halfway from Munich, but we reached it by 11am, and considering we were meeting Winfried at the Vilshofen Airfield at 3:30pm, we decided to fill in time in Landshut. However it was freezing cold, and Landshut seemed to have as much charm as Warrimoo (a place in the Blue Mountains, near Sydney, which one of our friends has described as "the armpit of the Universe". It seemed we had found the other armpit in Landshut...)

Tim was just lamenting that there didn't seem to be a bookshop when I noticed one, so we spent about half an hour inside thawing out. We wandered around a bit more, even found a wool shop, though no wool worth buying, and then got some lunch. We also spent some time in an internet "cafe" which was slightly more like a dungeon than a cafe.

After lunch we set out for Vilshofen again, and found our way to the airfield. We met Winfried and Ursula there, and Winfried came in our car to direct us back to their place.

Ursula had put on a lovely afternoon tea of kuchen (cakes) and we settled in there for the afternoon and evening.

I have to admit here that from this day I no longer wrote in my travel diary, so the rest of the trip is reconstructed entirely from memory, with photos to assist.