Regensburg, (town hall), Wahalla, and Michael's BBQ

Okay, so.. I know I’m doing things out of order here, but I’ll do my best to go back and give you an idea of how my day went yesterday.

So, the morning events were normal. Vio and I walked to school, but before that she packed me bread for the road. We got to school, and met briefly in the meeting room and figured out who was going with us to the trip to Regensburg. It turned out that only 3 of the Germans could come with us. Luckily, two of them were the hosts of my friends; Steven and Michael. So, we boarded the bus and started our merry journey.

The bus ride went by quickly, though I know we traveled a good ways becuase we could talk with the Germans. Once we arrived, we were greeted with a nice sight of Regensburg and the Danube River.

We left the bus and walked across the historic bridge

..so that we could go to the town hall for a tour, though Bubba was giving us a lot of nice information as we walked through the city.

After stopping in the tourist information area to buy some maps, we made it to the old town hall.

...and waited for our tour guide to finish her other tour.

When she was through, she introduced herself very enthusiastically and seemed very excited to give us the tour. She even gave the whole tour in English, though she had the thickest accent I’ve heard, and the way she pronounced some of the words was really amusing to poke fun at later.

She took us into the room where the 7 princes that elected the emperor met.

... took us into the area where the princes started to meet in secret, the big ceremonial room where all of the messages were given to the people:

...pointed out the different crests that could be seen around the hall as the crest of Regensburg, the city itself:

...the crest of the Holy Roman Empire of Germany which ruled over Regensburg as a whole (after Charlamane?):

...and we even saw the normal crest of Germany today on one of the carvings above the doors:

Then, things got interesting as she took us to the “Interregation Chamber” which is where they made people fess up to crimes... by means of torture (if necessary to get them to confess)...

You can imagine our feelings there.

She also showed us how the Town Hall of Regensburg also housed the punishment areas for crimes comitted (AKA – the dungeon) because there was no seperation of powers at the time.

Of course, she assured us that they outlawed torture in the 1800s with the age of enlightenment... Finally, she showed us the artilery room, which was equipped with cannons and a kick butt scale from ages ago that was used as the standard for Regensburg...

It was pretty intense.

After that, we walked a little ways away, only to see St. Peter’s Cathedral (Patron saint of Regensburg):

Apparently, it’s so awesome because it took 400 years to complete. Now that’s dedication! We also went inside, but there wasn’t a lot of light and there was some construction going on, so I didn’t feel like taking any pictures (plus, no flash). Still, it’s the biggest church I’ve ever been in – how cool!

After that, we were getting hungry, so we began to make our way towards a food area. I pulled out my Pausenbrot:

because I remembered that Vio had been nice enough to pack it for me. We still went to a specialty place for Kebaps. Steven ordered us all the Dönner Kebaps im Fladenbrot:

which tasted awesome. But, I hadn’t had anything to drink, so when Michael went to grab a drink from some other shop, he grabbed the Americans something as well. Although leery at first to try it (I prefer not to drink dark soda), the Mezzo Mix didn’t taste any better or worse than a typical Coke..

it just sorta had this aftertaste like orange.

After lunch, we (Amanda, me, Steven, Michael, Maddie, Iva and Jake) went to walk around the town, but ran across a public “demonstration” / protest in the streets done by students. They were making a lot of noise to try and convince the lawmakers of Germany to lower the cost of the college education (probably to be more like France). It was kind of scary, just because there were so many people and they made so much noise. At the time, I didn’t take a picture, so I’ll have to show you a picture of a picture on a camera that Iva took.

Sorry it’s not quality, but you get the idea.

Steven wanted to buy some headphones, so we went to a large department store. It was cool because I happened to run accross a lot of the classic Miyazaki anime on good display. I took pictures of all of them with their cool German covers, but when I saw this one, I thought of Courtney:

Too bad I didn’t need to buy any of them. They even had an old series done by Isao Takahata

that you can’t buy in America... the only problem was that it came in only German, so that would have been difficult.

Eventually, we left the store because the girls needed to use the restroom, so we had to go off in a search for one. After that, we met up with some of the other GAPP kids

... and went to a coffee shop to hang out until the buses came back. It was all cool until a bird pooped on Amanda xD

After chilling for a while, we headed back towads the buses. It was then that Michael introduced us to a common bakery item in Germany, the Chocobanana:

...which was very good.

We crossed the bridge, and I got my last glimpse of the Danaue(Danube):

Next stop was Walhalla! This was something I was really looking forward to, simply because the name means such a great thing in Norse Mythology.

Mythologically speaking, Vahalla is the place that the Valkyries, Odin’s winged messengers, take the souls of warriors who died in battle to stay and feast until Ragnarok (the end of the world) when the warriors of Vahalla will fight to save the world. To be in such a hall, in the realm of the gods made dying as a warrior a great honor. So, the fact that this hall is named Walhalla is very symbolic and glorifying for the people whose busts make it into it.

The view from Wahalla made the legend very convincing that we were visiting a sacred place in the realm of the gods that oversee Rune Migard (earth).

Because the whole thing is built on the side of the hill, when you stand in front of the entrance and look all around you, it seems like the structure is floating because you can’t see the hill from that angle. It was really awesome. The inside was pretty cool too, but there was a lot of renovation going on here as well, so I only got some shots to give you an idea of the busts:

The only disappointing thing about the busts is that the newer ones aren’t nearly as good as the older ones. The crafmanship has really declined. It was to the point that the new ones seemed like they were incomplete because they weren’t carved deep enough. Here’s a picture of us observing the message.

After we were done looking at the inside, Frau Maria-Z (the English teacher that hosts Frau Smith) suggested that we should walk all the way down all of the steps and how many there were. So, being crazy, we did.

When we reached the bottom, our numbers didn’t match, so we were more meticulous as we went back up. Just for your info, according to our counting, there were 249. Then, we took the other path down the hill to the buses and stopped in the rest stop/gift shop for some random things and then took the bus back to school.

The bus ride back was equally as fun because we had many ways to entertain ourselves:

(like music!)

But still, as we got back to school, we had to wait a bit for the rest of the Germans while we made plans.

So, German bottles are everywere J

The fun didn’t stop there, though. Instead, once we got Violeta from the clutches of the school, Michael invited us over for a grill out thing at his house... because we wanted to see it. Sadly, Maddie and Sarith couldn’t go because Lisa and Kerstin had to study, but I went with Vio, Steven, Iva, and of course Amanda.

It was cool to see an actual German house. So far, I had only seen an appartment. I was surprised to see that his house had the same sort of modern look as Vio’s, and that it was standard to have door handles that opened by pushing down.

He also had a really nice backyard.

Because the trees were so thick and the temperature was so cool, it reminded me a lot of the Olympic Peninsula, excpet the sun was out :). It was great. Mili was a good host, he gave us plenty of drink selection:

Grilled the food for us, and then gave us a ton! It was a traditional Bavarian meal. We ate outside on the Bierbench:

I had my first German pretzel:

..and decided that it was really great xD About the time I finished that, the sausage was done:

This was my first time trying a real German's Brotworst, but it was good. I also had a nice little Teaser candy when I was done:

It was chocolate flavored hard candy with some sort of crisp inside (I think like a hard Crunch bar). It was good.

After the meal, we sat and talked for a good long while outside on the bench and played “Would You Rather...” where we took turns making up random scenarios to choose from and explaining our answers. It passed the time. But, as the sun went behind the hill, it got colder, so we moved inside and just listened to music. Then Vio and I left and we all went our seperate ways for home.

Thursday, we plan to go to the Glasshouse in Frauenau to get some blown glass. So, hope we’ll be awake after all of that excitement!