College drinking seems pretty remote when you're as old as I am, but for the second time this year it has interfered with my enjoyment of a city. First, Coimbra; now Regensburg, Bavaria's fourth largest city. Orange-attired students determined to get shit-faced overran the place. When I later asked the desk clerk at my chic hotel what was going on, he said they were celebrating the beginning of their semester. "Students make up 1/3 of our population," he reported. That's 50,000 kids.
I first noticed the loud revelry while eating the best dinner of my trip near the Steinerne Brücke or Old Stone Bridge. When I started filming a woman participating in a beer relay, one of her friends approached and demanded that I stop. "We're just having a little fun," he explained. "It doesn't need to embarrass anyone on the internet." "Well, maybe you shouldn't be doing it in public," I snapped.
But I seemed to be the only person bothered by it.
Regensburg had been making a good impression as I walked from the hotel to the restaurant. Scaffolding partially obscured the Gothic cathedral at the city center.
The biggest medieval city north of the Alps, Regensburg was designated a World Heritage Site by UNESCO in 2006, in part because of its significance during the Holy Roman Empire. The Imperial Diet met here so often in the 17th and 18th centuries that it became known as the Perpetual Diet of Regensburg.
The Steinerne Brücke reminded me of the Charles Bridge in Prague, although it was built two centuries earlier. I had seen signs for the Czech Republic's capital, about 150 miles northeast, on the autobahn.
To escape the bacchanalia, I crossed the river to Stadtamhof, a tranquil residential neighborhood.
Despite all the chirping, I didn't see a single bird.
The warm weather held through the evening. Crossing the bridge back into the city, I could see the impact of drought on the Danube.
I'm pretty sure water would cover the area where these people were watching the sunset.
Here's an interesting take on pretzels and brats.
More traditional German imagery decorated this building.
A small crowed attended a pro-Israel rally outside of the Rathaus. Not speaking German was a real disadvantage for the only time.
I'm guessing these drunken men had been ordered to run around the fountain in their underwear. They didn't object to being photographed.
This evangelical church has an interesting history that goes back more than five centuries. After the death in 1519 of Maximilian I, a Holy Roman Emperor who had "protected" the empire's Jewish population in the same way that organized crime extorts money from small businesses, the city council tore down the synagogue that stood here and began building a Catholic pilgrimage church to curry favor with the new emperor. But the Reformation intervened before it could be completed. The entire city council converted to Lutheranism and voted to make their new house of worship a Protestant church instead, despite its resemblance to a cathedral.
More Bavaria:
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