Wurst Wurst In Regensburg

On By StevenIn Life In Germany3 Comments

The weekend before last,I finally got around to trying the historic Wurstkuchl. Founded over 500 years ago, the Wurstkuchl is generally regarded as the oldest fast food restaurant in the world.

The restaurant is right on the banks of the Donau river, right next to the Steinerne Brücke (Stone Bridge). There is a small seated area outside, and an even smaller seating area inside. In between, there’s a tiny doorway right next to the grill where you can get some food “mitnehmen” (to go.)

I tried their standard takeaway, which is a Bratwurstkipferl, a small curved sausage, on a semmel (bread roll), with a helping of sauerkraut and the Wurstkuchl’s famous sweet mustard. The mustard is a family recipe passed down for generations, and they still produce it themselves. In keeping with modern times, however, you can now order their mustard through the Wurstkuchl’s online store. That’s progress!

I didn’t have the foresight to take a picture of my Bratwurst, but I did take a picture of the Wurstkuchl itself. The place is pretty much always busy, because a lot of tour groups stop in for lunch.

Oh, and the subject line of this post, “Wurst wurst in Regensburg?” Don’t believe it for a second; It was delicious. I just used “wurst wurst” for the subject because I like the way it sounds.

Buying Things Is Hard

On By StevenIn Life In Germany5 Comments

The process of acculturation in Germany, for me, has been particularly challenging.   Every time I start to feel like I’m making progress, I encounter things which are enormously difficult for me, despite being rudimentary and simple for a native.

Purchasing concert tickets, for example.

For most of the concerts I’ve gone to this year, I’ve used eventim.de for my purchases.  Eventim is a great deal like Ticketmaster, except easier to use.  It also allows you to select English for the Website, so I’ve been able to get by.  However, sometimes the concert I want isn’t available through Eventim and I have to go a different method.

This is where I start to have trouble.  My command of the language isn’t very strong yet, so I use Google Chrome, which translates German to English on the fly.  The only problem is that the translations aren’t always precise, so I really have to employ some educated guesswork.

The word Karte can be a problem.  Karte can refer to a map, a card (such as a credit card,) or a ticket. You can imagine the confusion when you’re being asked to put enter payment information.

Dates are reversed here.  Using the first day of summer as an example, when I arrived, I thought the first day of summer was written as June 21st, 2012.  Here in Germany, it’s written 21 June 2012.  This is also true on Internet forms.  This leads to still more confusion: Is my card’s expiration 11/2 or 2/11?

Many of the line items on order forms don’t translate very well to English.   The idea for this post popped up while I was fighting with an order form for a concert ticket in Mannheim.  It took me three tries to successfully navigate the form to completion.   I was ultimately successful, but I would not have been able to place that order without help a year ago.

On Packing

On By StevenIn Life In Germany6 Comments

I tend to overpack for trips.  I always pack more socks and underwear and t-shirts than I could ever possibly wear for the number of days I’ll be gone.  I always have more stuff than I will ever need.  “It’s a three day trip in the dead of winter?  I’d better pack my swim trunks. And I really should bring a pick-axe, a compass, and night goggles.  You never know!”

When I was asked last fall if I wanted to move to Germany for a few years, my belongings were already in storage. I had been selling a condo, and part of that process involved getting me and my stuff out of it. I placed almost everything I own into two storage units, one large and one small, and I moved into my brother’s spare bedroom for the (theoretical) short term. My goal was to find an apartment once the sale was complete, but my focus changed to Germany before I ever had a chance to lease a new apartment.

When I knew for certain that I would be going to Germany, I started to offload a lot of my possessions- particularly the big furniture. A co-worker in the Florida office had moved to Florida with his wife a short while earlier, and they didn’t have much in the way of furniture, so they took the bed-frame, night stands, dresser, couch, dining room table off my hands.  They had instant furnishings, and I had less to store. Another co-worker took a deliriously comfortable mattress off my hands, and some smaller things went to other folks.   Before long,  I only had an ancient desk chair and my beloved coffee table remaining.  I was able to downsize from two storage units to just one, and soon after that, I moved to an even  smaller one. During that time, I also made choices about what to ship and what to store.

I brought a few things with me, but for the most part, my lifestyle here is pretty austere.  I travel a great deal, so most of my extra cash goes into that.  What can I say?  I’m an inveterate overpacker in life as well as on trips.  Ryan Bingham is kind of my hero.

I wish I had the experience then that I have now, however, because my ship-or-store choices would have been very different.

  • If I had a do-over, I would have shipped my books. With the exception of three or four technical tomes, my hilariously outdated guide to London, and my Kindle, all of my books are still in storage in Florida.  My signed Neil Gaiman and Douglas Adams are there, along with dozens of paperback novels, cookbooks, reference books, and more.
  • If I had a do-over, I would have shipped my DVDs, because even though I rarely watched them at home, there are times that I miss the movies in my collection. I have Netflix, but the selection there is utter rubbish these days.  Netflix has primarily been good for watching old How I Met Your Mother episodes, and not much else.
  • If I had a do-over, I probably would have shipped my coffee table. I worry that being in storage for three years will destroy it, and if it were here, I would have less shin pain than I do now from smacking my legs into the evil bastard of a table currently filling that role.
  • If I had a do-over, I would definitely have shipped my Rollerblades. I sometimes think it would be fun to inline skate around this town.  Regensburg is really a bike city, but I do see inline skaters from time to time.
  • If I had a do-over, I… well, I probably would still have put most of my kitchen goods in storage, but I would have shipped my knives. Good kitchen knives are a vital cooking tool.  I had to buy a few pieces when I got here even though I have a great set of Henckels knives in a box back at home.  I really didn’t think that one through.

Here’s the real problem: Despite the fact that a still-fairly-large storage unit is full to brimming back in Florida, the items listed above are nearly all that I can remember from it.  It’s only been eleven months and the rest of the contents have fallen entirely out of my brain.  Nothing else in there is memorable.

For clutter, out of sight really is out of mind.  The less I remember of my belongings back in the US, the more unmoored I feel.    It’s an alarming sensation, to feel so adrift, so homeless.

Oh sure, I know there’s a box of photos and a some old paper files, but that’s just two boxes. What else is there? Old bedding and cushions that I should just give to charity? Glassware and plates that would be cheaper to replace in three years than to store?  I don’t really know.  I’m pretty sure that there are at least two pieces of cookware in there that have actually never been used. (Long story.)

I think I need to revisit the storage unit when I go back next month, even though I can’t really bring the do-over choices back with me.  It would be much too expensive to consider shipping anything else over right now.   I might be able to get rid of a bunch more crap and move to a still-smaller storage unit, though.  Maybe some of my Florida friends would be interested in dishes, glassware, pots and pans, and whatever other mystery items turn up in the storage unit.

Maybe I can whittle it down enough to really be Ryan Bingham.

Short Trip To Vienna

On By StevenIn International Travel - Europe4 Comments

I went to Vienna for several days. For once, I wasn’t there to attend a concert. Instead, I was there to help Jenny with her competition in the Vienna Photomarathon. The Photomarathon was only one day long, however, so we had plenty of time to do some sightseeing.  Here’s a couple of things I really liked in Vienna.

Spanische Hofreitschule – The world famous Vienna Spanish Riding School, where the Lippizaner stallions have been trained since the main riding hall was built in 1729.  I took these photographs roughly ninety seconds before I found out that photraphy is strictly forbidden in the riding hall.  Oops!

Zentralfriedhof – This is Vienna’s Central Cemetery, established in 1863.  This cemetary is enormous- 2.4 square kilometers in size. It’s so large that it has three separate gates.  It’s so sprawling that there is a separate city bus line that runs entirely inside the cemetery!

There are many notable interments here-  I found the graves of Beethoven, Strauss, and Brahms, but I did not see the grave of Antonio Salieri or Falco.

The Wiener Riesenrad- The Vienna Giant Ferris Wheel, located in the Prater, is a 212 foot tall ferris wheel which was originally built in 1897.  The Riesenrad originally had 30 gondolas before the bombing during World War II destroyed most of them. It was rebuilt with only fifteen, and has become a very well known landmark, even appearing in a James Bond movie in the late 1980s.

Shmetterlinghaus-  Compared to Butterfly World in South Florida, Vienna’s Schmetterlinghaus is tiny, but it was still nice. This attraction is located just a few minutes walk from the State Opera Theatre.

Statues, Statues, Statues! While in Vienna, we saw statues of Mozart, Goethe, Gutenberg, and countless others.  Here’s two of my favorites.

For the rest of these pictures, I’ve decided to try a WordPress gallery-  if you click on any of the images, it will bring it up larger with some additional commentary, and then you can scroll through the rest of the gallery with your right and left arrows.  (Escape key to get back out of the gallery.) Ain’t technology grand?

The Donauturm is a tv tower with an observation level, a revolving restaurant, and a bungee jump.
This was part of the view from the Donauturm.
Leonard Bernstein’s tux in the very cool Haus Der Musik.
The Holocaust memorial in Judenplatz doesn’t look very much like a memorial, until you read the inscriptions on the stones around the base. There’s also a museum nearby with an excavation of a medieval synagogue.
St. Charles Church, or Karlskirche.
Stephansdom, the large church in Stephansplatz.
This is an art piece representing an explosion. I thought it was kind of neat.

Erfurt

On By StevenIn International Travel - Inside Germany5 Comments

I went to Erfurt two weeks ago for a concert.  I headed over on a Friday night  I wasn’t really sure what to expect because I’ve never heard much about Erfurt, except for a comment from Cliff of Regensblog who said that Erfurt was quite nice.

I will  agree, I found Erfurt to be absolutely charming.  Here’s the view from my hotel room when I first got into town:

There’s a lot about Erfurt that I did not know, however.  For example, the Erfurt Synagogue, which I did not see, was built around 1100, and it’s thought to be the oldest synagogue still standing in Europe.

I also did not know that Kika, the children’s television programming network, wsa based in Erfurt.  That explains this giant statue of Bernd das Brot in front of the town hall.  This statue was kidnapped in 2007- I didn’t know that until just a minute ago but it’s a fascinating and entertaining story.  Even if Bernd das Brot does creep me out.

I also found a random gnome on a bench, and couldn’t resist.

I wandered by the Krämerbrücke, a rather unique footbridge over the Breitstrom, a small tributary of the Gera river.  This bridge has buildings on both sides, so it doesn’t actually look like a bridge from inside it.  In hindsight, I wish I’d tried to take this piture in HDR so the tower in the background wasn’t so washed out.

I also wanted to check out Erfurt’s Domplatz, and I found it easily by following the sounds of a brass band.  Here’s how it looked at 9am.  You can see

…and here’s what it looked like less than a half hour later.  The brass band I heard was just warming up for a giant gathering called Bistumswallfahrt 2012.

This was a religions event held  on the Domstufen, the huge steps between the Mariendom on the left and the Severikirche on the right.  There was a procession with a bunch of flags and children in white robes.  I don’t really know specifically what they were celebrating, but the band was joined by a large chorus as well.

I watched the whole thing for perhaps forty minutes, and then I walked back to the Bahnhof to catch my train back to Regensburg.