RegensburgRegensburg

Published on November 12, 2016 ⋅ 2min read

The weekend following Kirsty's departure to England, I headed down to check out Regensburg, in Bavaria, and also to catch up with Stephanie, who'd recently moved there. Considered the most medieval city of Germany, it's only a small town — I say small; it's about the size of Hamilton. After Stephanie raving about her Spaghetti Bolognaise while travelling together in South East Asia 11 months earlier, I was finally privileged to try her highly-regarded recipe. Not gonna lie, it's damned tasty. Delicious. Lecker. Köstlich. Scrumptulicious. Okay, I'm making up words now, but it was make-up-word-worthy-yummy (in German it's probably something like Machenwortwürdiglecker — cue all the Germans cringing). I would never have thought to put cinammon in my bolognaise sauce! She was also very generous with the amount of red wine added. I think I'm going to have to experiment with my own recipe now… it doesn't seem quite up to par.

We had a great time exploring both Regensburg and Nürnberg, the larger nearby city. In Nürnberg, we visited the castle and stone cellars. Standing at the top of the Simwellturm (round tower) they had photos of the city in every direction, pre and post WWII. The devastation was horrendous. About 90% of the city was destroyed in the bombing, as Nürnberg was the centre of Germany at the time and the site of huge Nazi Party conventions.

I attempted to do the tours in German… and failed to understand what they were saying. Admittedly, the first guy (apparently) spoke in a dialect accent, the second tour guide spoke incredibly quickly (even Stephanie said she struggled to follow him sometimes), and the third… well, she spoke very slowly and I could understand a lot more, but once the topics and vocabulary started to go beyond what I was familiar with, I began to lose comprehension. It was disheartening to realise how far I've still yet to go on my German journey, but by the end of the weekend I was resolved to persevere.

It's been a great past few months in Germany and Italy. When I've not been gallivanting around Europe, I've whiled the hours away drumming, several times a week. It's become my biggest past time, jamming with my friend Atharva, or as we call him, Hans. I really don't know why I didn't try playing the drums earlier. It was always Kirsty's thing.

Speaking of which! When Kirsty was in Berlin, we were fortunate enough to be able to access the band room where I have lessons and play together, yes together! There are two kits in the room, one usually used by my teacher. So we turned the speakers on and selected some of the songs Kirsty used to play and jammed alongside each other. It was rather difficult to stay in sync, with 3 different drums competing, although still a lot of fun! I definitely need to work on staying in time... I always get carried away with experimenting and trying different things, which causes me to slip up and lose the beat. Kirsty's years of practice definitely have given her a certain consistency that I lack. After we left the practice room (we only had a short time available) we headed to my workplace and were joined with Hans and Guiliano, another colleague. 3 hours later, we were all thoroughly jammed out.