Farraris for everyone?

Regensburg

Jared had setup a meeting with his friends in Regensburg.   It was a short train ride (more on that later), north of Munich.  These kids were part of the Sister Cities program (foreign exchange, as we used to call it)and Jared had met them in the US and then again in Europe in 2008. 

The train ride turned out to be 1 hours and 30 minutes, not the 40 minutes Jared had remembered.  At this stage of the trip, all of us were growing weary of trains, so there was a wee bit of tension, because we hadn't brought our iPads, iPods....oh well, once we arrived everything was ok.

The other little bone was that the only thing Nancy wanted to see in Germany was a castle.  Luckily a very large one existed here and was only 10 minutes away.   Jared went off with his friends as the rest of us took a fabulous tour through an unexpectedly large palace.  This "house" had  514 rooms and stood on larger overall grounds than Buckingham palace!   Apparently there is a little rivalry between the Queen and her digs.  It is still used by the Princess Gloria and her family.  She has a 28 year son (Prince Albert), that we tried to hook Rianna up with but.....hey, they say he is a Billionaire (and he had a Ferrari parked outside!   I'd probably blow it with some joke about having Prince Albert in a can....

We had a very nice time in regensburg, eating at and 800 year old weinershnitzel place (where I even had sauerkraut!).  Turns out in Germany, it's quite good.    Of course they had beer (I'm sure your shocked by this...)

Of course the one thing that you must do is visit the oldest and most famous beer garden the (hofbrauhous).  I wanted a picture of one of those girls with the big "personalities", carrying 6 or 8 beers.  Well, back to my earlier statement, the beer was pretty good.  I never did get a good picture.  The girl that brought ours was good enough, but she was moving so fast I never got the shot.  And when I tried to get her to reenact it, she got all bitchy! Like I said, great tasting beer.....

Random thoughts:

1) I think the girls you see at octoberfest are models, hired for photos.
2) I'd be fine with crappy tasting beer (at least on this occasion)
3) I really want to visit some of little towns along the train ride.
4) Airlines could really learn some things from train lines.
5) Finally got a large coffee (Starbucks of course)
6) Germans are extra nice!
7) Still need some bacon...