Life on the High Plains

 Finally...the day arrived to head to Passau to prepare to board our river cruise! The day started with a rapid antigen test that was required within 24 hours of boarding the ship.  Thank you to the Germany government for providing these tests for us even though we're not German citizens. We hopped in the rental car and made the 2.5 hour drive to Passau.  JL booked us rooms at hotel that was on the banks of the Danube not far from where our ship, the Viking Vali, was docked. (I highly recommend this one if you're ever in Passau.)  We checked in, dropped of the luggage and headed to the rental car drop off point. Navigating the narrow roads in Europe and finding places that should be easy to find, such as the rental car office, should be easy tasks, but sometimes they are quite challenging.  Irv did a great job and only lost his cool a couple times when we couldn't find the entry to the rental car parking lot. All Americans should be grateful for our wide streets...

After leaving Flossenburg we continued our tour of Bavaria with a visit to the medieval city of Regensburg.  After navigating the narrow streets of the old city we finally found our way to a parking garage where we could leave the car for the day.  Thank goodness for Google Maps. The first stop on my agenda was the Old Stone Bridge or Steinerne Brucke.  The bridge was built between 1135 and 1146 and for 800 years, until the 1930s, it was the only bridge that crossed the Danube in Regensburg. Charlemagne had built a wooden bridge near this bridge near this one, but it couldn't stand up to the flooding and was inadequate for the volume of traffic that came to Regensburg for trading.  On the far end of the bridge you will see the only remaining medieval gate that was the entrance to the old city.  The bridge was considered a masterpiece of its time. The bridge has been renovation for many years.  In the late 1990s it was closed for over a decade because of its...

No visit to Germany is complete without a visit to a concentration camp to honor the memories of those who suffered and died during the Holocaust.  Most people are familiar with Dachau in Germany or Auschwitz in Poland, but there were lots of smaller camps spread throughout the country. Not far from our daughter and SIL's house is the Flossenburg Concentration Camp.  This building at the entrance was the offices of the SS.  The camp was opened in 1938 and was originally meant for criminal or asocial prisoners.  It was close to the Czechoslovakian border and was significant granite deposits were nearby. The barracks which were designed to hold up to 1,600 prisoners are all gone now, but you can still see the concrete foundations where they once were.  By the war's end there were up to 15,000 prisoners housed here in cruel conditions.  The building above was the laundry house and the basement contained washrooms, barber facilities, and the shower room. Flosse...