Friendly Faces: a visit from the Best Man (and Wife!)

I had last week off. It was kind of a staycation for us while the Best Man and his excellent Wife (shall we refer to them as “BMW”?) came to sample three regions in Bavaria:

• the Upper Palatinate
• Lower Bavaria
• Franconia

The BM (okay, let’s stop that right now.) Nate had visited once before, back in 2004, along with fellow Algonquin Middle School alumnus Sam, and they got full into Oktoberfest mode. At that point, Excellent Wife (EW) Carrie was just barely in the picture. But we got to know her over subsequent visits to Detroit and Puerto Vallarta and love to see how happy they are together.

Oberpfalz

This was easy, since that’s where we live.

Saturday

We scooped’em up with the handy Bayern-Ticket (speaking of which, the rules changed earlier this year) down in Freising and kept them awake as long as we could. They did great, even managing to eat a full dinner before crashing out at 9:30pm.

Sunday

We spent the day hanging around Regensburg, and stretching their legs out a bit after so much travel in cramped quarters. We hit the open-7-days(-and-free!) UNESCO World Heritage Visitor Centre for some background on our town. The ritual of dinner out at Exil Mesopotamia was as satisfying as ever.

Niederbayern

Monday

We took a train out to Passau and back for lunch and a stroll. We had great food at the Heilig-Geist-Stiftschenke outside in their garden among the grapevines.

Passau was neat, because

• we’d never been there before
• it’s doable on the Bayern-Ticket (and you can take the bus anytime them dogs start barkin’)
• it’s an ancient cathedral and university town too, but done in Baroque style, as opposed to the Gothic flavor in Regensburg
• three rivers join up there and cause major flooding every year, showing us some high water marks that put Regensburg’s to shame

Oberpfalz again

Tuesday

I had to work in Nürnberg. I think the weather and the time zone shifts conspired against N+C such that they stuck around town with some light sight-seeing and shopping.

Franken

Wednesday

This was their last full day in Germany, so we once again relied on our pal Bayern-Ticket to get us to Nuremberg and back. We stopped in at Perfetto to have a look at the meats and fishes and admire the novelty of an in-store steak bar before tromping up the hill to the Burg for some nice views. We got a couple pretzels to snack on and a box of mini-Lebkuchen for the train ride back to Regensburg.

Oberpfalz one last time

Thursday

Their flight out of Munich on to Copenhagen was rather late in the day, allowing us to soak up a little more sun on their way out of Germany.

Auf Wiedersehen, Nate & Carrie!