Sarah and I took a little trip over to Kelheim with Tammy and Matthias in their spiffy new car today, and from there we continued on to Weltenburg, hiked around a bit in some lovely pastures
and woods and looked at
some old Roman ruins, too. Then we had lunch at the Weltenburger Klosterbrauerei. The monks there have been making beer since 1050 AD, so they know what they’re doing…and you can taste it. I’m not usually a fan of the darker beers, but Sarah, Tammy, Matthias and I all had one (after all, it is the house beer), and man was that good stuff. Not heavy or overly malty or Guinessy at all. The aftertaste was just like eating a pretzel. Simply yummy.
Here’s something dumb we did: all four of us left our respective apartments without more than pocket change on us. When we finally managed to get a table in the Biergarten (it was crowded, and Weltenburg has a pretty serious local tourism draw, partially fed by Danube river tours who stop there for lunch), we asked our Oma-looking waitress 
if they would take a credit card or EC-card (a debit card) as payment. No dice. But she did offer to take down Matthias’ ID and send the bill to him. I guess that happens to them often enough that they’ve put a backup plan in place. I thought that was nice. Else we would have had to drive out to find an ATM, lost our parking spot, etc. I don’t think many restaurants in the U.S. would offer that if you showed up with empty pockets. Of course, pretty much any place you go to these days will take a credit card or debit card charge, too.
Thanks to Tammy for having a working camera on hand — these shots are all hers.
In other news, it’s a summer weekend, so you know what that means. Another Fest! This one’s the Brückenfest. I don’t recall this one from last year. It sounds more, um, reputable than the Gassenfest last weekend, and at least no crappy music is forcing me to listen to it right here in my own apartment, so it may be worth checking out tonight or tomorrow. Looks like it’s going to be music, art, food, and maybe a little river action on and around the Steinerne Brücke (built between 1135 and 1146 AD).