Please spread the word! Mention the meetup on your blog!

I really hope you’ll join us in lovely Regensburg next month for the Regensburg Expat Weekend (you don’t have to be an expat to participate either). Regensburg lies at the confluence of the Regen and the Danube rivers, and was largely unbombed during WWII, leaving the medieval city center intact. The city includes outstanding examples of Roman, Romanesque and Gothic architecture. For this reason, the entire Altstadt (old city center) was named a UNESCO World Heritage site in 2006.

Where is Regensburg?

• In Bavaria, about an hour northeast of Munich

View Larger Map

What’s the schedule? (if more people come, more events may be planned):

• Saturday lunch? Depends on how many out-of-towners are coming and when they arrive
• Saturday at 2:30pm, 1.5-2 hour guided city tour - the cost is 80 Euro for the entire group, with a limit of 30 partipants (so with 20 people, the cost would work out to 4 Euro a head)
• Saturday 4:30-6:30pm, hanging at a beer garden along the river
• Saturday 6:30pm, join us for the monthly Regensburg Expat Dinner
• Sunday, attend a baseball at the Armin-Wolf-Arena - for the diehard fans,* the games start at 9am, for the rest of us, we’ll attend the final game of the Baseball Eurocup 2008 at 3:30pm. We might have brnch beforehand if there is enough interest. Cost for the game is 8 Euro for a single day ticket, or 12 Euro for a family day ticket.

Where do I stay?

• I’m recommending the Ibis Hotel Regensburg City as the official meetup hotel. Single rooms are 64 Euro/night (without breakfast). It’s located across the street from the train station, at the edge of the Altstadt.
• Other possibilities are: Brook Lane Hostel (starting at 15 Euro/night), Hotel Karmeliten (starting at 52 Euro/night, including breakfast), and if you want to splurge a bit, there is the really beautiful, nice Hotel Orphee (starting around 137 Euro/night).
• If your budget is really tight, let me know and we’ll see if a local can put you up for a night (much more likely if you’ve previously met said local)

How do I get there?

• By train or by car are your best options. The closest airports are at Munich and Nuremberg.

Who’s coming?

• So far, it’s us, J, and Tammy and Matthias. Leave a comment if you’re coming too!

For more information see:

• Wikipedia article on Regensburg
• My FlickR photos of Regensburg
• Official site of the city of Regensburg

* for the really die hard baseball fans, the Baseball Eurocup starts on June 18th!

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As of today, I have now lived 6 years in Germany. It wasn’t all good times, I had plenty of homesickness and cultural adjustment to experience. I spent plenty of nights crying and plenty of mornings not wanting to get out of bed, but I always kept going. First, I told myself that I couldn’t give up before living a year abroad, how wimpy would that be. Then I said two years. Each year was easier, and once I hit three year, it was pretty much smooth sailing. In my fifth year, I decided that maybe, just maybe, I preferred to spend the rest of my life in Germany. Over the last week, I realized that I don’t mind drinking wine at all (I used to hate the taste). I suppose it’s only a matter of time till I’m out on the Wiese, drinking a Mass while eating Weisswurst for breakfast.*

Now, on to the main event. Today’s Video Wednesday is this year’s Maypole raising in Harting, Germany. Harting is a small Bavarian village located just south of Regensburg. Andrea invited us to join their Maifest (May fest), which took place on the 1st of May, and since Laaber wasn’t having one, I jumped at the chance to film the event. I finally got around to editing the pieces together yesterday, and it was a project. How to condense a 1.5 hour event into 6 minutes? I hope you enjoy my efforts.

* Wiese = meadow, Mass = liter of beer, Weisswurst = white boiled sausage typical eaten before 12pm in Bavaria

I’ve just been crazy busy.  I think I’m going to take the rest of the month off from entertaining.  After hosting two dinner parties this week and trucking it over to Erlangen to meet up with Blythe and Theo, I’m pooped out!  (But I did have a blast)

Don’t forget that tomorrow is Mother’s Day, be sure to call your mom!

Oliver is not yet walking.  He now understands waving, but he doesn’t quite do it properly.  He does something I call, “Heil Papa!”  Rainer is incredibly embarrassed by this and hopes that Oliver won’t do this in public anywhere (at least not in Germany, where this action is illegal, although I think they will make an exception for a 9 month old).  Today at the supermarket, every time Oliver started to raise his little hand, Rainer grabbed it and pretended to greet Oliver with a firm handshake.

Don’t forget about the Baseball Eurocup meetup June 21-22.  I’m going to post hotel and itinerary details in a day or two.  We’ll have the monthly Regensburg dinner on June 21st with a tour of the city in the afternoon.  Unless someone local wants to organize a May Regensburg meetup, I’m going to skip it.

And that’s it for now.  Have a beautiful weekend and Happy Mother’s Day to all you moms out there!

I’m all better, but Oliver is sick (I think he’s teething.  Something they don’t tell you before you become a parent: teething babies spew fluids out of both ends.  And they cry all night.  Yeah, fun.)  Anyways, we bought a wireless router and as soon as Oliver is well, and the router is set up, I should be able to blog a little more frequently.  The office is not all that baby friendly, so using the laptop in the living room should give me a little more time online.  Well, except that Oliver is also obsessed with the laptop too.  And the camera.

But on to the video.  This is from a few days ago and shows why I have trouble taking videos of Oliver now.  As soon as the camcorder comes out, he makes a beeline straight for it.

Oh, and for local folks, the 37th Annual Hohenfels German-American festival will be taking place from April 30 to May 4.  You can be sure I’m gonna be there chowing down on good ole American grub!

I’m back and healthy again (I had one butt-kicking cold, Oliver had a runny nose for two days - thank goodness for breastfeeding!).  Spring has finally come, plus we had our monthly Regensburg meetup today - brunch did not prove all that popular in the end, so we’ll probably stick to dinners in the future, although I think that everyone who showed up enjoyed themselves and Rive Droite is highly recommendable for brunch (good eats for little money).  So I will now inundate you with photos of our recent exploits.

The location of the expat brunch, Rive Droite

Table one: Mohammed, Monet, Guiseppe, Penny, Chris and Rainer

Table two: Laura, James (I think - sorry I forgot your name!), Andrea, Alex, Kevin, and Leigh

The pint-sized attendees

Springtime in the Regensburg Stadtpark (city park)

Magnolias in the Regensburg Stadtpark

And finally, some goodies from the best stocked American section in a local grocery store (at least that I’ve discovered so far):

American section of the Edeka in the DEZ