Regensburg

Well we sort of managed to find parking once again on “our” street. This time we are lingering over the parking spot but we think it shouldn’t be a problem. On Friday we called Anna to let her know we were in town but Anna and Michael were in Wieden this weekend. We intended to visit some travel agencies to see if we could book a flight to Dublin for St Patrick’s Day and see if we could make it to Kate and Kenny’s wedding in Jamaica. Unfortunately we just can’t afford either trip. The trip to Ireland would run us about €600/each and the trip to Jamaica would cost us $4000 CDN, money we simply don’t have. Julie and I hung out in town the next two days, visiting a coffee shop and some book stores. Sunday night Anna and Michael surprised us at the van and took us out to a Bavarian restaurant where even they had trouble decoding the menu. We were there for a bit but it was getting late so we headed out with the intention of meeting up the following night. On Monday we proceeded to the internet café to see what BW Campers has to say about fixing the van. It’s sort of hard to say if it is bad news or not, but BW’s is saying that they are under no obligation to fix the camper as it was only covered for 3 months or 10,000 km. I guess on the upside we don’t need to drive to Amsterdam, but now we need to pay to get it fixed. Anna was meeting up with one of her friends at a silver surfer themed bar for cheap cocktails night. Anna’s friend (can’t recall his name) knew of a place to get our laptop fixed which brightened our moods (I’m sure the drinks had nothing to do with it). It was raining on Tuesday so Julie and I decided to just hang out in the van and it was a rather long and cold day.
I convinced Julie to try out a Sport store for a pedometer, we’ve had no luck so far and she was convinced that we wouldn’t have any here either so she didn’t want to waste time. Success! We managed to buy Julie a very nice pedometer (although she thinks it was too expensive). Just after we purchased the pedometer we ran into a friend of Anna’s, Tobias (we met him last time and he showed us a nice garden restaurant). We spoke for a bit and in the end he offered a room in his apartment for us to stay in while we hung out in Regensburg. Julie and I being who we are thanked him and said we would give it some thought. The following night we met up with Anna and went out to the Buro for cheap beer and to meet up with more of her friends. During the night Tobias and Anna came up with a plan to get Julie and I out of the van and into his flat. So it was decided for us, at 4:30 tomorrow we move out of the van. Julie and I finished off the night with Tobias at a bar called the Pharmacy (when translated to English) and had the same name and sign that all pharmacies have in Germany. This bar offered free peanuts and didn’t care where your shells ended up, like Jack Astor’s or East Side Mario’s. Friday night we spent the day at Anna’s doing some general research online and trying to get caught up on everything. We later moved the van closer to Tobias’ and moved into our temporary home. We eventually met up at Anna’s place to go out for the night. The night started off with Julie, Anna, Tobias, Nicole and I and ended with at least 5 or 6 more of Anna’s friends. We went to many bars and had a great time.
We met Tobias’ son over the weekend and hung around with them and we went on a few walks. Tobias also made us what he considered traditional German breakfast which consisted of boiled eggs, cheese and meats, bread and muesli. It was quite good, especially the muesli. We also checked out a bridge that had caught fire earlier in the week causing large traffic problems as it was a main bridge. Regensburg is made up of 3 or 4 islands. On the Sunday night we met one of Tobias’ friends, David, whom stopped by for dinner with us. He offered to speak to his brother-in-law regarding our van issues. David’s brother-in-law works for ADAC (a lot like CAA) but is also a licensed mechanic and does repairs for friends and families.