A Throwback and Aus-Checken

Returning from our boat trip, we look for some dinner – August 2007

This follows on from Valhalla.

Greener on the other side

Back in Regensburg, we decide to cross to the other side of the river, where we’d read it was quite pretty, and to keep our eyes open for a possible restaurant. It was pretty. Lots of picturesque houses in picturesque lanes, and a party, could be yet another wedding or even the same one, going on on the ground floor of what seemed to be a building site with the builders still working. There was a traditional-style band playing but we thought it wouldn’t be right to do more than stand and stare for a short while.

Immediately over the bridge, we saw a kind of beer garden on our left, and we wondered if they might do food, but we saved this thought for after our exploration. Our exploration brought us to the same beer garden but from the main entrance, which was the grounds of the Spital brewery, and clearly they did do food, for there were people eating.

A throwback

This beer garden was like a throwback to the images of Berlin in the 1930s. Lots and lots of wooden slatted tables on metal legs, with chairs to match, under the trees, and with waiters and waitresses in traditional dress walking fast with jugs of beer and plates of food.

The beer came in either litre of half-litre glasses, and the food was essentially meat, bratkartoffeln, and salad. I had liver for my meat, by way of a change, and Hilary had the special which was meat in a melted cheese sauce. Just what we needed, and we sat overlooking the river, accompanied at the nearby tables by families, couples, groups of friends, groups of men playing cards after having eaten – no groups of only women in evidence though that may have been chance.

The weather in the Spital beer garden was perfect, a balmy still evening, though with worrying-looking clouds coming up, and it did start to rain rather seriously on our way home. If there’s an evening of rain, what happens to all the staff and food in the Spital brewery beer garden? For there must have been a couple of hundred seats, at least. Do the staff hang around smoking and the company write it off as an expense? Presumably they must do.

The famous eddies

We walked back to the hotel over the old stone bridge, watching the famous eddies swirl around in the river – which they do here presumably as a result of the bridge supports, though since the bridge has been there for centuries no one’s going to change it.

Aus-checken

The following morning we were to check out of the hotel and since we’d pre-paid I wasn’t quite sure what was required so I somewhat puzzled the man on reception with my question to him in German. To be clear, he asked, “Wollen sie aus-checken?”. So now we know, the German for check-out is aus-checken (which will need the hyphen so you pronunce checken the English way). I tried it some weeks later in a hotel in Würzburg and the receptionist understood it immediately. “Genau”, she said, in answer to my suggestion as to what we might do on checking out, “genau”. (Exactly – Germans say genau more than any other word, possibly).