Herbipolis

‘..also called, in the vernacular, “Wirtzipurgk,”‘ the city where Röntgen discovered x-rays and where I did my PhD. I recently had the opportunity to visit without paying (much) in the way of travel costs, so spent a week visiting old friends and looking at the scenery.

The Ratskeller, next to the Rathaus:

The Festung Marienberg:

The cathedral of St. Kilian, built on the location where that Irishman (and two others, St. Coloman and St. Totnan) were sort-of-martyred-(depending-on-how-you-look-at-it) in the 7th century:

The Neumunster, where the skulls of said Irishmen, brown with age, are kept, and then paraded round the city once a year – the view was obscured by another building (which is drawn faintly and sketchily in front); it was hard to get a good angle:

Passin’ thru

Evangelical-Lutheran church of St. Matthew, Passau, Bavaria. I was in transit, waiting for a train to Munich to see Elberry, who complains that Germans don’t look where they’re going or make any effort to avoid bumping into people – there’s some truth in that, I was finding it harder to move through crowds in Germany than here in Bratislava (not that I look where I’m going as often as I should). I’m taller than he is, so I suspect he has it worse than me, and he lives in Munich, which, being a big city, has the problem especially badly. Getting off trains and buses is also a bit worse in Munich (and, for that matter, Vienna) than it needs to be, one has to barge and elbow one’s way out sometimes.