Walhalla

Sunday morning happened upon us slowly as any well-bred Sunday morning ought to do, and to add to its already sublime arrival it brought with it no fixed plans or expectations, simply, like quantum physics, only potential. I'm not exactly sure how we decided to go there, but as the babies were putting the hotels toy cars through their paces and the parents discussed what to do with the potential of the day while, savoring another of those good croissants, we came upon the trip.

We eventually cleared the routine of getting out of the door of the hotel after 10am and headed off to Walhalla, or Valhalla if you can't sprechen. It's a short trip out of Regensburg and we were there in 20 minutes or so. On approach you can see the temple from the road high up on the hill overlooking the Danube, even from far off you can tell its going to be a spectacular.

I think it was the first day the place was open to the public after its winter hibernation, and there was still quite a bit of maintenance going on - scaffolds and a crane etc, but apart from having to hide the beauty of a modern scaffold from a photo behind a tree or side frame it didn't mar the experience much at all.

Babies off the beaten path on the walk up to the temple.

Walhalla was conceived of by Ludwig I of Bavaria in 1807 when he was still crown prince. This was about the time when it wasn't really all that fashionable to be Germanic because everywhere there was a cherman there was Napoleon knocking the stuffing out of him and annexing his boundaries. Still, Ludwig, filled with pride for die faderland wanted to build, not a monument but a temple to the great ethnic German people who had contributed significantly to the world either in peace or war. Kind of like a Nobel temple for Germans.

Although Ludwig couldn't do anything until he was crowned king 35 years later, he did commission, and have made a whole stack of busts for Walhalla, which, along with the rest of the initial ensemble went on display for the opening of the place.
Just walking the hall, its amazing to see how many famous people the Germans have contributed to the world. Really, some of the greatest writers, thinkers, poets, humanitarians etc. (Adolf didn't crack the nod if you're wondering - I did check)

The front facade of the temple - unfortunately there were no trees to hide the lovely scaffolding and formwork 50 metres up on the roof here... but the carving up there is of the return of power to the Germans. It took 8 years to complete!

Walhalla is built on a steep slope going down to the river, and they had to build up 3 huge levels to provide enough level ground on top for the building, all in stone and hundreds upon hundreds of steps to get to the top.

The temple design is patently influenced heavily by Greek architecture and I think they did a grand job of the interpretation... this is a view from the back of the temple along the outside of the one colonnade, Danube visible down below in front. You can also see the sides of the big stone slabs that I was talking about above...

Wife and angels in the same colonnade as above... stunning!

This is what it looks like inside - well, just one shot, busts and plaques up on the walls, with the 6 Valkyries (these were the ladies who admitted you to (the Germanic) heaven - Walhalla if you had the misfortune of snuffing it in battle). You had to die a glorious death naturally, not any old death would do. What was interesting was learning what each of the Valkyries represent - they all represent victory, but attained through different means. For example, through great sacrifice and suffering, through swift and decisive defeat of the enemy, etc. So, I guess, depending on what the circumstances of your demise were, you got to heaven via a different Valkyrie.

On the way out we wend our way into the little village of Donaustauf for a bite to eat, and, happening upon a quaint local establishment ordered things we knew very little about in the quest for some traditional cuisine.

This is Hayley tucking into German sausage soup of some kind where the "soup" is substantially vinegar... If you think the smile looks forced you know why ;)

The babies, on the other side of the table from their grimacing mom, are far safer with the infallible schnitzel and chips - Amber has recently taken to pulling silly faces every time we point a camera at her, so, no... we didn't force-feed her a bit of appetizing vinegar-soup-sausage!

After lunch, we put Hayley's tongue on a stretcher and went up the hill behind the restaurant to an old Roman castle ruin. Fascinating place - huge as ruins go, absolutely huge. I love these old places, imagining what it must have been like...

The place is called "Burg Castle". An original name I thought - must be because its a castle on a... berg..? Anyway, it's been there in some shape of form since 500 BC!

Just inside the ruin there was this gigantic wall, I took some photos of it, struggling to get the whole thing into frame, but it just looked like any good old wall - so I added some pink babies at the bottom so you can see how big it actually is..

Flipping enormous!

Just past the big wall... this bit, when looked at from the other side...

Was obviously the quarters of someone important - you can still see the old plastering, recesses, domes and so on - a stark contrast to the rest of the place which is, as you can see, pretty much rock au naturale.
This is a drawing of what the place used to look like in the 1800's when it was still in use - magnificent.

The entire place is now in the middle of a woodland / forest, probably wasn't like this when it was in use coz trees are good places for bad guys to hide behind when they're shooting pointy things at you... nonetheless very pretty for us looking at it today...

Sarah doing 90 down the tree-lined road...