Europe Trip #2 – July 4, 2022 – Eurodisney and a Grand Unified Theory

We’ve arrived in Regensburg, Germany. It’s a town of 150k about an hour and a half northeast of Munich.

Ginnie shared this with a friend about a medical issue that we nearly had when we got here (more to come on this later).

Buds nearly ruptured his delts and lats patting himself on the back for finding Regensburg. It’s a perfect town for us; beautiful, lots of things to look at, great transportation, and less busy than a huge city.

We are in the Altstadt (old city) area. This is a nearly car-free zone, what the Dutch would call “autoluw” (https://twitter.com/cycling_embassy/status/1197469811774803968?lang=en). It’s a great massive area full of gorgeous architecture. The lack of cars (autoluw) makes it quiet and relaxing. The cars and trucks that need to come through are moving slow. This morning we watched a full size logistics truck crawl by a tromping group of first graders (school’s still in session). That’s a combo that would put an American parent’s nerves on edge because American autoluv stops us from seeing the damage they impose to our noise and nerves. But here, it’s smooth and relaxing.

This city resembles Lucca, Italy, another favorite from our travels. Lucca also has an autoluw inner city, a strong medieval foundation of zigzaggy streets and beautiful cathedrals.

But as beautiful as Lucca is, it’s missing one thing that our new home of Rochester has.

What’s missing from Lucca is architectural detail. Out on walks in Rochester we’ll come around a corner just to sigh in satisfaction with some details built into one of the turn of the century houses. Lucca has wonderful detail (if you zoom and enhance on the Duomo, you’ll see every column is different), but it’s not omnipresent on every street, in every house.

Regensburg has incredible detail everywhere. The tourist info center is this honeyed gothic thing, dripping with artisanal craft.

It’s so incredible, it makes me feel I’m in Disneyland, everything is perfectly restored. It’s better because these buildings are built to last hundreds of years.

So that leads, at last, to a grand unified theory of this trip. Where do all our places fall on the autoluw/medieval streets/architectural detail scale?

Dimensions of public transit and bike friendliness are not shown, but rest assured Regensburg would show up pretty well.

We like it here.