Photo Story: River Winch

This image comes from Regensburg, and I took it from an island in the Danube. There is a bridge there, built in the 1100's and still in use today. It sits on massive boat-shaped pylons that churn the river into whirlpools. More pictures of the setup here. Anyway, back in those days, ships moving upriver didn't have enough power to pass the turbulence, so a winch was built. That's the winch house there in yellow, and if you look closely, you can see a long slit in its wall - that's where the winch cable came out to attach to the ships and guide them up past the rough spot.

Seven Years In Bavaria

I had visited Regensburg once a couple of years earlier and found myself enchanted with its old-worldiness. One of the only German cities to survive WWII, it still boasts a largely intact medieval core. Now, granted, the earlier visit had been my first experience of a foreign country and maybe it was that that left me starstruck. In any case, I ended up deciding that I had to live there, so I took off with only a couple of weeks' planning, not knowing where I'd live or what I'd work at. That may not have been very smart.

Youthful spontaneity notwithstanding, things did turn out all right. I got a job with the Bavarian Police, shared apartments with three wonderful friends, lived in an 800 year old building while working in one that was 300-ish, kept four pet rats (not all at once!) then two cats, and got to travel around Europe a little bit.

Germany has a deep sense of permanence and establishment that can often out itself in lives that don't ever change. Low wages and high rents - never mind the idea of buying a house! - can trap people in the same places for ever and ever, amen. It was like a fog over the land.

Eventually, I just missed the sea too much. So I came home again.

With a heaping helping of improved German language and a kind of haunting from living amongst all the antiquity. <