It was cloudy and misty when we woke up, so we decided to delay the boat trip up the Danube until tomorrow. When there is, supposedly 0% chance of rain. I'm going to take a detour for a moment here--I have been checking three (THREE) different weather services: Weather Underground, Accuweather, and Weather Channel. They do not agree! One will show rain for the morning, one for the afternoon. One will have 20% chance of rain, another 40%. How the heck can they be so different? I swear, weather people have the easiest job in the world, because they don't have to do it well!
OK, rant over.
Today (because it was SUPPOSED to rain....) we went to the Schloss Thurn-Taxis, so we could be indoors. Took us awhile to find it, and we ended up walking a long way out of the way. But it was through a beautiful garden, so that was just fine. Regensburg is very green, with lots of parks. And, right now, anyway, buckets of flowers. Their flower patches are really well designed--small, dense flowers near the ground, interspersed with taller ones of a different color, then really tall flowers like tulips. Just lovely, blankets of flowers amidst the grass of the parks.
We finally found the Schloss and signed up for the tour. Again, the guide spoke German, but this time we could get an audio tour in English. It didn't include everything the guide said, but it gave us the basics.
We couldn't take pictures inside the residence. But it looks much like other great houses in England and France. Not surprising, as France was the arbiter of much fashion. Marble staircases, frescoes and portraits on the walls, lots of gold and silver curlycues everywhere. Lovely inlaid pieces of furniture that are really old. There are 14,000 square meters (not feet) of parquet floors, and it's different in every room. A long hall runs through all the rooms on one side, just as in English mansions. Seems inconvenient to me, but that's how the houses were laid out. What I'd never known before was, there were hidden passages behind walls, so that servants could move around and do their work. This is possibly the origin of the phrase, "The walls have ears." What an odd way to live, never knowing if there's someone on the other side of the wall of the room you're in.
The family has an interesting history. They are now princes and princesses, but they didn't start out that way. The Taxis (means Badger in Italian) had a courier service in Italy, then they moved to Germany and did the same thing, only bigger. They started the first postal service in Europe in 1490. It was quite an undertaking, requiring lots of organization. The goal was to be able to deliver the post within a week, which wasn't very easy in 1490. The Thurn-Taxis family (somewhere along the way the Thurn got added, we never figured out where or why) solved the problem by setting up stations along the routes, where the post could be turned over to another rider, on a fresh horse. The rider had a horn which he blew when he got close to a town. When the horn was heard, the gates of the town were to be opened and the streets cleared.
It reminded me so strongly of the Pony Express, but it lasted much longer--300 years. It was only broken by Napoleon, who wanted to nationalize it. Upon his fall, the family got it back, but that didn't last forever. It was eventually taken over by the government, but I'm not sure when. The audio tour didn't cover that. My guess is that as soon as possible, as with the Pony Express, railroads started carrying the post. And so ended an era.
I love this story, love the evidence of the human need to communicate. It reminds me of one of my favorite stories, David Brin's "The Postman". About a ne'r-do-well in post-apocalypse USA, who finds a mailman's bag and uniform in a car in a ditch. He puts the uniform on because he needs clothes, and uses the bag. The bag still has letters in it that were never delivered. He starts moving around the area and it is the uniform, and delivering the letters in the bag, that give him acceptance into the walled communities that have grown up. Against his will, the people start giving him mail to deliver to other communities. Young people get excited and show up with horse to help with delivery. The postal system is gradually re-established, which leads eventually to the start of the restoration of the country. Great tale, and I thought a lot about it in the story of the family of Thurn und Taxis.
Part of the current house was a monastery and was started in the 11th century--built, again, on the ruins of the previous house which, you guessed it, burned down. It has been burned and added to ever since and, like Regensburg itself, shows all those phases. Historically, it is fascinating. Living in it, though, would be a huge responsibility, and oppressive. SO many rooms--it's a third larger than Buckingham Palace--and so much history. It is a treasure. The family still lives there, entertains there, but me, I can't imagine living there. The family is, of course, to the manner born. But to me it seems as if the house would own you, rather than the other way around.
Gorgeous, though, as with the rest of the city. Regensburg is a World Heritage site precisely because so much history is carried in buildings that have been around for centuries. And since it suffered very little harm in WWII, all of that is still available for people to see.
We had lunch at the cafe on the grounds. The tomato soup was wonderful, the Thurn-Taxis dark beer, not so much. But it was a good way to end the tour.
This is getting long, so I'm going to do another post.
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