European Family History Tour: Day 2 – Regensburg & Falkenberg, Germany – Creation Girl

We spent the morning of Wednesday, October 9th in Regensburg, Germany. We went back to see the inside of the St Peter’s Cathedral.

St. Peters in Regensburg, Germany

Then after walking 4,000 steps, we finally located a bank that would exchange dollars for Euros.

Word to the wise: Exchange your money to Euros BEFORE you go. They had a place in the Charlotte airport that we could have done it for a small fee. Lesson learned. Finding banks that would do money exchanges proved to be one of our biggest challenges of the trip.

In our search for a bank, Dave stumbled upon this place Goethe stayed. He was so excited!

Exterior of St Peters Cathedral in Regensburg, Germany

King Ludwig II, King of Bavaria

Lunch at the Longest Running Restaurant in the World

We ate lunch at Historic Wurstküche, the longest operating restaurant IN THE WORLD on the Danube River. It’s next to the Old Stone Bridge which was built a little over 1000 years ago. We walked across it (over the Danube) and the colors were incredible!

Wurstküche in Regensburg, Germany – the longest operating restaurant in the world.

Old Stone Bridge across the Danube River, Regensburg, Germany

Our table at Wurstküche.

The staff at Wurstküche.

View of Old Stone Bridge and the Danube River from our table.

View of Danube River from Old Stone Bridge

Kuhns Family History in Falkenberg, Germany

After leaving Regensburg, we went to Falkenberg, Germany where Dave’s ancestors lived last before migrating to Wisconsin in the United States. The home where Johann Kuhns and Viktoria Mark (Dave’s paternal great, great grandparents) lived with their six children is still standing and the town is very much as it once was.

Drive to Falkenberg, Germany

View of Falkenberg from close to the cemetery

We spent the latter part of the day with the keeper of the books at the Catholic Church in Falkenberg and the Rasp family (Gerhard Rasp is Dave’s distant cousin on his Mark line).

The gentleman from the church spent about two hours going through the Kuhns and Mark family records and gave Dave copious notes on his family line.

We also went to the cemetery where more recent people have headstones. They recycle cemeteries. When the graves have dissolved, they remove the headstones and bury more people there. So, the really old records are to be found in books, not on headstones. But the cemetery photo is of the cemetery where his people were buried.

Me, Doris Rasp and Leopold Rasp at the Church while the guys were going through the Church records.

Gerhard, Doris, Leo, Herr Helmut Köestler and Dave at the Falkenberg Cemetery

My First Castle Tour of Europe

Next, we took a tour of the Falkenberg Burg (aka castle) which dates back a thousand years. It was destroyed and later rebuilt by Friedrich Werner Graf von der Schulenburg, who acquired the castle in the 1930s. On our tour of the MuseumBurg, we learned about the eventful life of the count, who fought for peace as German ambassador to Russia and was murdered as a co-conspirator on 20 July 1944. If you’ve seen Valkyrie, about the plot to assassinate Hitler, this man was in on it. Graf was executed for his role in the plot.

The place we stayed was right outside the castle. We literally walked out our door, and there it was.

A Dream Fulfilled

As a side note, about 15 years ago I put a Castle Tour of Europe on my vision board. I mainly wanted to go to Wardour Castle in Wiltshire, England because my ancestors lived there in the 1500’s. Ironically, this family history tour turned into quite the Castle Tour of Europe and fulfilled my desire to visit castles where family once lived. While our ancestors didn’t live here, Dave’s family lived next door to this castle before they left for Wisconsin. Look for more castles in my upcoming posts.

We had a lovely dinner with David’s cousin Gerhard Rasp and his wife Doris and their son Leopold in the village’s only restaurant, the Rathouse.