I still remember a certain T-shirt from my youth that I would see from time to time in my home town of Roseburg, Oregon. The shirt was a knock-off of a popular shirt found in most tourist destinations around the world. The T-shirt simply said "Paris", with a picture of the Eiffel Tower, "London", with a picture of the London Bridge, and "Roseburg", with a picture of the world-famous Mt. Nebo weather goats that occasionally wandered off of the hillside to block traffic on Harvard Avenue and Interstate 5 when inclement weather was imminent. With this T-shirt in mind, I would like to introduce you to the town I've lived in for the past year, Parsberg. It's no Munich. Heck, it's not even an Ingolstadt or even a Weiden (not that you would know the latter two - that's my point). It's Parsberg, a small hamlet with 6,000 residents lying smack dab between Regensburg and Nurnberg just off of the A3 Autobahn. As small as it is, it still is the king of the kuhdorfs (cowtowns) for this area and the center of the universe for many people that call this small chunk of the Oberpfalz (a district in Bavaria) home. A lot like Roseburg, actually. But even more redneck (Bavarian-style) and in many cases, more backwards.
One way to give a tour of a place via the internet is through pictures. This blog does limit what I can show you, but I will do my best to introduce you to the sights and highlights of Parsberg in a digital format. You can click on the pictures for a larger view of what I see every day. To begin, I must inform you that Dawn, Osu and I did go for a walk this morning and I had this blog entry in mind when I took my camera. I didn't get all of the pictures I wanted, but enough to give you an idea of the hell we live in (just kidding!). On the left is Dawn and Osu in front of our house ready to embark on our one hour journey. As you can see, they carried none of the supplies. That was left to me - the man. Typical. Osu has gotten so lazy in his old age. Dawn - well, she has no excuse. Except she did have to manage Osu. On most days, that can be enough.
The sign pictured to the left is just up the street from our house. In German, "Stadtmitte" simply means 'city center'. I guess it must also mean town or village center because it’s quite a stretch to call Parsberg a city (see picture to the right – that is downtown). Lupburg is an even smaller town approximately two kilometers to the east of Parsberg. It’s a quaint little dorf (village) but nothing to really write home about. It does ha
ve a castle ruin which makes for a good destination on a bike ride, a grocery store and lots of old people. That’s about it. Dietfurt is a town that is actually larger than Parsberg about 20 minutes south in the Altmuhl Valley. This town, although larger, doesn’t really offer much either. It is set in a nice location but there just really is no reason to ever go there. In fact, the town is so boring and bland that there is actually a bypass built around it which is quite rare in Germany. In most instances, driving through any small town here can be a chore. Thankfully, even the German road engineers recognized the pain caused by driving through Dietfurt. Kudos, German road dudes!
Parsberg actually is a very nice place to live and has most of the amenities to meet your basic needs. The town proper contains four grocery stores, four or five pharmacies, three eye glass places, a smattering of decent restaurants and a few stores that are worth poking your head in to every now and then. The main hospital and the main schools for the area are also located here along with a small train station which is conveniently on the main line between Nurnberg and Regensburg. It also contains a lot of very, very old people. This would explain the abundance of pharmacies and eye glass shops. If you were to combine mine and Dawn’s ages, w
e would still be 30 years younger than most people in town. I’m talking these people are OLD. The funny thing is, they probably walk more each day going through their normal routine than the average American walks in a week. But, that is one of the great things about this town – you literally can walk anywhere within the city limits in 15 minutes or less and really don’t need a car at all. This is truly one of the things I love about living here.
The crowning jewel of Parsberg has to be the Parsberg Castle. Really, there is nothing else in town that can compete with it. It sits on the highest and most prominent spot in town and is visible from virtually anywhere you might find yourself in Parsberg. To call the thing a castle, however, is overstating matters a bit. I like to refer to it as the ‘big pret
entious poorly-designed non-castle looking residence perched on the hill’. For some reason, every time we go for a walk up to the castle grounds, I get all worked up thinking about the people who used to live in the place, sanctimoniously peering down on the paupers living and working at their feet, casting a leering eye at the merchants and farmers whose back-breaking work made their lifestyle possible. But then, as if on cue, Osu takes a wee on the castle wall and all is right with the world again.
Okay, so maybe I went a little overboard when describing the denizens of the town and their ages. Parsberg does have a lot of very old residents, but there are also some younger ones - enough in fact that there are actually two small bars/clubs in the town. Dawn and I have yet to visit either establishment other than to order a couple of very crappy pizzas
during a lazy afternoon last summer. We once did try to go up to watch a soccer game one evening, but both places were so packed full of fans cheering on Germany that we just went home and watched ‘Old School’ for the 50th time. Besides, we’d know the outcome of the game easily enough. If after the game we heard screaming and yelling, car horns honking and fans singing their favorite football songs, we’d know that Germany had won and had moved on in the EuroCup. I think on this night they did win and the noise kept us up quite late. But, since it does seem most Germans in this town don’t work, it didn’t matter that it was a Sunday night and the start of the workweek was only hours away. Football uber alles, I guess…….There isn’t a lot more I have to say about Parsberg. Well, actually, there is but I don’t want to bore anyone to death. Parsberg, although a very nice and enjoyable place to live, definitely is not a place anyone plans to visit for an extended vacation. I do see the occasional tour bus rolling through town, but usually it is on its way to somewhere a bit more vibrant and exciting. I kind of like it that way, though. I can do calm. I can do quiet. This is the type of place Norman Rockwell would have painted. You know, if he were German. Not a bad place at all.
If you’d like to see some more pictures from Parsberg, be sure to visit my Flickr site. The link is up there on your right…….
The castle in Parsberg is built on th foundation of an old roman fort. There are still remnants of the original roman wall. As the roman left much of the stones from the fortification were used in many the structures as no one could afford to upkeep it as a castle. Later there were rulers who did build it up a fain as a castle. The knights from these keep were semi famous and participated in wars and politics all over Europr for a time. As economics changed, the ruling family went broke and the castle went to ruins. Once again people looted it for building materials.
ReplyDeleteOver time it became a monastery and because of that, parsberg began to prosper. It now appears as it did as a monastery and is being preserved that way. There is a small museum in it but not a lot of documentation of it's history.
The only real battle that I know of is when the Romans lost it to local forces who did burn much of it. I,m not sure exactly who it was that took it but the Romans were no longer getting support from Rome when they lost it.