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as we left Michaelskirche we followed along the old city wall, in which
there still remain ancient doors (looking like [drawing of a door] and only about 5' high,
set into the thick stone wall) which today serve as the entry to someone's
home. The old is still in use and this is part of its romance, that it is
still alive and meaningful. We ate dinner in a small restaurant,
being the only customers and watching the grandparents of the family ownership
playing with a darling 2 year old girl. Almost like eating with the family,
and a welcome relief from the cold outside. The cold in fact permeates all
over wandering, posing an added challenge - cold and sore feet and hands -
which we just have to ignore if we are to see anything and because of it
we appreciate warm restaurants, trains, and sleeping quarters that much
more. After dinner we window shopped in the nearby side streets, and
stopped in a grocery store to buy a loaf of bread, pack of cheese, and two oranges
for Sat. and Sun. breakfast and Sun. lunch (cost: 2 mark = 50c). Then we
caught a bus to go to the Jugendherberge (youth hostel). We had to walk
about 1/2 mile (this at 8pm in the dark) from the bus stop, past a few
houses and then through a snow covered field to the edge of the Regnitz
River. We were very generously guided in this by an old man who lived
nearby and would surely have never made it otherwise. Walking along
the snow-covered bank of the river with the moon shining through the
trees on the opposite shore was simply beautiful. We were the only two
people in the whole hostel that night and the 10 hours sleep hardly seemed
enough.

We left this morning at 7:30 and walked back along the river in
the early dawn. The river froze almost completely over in the night,
and we were surprised to find in one of the open patches of water, two lovely
white swans, not 10 feet from the shore. Hard to imagine a more serene
and wintery scene - all in white and grays. Back through the city, with
feet cold and noses red by now, to the train station, just in time for