Last round of pictures:
Now we're on the way up the Donau. Just before Regensburg there's a hall of fame called Walhalla, which is modeled after the Parthenon in Athens. It houses a lot of busts of famous Germans and new ones are continually added.
Regensburg has a very old town center with a beautiful gothic church.
Here's the Hall of Liberation, built after the defeat of Napoleon by the same architect as the Walhalla.
For thousands of years the Donau carved its way through a mountain ridge, so now there's a big gorge with cliffs up to 100 meters high.
Here you can clearly see the marks of carving through the limestone.
At the end of the canyon is an abbey, with the oldest abbey-brewery in the world. So I had to stop and check if the monks were doing their work properly
What a sky
I usually started early, and this was an especially nice morning.
Plenty of old town squares around these parts...
My absolutely minimalistic shaving kit
Ok, forget all the churches you've seen before, because the Minster in Ulm tops them all
It has the highest church tower, with a height of ~160m.
There are two aisles on each side of the nave, which are 20m high themselves.
The nave is over 40m high, absolutely huge. On the left you can see an intricate wooden carving over the pulpit, about 10m in height.
The best part: You can climb the tower. No elevator, just 768 steps of very narrow winding stairs
Haveway up, just look at those tiny steeples at the other end of the minster
The last part in the spire: Here is only one very narrow spiraling staircase for going up and down, and it's almost impossible to get by each other when someone is coming from the other direction...
Yay, that was worth the sweat
At some point I came across this tree, which was completely wrapped in silk.
And I mean completely wrapped, including every tiny branch.
Upon closer inspection, the whole tree was crawling with caterpillars. I doubt this tree will survive...
The houses are changing as we come closer to the black forest, they start to look more and more like those at home.
Another gorge, this time longer and not as high.
Just when the Donau starts to look like a proper river, there's an interesting phenomenon. Here it's just a normal river.
But one kilometer down it is completely dried out. This is called the Donauversickerung (Danube seepage), where the water disappears into the porous limestone.
After flowing through an underground river system, on average 60 hours later the water appears 12 km away at the Aachtopf, Germany's largest spring.
Here the riverbed is completely dry for over 250 days per year.
Now we're at the source of the Donau, where it is formed by the confluence of two smaller rivers, the Brigach and Breg.
From the source to Switzerland it's not far, just about 30 km through the black forest.
I hope everybody recognizes the hommage
Back in Switzerland, just a short stop at the impressive Rhine falls.
And finally heading home along the Rhine.
That's it, I hope you enjoyed the journey.
) but meanwhile, I enjoy the trip you brought us to. In the end, I've come to realize that there's a special place in my life for any sort of journey, be it long or short, away or close, on foot, bicycle, car, plane, ship, train, whatever...so that's why I enjoy these threads so much 
