Everything is better when the sun shines

A sunny Friday led to a vanilla frappe and walk around what I have now taken to calling Weiden’s Central Park, despite it having the perfectly good name of ‘Max Reger Park’.  It has this perfectly good name because Weiden itself is called the Max Reger Stadt because the composer lived in Weiden for some time in the late 1800s. The town, bless it, seems fiercely proud of Reger’s time spent here as evidenced by numerous tributes in the form of street names, sculptures and my beloved Central Park. On the theme of fierce pride, there is a plaque on one of the old buildings in the Altstadt that marks the occasion Goethe slept in one of the rooms for the night.

But before we hit the park, we hit the bustling Altstadt. And this is what we saw:

The Rathaus is slowly going green. Finally. He has been naked far, far too long.

In fact, everything is going green in the Altstadt.

Weiden’s Maibaum (May Tree) which was created during a big celebration in the city, to welcome the month of May.

Weidenites love the sunshine.

 So do the buildings – they look even CUTER in the Spring sun.

 A little alley.

My first visit to Weiden was in early December last year. It was rainy, cold and the hemisphere was knuckling down for Winter. My second visit was in February of this year. It was -20, so cold it felt the city could crack. Ice was everywhere, the trees were stripped and stark in their nakedness. Seeing the town now, in full bloom, is like being in an entirely different place. Everything feels better. The city seems to move with the trees. Everyone takes their coffee outside, the weird little fountain-sculpture spurts water at kids and the ice cream stores do a booming business. Life is so much better when the sun shines and the flowers bloom.

I am sure these little guys agree.

Last night, a bunch of us went out for pizza, after which there was a call for ice cream. Fittingly, the ice cream shop we strolled to lives right underneath this guy – who also looks pretty sharp by night.

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