Impressions of Rosenheim: goth Dirndls and concrete Maßkrugs

Rosenheim is a city in Upper Bavaria with a population smaller than that of Taunton. We chose it as a stop on the way home from Czechia not realising that we’d picked the biggest weekend of the year until we tried to book a hotel. We arrived in Rosenheim from Brno via Vienna and Salzburg after a day of delayed trains. It was cloudy, spitting with rain, and the first building we saw on the way to our hotel was boarded up and derelict. The walk to our hotel was along the ring road, past a string of modern office and apartment blocks. The pavement wasn’t finished. As we approached our hotel a bunch of lads in matching shirts, members of a drinking society from the Upper Palatinate, blocked our way. One of them said something and lurched towards us, before being pulled away by his pal. They laughed as we scurried away. Just to remove any last shred of romance the hotel in question, the only place in the city with available rooms, was a Premier Inn. We might as well be in Wolverhampton. We…