24-Mar-2001 -- INTRO -- We - the team of the Explorer Magazin - are always looking for new interesting and challenging ideas concerning travelling, navigation, outdoor etc., that are worth to be reported on. To get the whole story of the Bavarian Equator (see map left), please start at the beginning 49°N 11°E.

24-MAR-2001: It is raining again. But we are in a great mood, because at the first confluence it stopped raining for a few minutes. While driving to the next confluence you can make a lot of breaks at nice breweries in Beilngries with a brewery museum, Essing or at the world oldest brewery: Monastery Weltenburg, where they produce the delicious golden beverage since 1050. Oh Yeah! Here we are in the center of beer drinker's paradise, but the next confluence is calling.

Near the highway to Regensburg we follow a muddy way - again right into a forest. The confluence is about 40 meters away from a forestry road as our GPS shows inside the car. And again it stops raining for taking the pictures (There must be magic in our project!).

We are a little bit astonished that both confluences are situated around roads or tracks, we will keep this in mind and observe this fact for the next one.

We continue our trip to Regensburg, a very worthwhile old city, founded by the Romans and still now with a real medieval outlook in the center. This is the right place for confluence hunters: The 12^th meridian is also called the "Regenburger Meridian", Kepler lived here - you can visit his house - and the famous Mercator calculated the location of the magnetic pole based on the declination at Regensburg and after calculating and recalculating he defined the zero meridian in 16^th century at the islands Cap Verde.

You will not be astonished, that in Regenburg two famous inns with breweries are situated: Bischofshof and Kneitinger. Thus, we make a break for a good meal with beer (of course) and when the night falls in, we join a tour through the city, where a member of the Stadtmaus (city mouse) team shows us old places and tells us stories about medicine in the medieval, plague and cholera, doctors and quacks...

This was a real worthy end of the day. The next morning we will start to the next confluence: 49°N 13°E