Thurm & Taxis Palace and Mine

ok, I'm still behind, but I think I'm just going to condense things for you. I have a convenient avenue for doing so. You'll probably know it when you see it.
On Monday we toured a jewel of Regensburg, the Thurm und Taxis Palace. The Thurm und Taxis family is really just one family that changed thier names too often. Thurm is translated from the Italian word for turret, which was also the old house symbol and Taxis is kind of a round-about way of saying mountain-dweller (connected to the Italian word Tasso), as best I can tell. For whatever reason, the Taxis symbol is a badger. Yes, the small, stubborn animal you're imagining. The Thurm family had been fighting for possession of Milan since the 13th century, with varying degrees of success, and apparently part of them retired to the mountains after a while. A couple of hundred years later, in the 15th century, that family (called Taxis) helped out with the newly formed post and was raised to nobility. They weren't recognized by a lot of the older blood, though, and so they hired a geneologist to prove their worthy status. He found the Thurn family in thier past, and they were so thrilled by it they stuck the name on first. The post continued to flourish, a brewery was started, and several Imperial offices were held. Hence, the Thurn und Taxis family grew in wealth and prestige as the princly family of Regensburg.
Their palace not only houses the Thurn und Taxis family, but also a rather nice monastary. Actually, the monastary was there first. It dates back to the 12th Century, but the palace expanded into and around it. There's a free meal there for the poor, making the monastary a place where the poor and rich really can come together, like the church is so often not. The palace itself is beautiful. Like I said earlier, it's physically larger than Buckingham Palace, but favors such large rooms that it contains 100 less total than the famed Buckingham. The family has a private chapel, many many guestrooms, historical rooms, meeting rooms, a ballroom, and rooms whose purposes I can't even imagine. Over the course of an hour we saw 18 of these rooms, including (roughly in the order of the photos)the greeting hall, several historic meeting rooms, the ball room, the private chapel, the monastary, and the private crypt. The Thurm und Taxis family is still very active today. The Princess Gloria is actively involved in the government, has written several books, and of course does many courtly duties still retained as local tradition. Her three daughters are off in college (being roughly between the ages of 20 and 26), and her son is currently serving his required military service time.
Today I toured a mine once owned by the Thurm und Taxis family. This mine's name is a bit of a mouthful: "Das Historische Schmucksteinbergwerk Silberschacht am Kittenrain in Bach bei Regensburg," which translates to "the historic silvermine at Kittenrain (presumably the name of the mountain) in Bach (the town) near Regensburg. In 1494 the T&T family mined for silver and came across marble, which they quickly used. They milked it dry after a while. In WWII people hid from air raids in it, and from 1960 until 1994 it was mined for Floride. After that they turned it into it's current status as a museum (museum page, in German). They didn't speak English on the tour, but Tiff and I pieced together the German pretty well. Our tour guide, who somewhat resembled Dominic Deegan, had his hand full with the pack of kids ranging from age 8 to 12. There were only about 7 of them, but it seemed like 30. Once he told them they could find floride crystals on the floor, they spent the rest of the tour hunting them. Still, it was neat and he was nice, and the student discount made it only 2 Euro 50 each. Not a bad way to spend the afternoon.
Tomorrow I have quite a bit of homework to do, so I'll probably spend my day cooped up here. I'll spare you the details of last tuesday's trip to the collections of the various churches here. Suffice to say that Regensburg has two pieces of the "true cross." If you're unfamiliar with the true cross craze here, one witty writer once wrote that there was enough of it in Europe to build a sizeable ship. I don't think he's far off, but I think our art teacher does. She's making class interesting, but it's not the breeze I had thought it would be. That's probably a good thing, though, because I'm learning to tell the difference between Baroque (which I think I just mispelled) and Gothic and Romanesque. I imagine that'll come in handy some day, if for nothing else than intelligent conversation.
I'm going to go collect the various clothes that have been gypsy-drying all over the room, then I'm going to sleep. I hope you enjoyed the rather lengthy post!