Speyer is a cathedral city of about 50,000 people with no gay bar, no club and no sauna. What it has instead is a gay regulars' table, and that table is the local scene.
The group takes over a corner of the Weinstube Rabennest, a small Palatinate wine tavern in a lane a few minutes from the cathedral. There is no membership and no programme, you sit down and join in. Men of every age come, and a good part of the table travels in from outside the city. Mannheim, Ludwigshafen, Neustadt, Landau and Germersheim are all regularly represented, which makes this as much a regional network as a Speyer meet-up.
Alongside the table evenings the group arranges outings: walks in the Palatinate forest, bike tours, theatre and cinema trips, day excursions around the region. Write to the group by email first to ask when the next table is and what else is planned.
The table has been going for about a decade, which in a city this size is its own kind of achievement.
The people in this picture are AI-generated.
