Nuremberg
Today is the last day in our month of crazy whirlwind travels. We have only one day in Nuremberg, so get started early. We walked from our hotel through the Frauentor, which is the medieval entrance to the old town. Within the courtyard are some cafes and craftsman shops (Handwerkerhof), and the kids really liked the candle store where they were dipping candles.
We continued our walk of the city, going past Clara Church and the monument to WWII refugees. The kids pretended the monument was a portal to another world. There were also several pretty fountains, and many buildings had cool statues on the corners.
Our first big stop was St. Lawrence church. This place was mostly demolished during WWII, just like most of the large buildings in many German cities. The church was rebuilt, and it had beautiful stained glass.
There was a trio of musicians playing on one of the street corners, and Willow had to stop and do some dancing. We gave them a euro in their basket, as they really were good!
We passed over the Pegnitz River and had a view of the Hospital of the Holy Spirit, an old hospital that was built over the river. It is not still open or available to tour, but is still a pretty cool building. The view on the other side of the bridge was nice too, and the sun showed the reflection of the bridge on the river. Right across the bridge was this interesting statue, and we took turns truing to guess what was going on in the story of this statue.
The next church was Frauenkirche, another church that has been rebuilt since the war. It is interesting that the churches look so old on both the inside and outside, yet for the most part are less than 75 years old.
Here is Ronin taking a moment to stop and pray. I like that he wants to pray at every church we go to, and he sees other people praying too. There are many teachable moments when in these churches about religion, Christianity, Catholicism, and how many of what we do in church is different from what Catholics do in church, but some things are exactly the same.
The beautiful fountain here is in the main market square, or Hauptmarkt. It is so golden and glittery, but the pictures don’t really do it justice. I wish it didn’t have the gate around it, but there are spouts coming through the iron bars so you can make the water spray down on you. We definitely didn’t do that though, because it was still pretty chilly.
Yet another church, Saint Sebald also had pretty stained glass windows. The windows themselves are not stained glass; rather, the stained glass panels are set in front of the actual window.
We made our way up to the top of the hill to see the Nuremberg Castle, a medieval fortification first built around the year 1000 AD. Willow liked the candy cane wall on the outside of the building in the middle of the courtyard, and the views from the hill overlooking the town were striking. Again, I felt like I was in Mary Poppins and could jump from roof to roof, although many of them looked way too steep for that.
Inside, the castle had a more rustic look than many of the castles we have visited. The most interesting part for me was the chapel, which consisted of three layers. The gentry sat on the main floor, while the common folk were regulated to the basement. There was a hole in the middle of the main floor so the commoners and castle servants could listen to what was going on. When in town, the king and his family sat on the balcony with their own separate entrance so they didn’t have to mix with any of the lower classes. I had never seen a chapel with a huge hole in the middle like this!
After the castle, we went backdown the hill and made our way to the Tiergartnertor, a tower gate with very thick walls. You can see that under the gate the wall tunnel curved so you can’t even see the other end of the wall! Here they also had a creepy rabbit statue with a baby rabbit beside it that the kids wanted to pet. You can tell that is where everyone touched the sculpture because the patina has rubbed off to a different color. Gross! Anyway, in this little square is also where the Albrecht Durer house is. There is a small museum to the painter in here, but we didn’t go in and just admired the building from the outside. Sometimes you have to pick and choose what the majority of the group (a.k.a. the kids) will want to do or will at least tolerate. From here we walked down Weissgerbergasse street, a street with colorful picturesque houses that date from medieval times and were mostly unharmed in the war.
This led us to Kettensteg, a chain bridge that is the oldest iron footbridge on the continent. There were pretty views down the Pegnitz river. We crossed the river then a little ways down crossed back over using Henkersteg, the wooden covered bridge that goes to a small island in the middle of the river. I liked the view of this house from the bridge because of the reflection of the house in the water. Once across the river again, we of course stopped for gelato. Because this was our last day of our month-long travels everyone got a double scoop, even JonPaul! Willow found a car that was just her size and wanted to keep it so she could ride around on the tiny streets.
Phew, after all of this we still had one more stop to make. We took the metro to the outskirts of town to the Documentation Center, the museum and memorials that were in the location of the former Nazi Party Grounds and where Hitler was building the center of his Reich. The building structure on one side is modern looking; Zoey thought is was a spaceship building. But then the rest of the building called the Congress Hall was reminiscent of the Colosseum in Rome, which is what it was modeled after, only lots bigger. The building was left in disarray for years, and even now the renovations are not to bring it back into an original and pristine state but just to keep it from crumbling into the ground.
Beside the Documentation Center is a large lake, and the Great Road follows the lake to the Congress Hall. The Great Road was meant to be a parade road and the central axis of the large party rally grounds to connect all the most important buildings (both built and yet unbuilt but planned by the Reich. Some sections of the road have the original granite pavers, but other areas are simply covered with concrete. Now, what was once the Great Road is a walking path and used as a parking lot for events in the convention center.
Around the lake is Zeppelinfeld, the huge grandstand and field where the big Nazi party rallies were held. It’s surreal to see the old propaganda videos of all the soldiers in the big party rallies filling the field and the box on the grandstand where Hitler stood to make speeches. This was one of JonPaul’s favorite things that we did in Germany—standing where Hitler stood and really feel the history on a personal level. What is now a crumbling set of stairs was one of the architect Albert Speer’s first work for the Nazis. The field is now overgrown with grass on the smaller grandstand mounds. The large supports are standing like giant blocks and look quite eerie, especially beside the empty parking lot.
We walked a lot today! We stopped for dinner at a biergarten right beside the lake, and they even had a playground at the restaurant for the kids. You would think the kids would be exhausted, but of course they had enough energy to play! After dinner we walked the 45 minutes back to the hotel instead of taking the metro back. Our pace got slower and slower the farther we got into the walk.
When packing up to go back to Budapest, it was a little shocking at how much we had accumulated over the past four weeks! Our luggage, which fit everything snugly (but without the extensions opened) on the way here was now packed to the gills with all extensions opened and stuffed. We also had a few extra bags that we had to carry, and of course we were still dragging around Zoey’s boot that she wasn’t wearing anymore. It was nice having the car to keep all the extra stuff in, but JonPaul realized how much he loves public transportation!
The next morning we got everything together to travel back to Budapest. Our train was to go from Nuremberg to Vienna and then another train from Vienna to Budapest. When we got to the train station we were informed that the German train companies were back on strike and our trains were cancelled! Not to worry, they could book us on some other trains that were running to get us back to Budapest that day. The next train left two hours later, and instead of one transfer we had three—Budapest to Munich, Munich to Salzberg, Salzburg to Vienna, and Vienna to Budapest, getting us in three hours later. All the trains were packed, so we were not able to sit together. On the last leg of the trip Willow sat with three others adults and entertained them with songs, explaining her love of horses, unicorns, and puppies, and showing them how to play her favorite games on the iPhone. I bet they were glad when she fell asleep!
We walked the 25 minutes from the train station to our apartment dragging our bags behind us. It has been a long trip with wonderful experiences. There were smiles, laughing, hugs, and awed faces, and also sometimes tears, shouting, whining, tantrums, and annoying children. But above all, there were memories. Now we have four full months to explore the beautiful country of Hungary and learn how to live in a big city in a foreign country. The adventures are only beginning!
