Nuremberg

No pictures because my camera got stolen!

I arrived at the Metz train station thanks to a lift from my French professor. For the past three weeks I've taken night trains leaving around 9 PM, so Madame Serafin has been kind enough to drop me and my friends off on her way home. Unfortunately I left my itinerary and every document I had assembled to prepare for my trip. The Eurail pass gave me plenty of freedom to choose my trains, so much so that I didn't have a record of which ones I was to take on my overnight trip to Nuremberg. Luckily, my friend Albert picked up the phone and happened to be on the German rail website. He looked up my route, I wrote it down and hoped it would work out. I made it to Nuremberg at 7 AM, having survived a frigid 3-hour layover in Frankfurt. Nuremberg's old city section was pretty small. I covered it quickly in the morning. There were market stands everywhere, culminating in a massive market called the Hauptmarkt in the city center. About 100 stands filled the square entirely. Vendors sold crafts, kitchenware, and plenty of food. A church overlooked the square, but the highlight was the "beautiful fountain" - a replica of a middle age fountain that now rests in a museum.

I trekked beyond the main market to Kaiserburg castle, which sits on a hill overlooking the city. It served as the home for Kaisers and was part of a three-castle complex heavily used during the middle ages. The castles were bombed in WWII, and later rebuilt, which was clear to the untrained eye. There were bits of the original foundation - smooth, flowing rock that clashed with the newly cut stone. Nuremberg has some excellent city gates that were built to fortify the original castle. The old city is contained in these walls, which my hostel abutted.

I declined the tour, preferring to take some pictures of the town from the excellent vantage point provided by the castle. Then I paused briefly on my way to the main train station to sample the tourist special "3 Bratwurst im weckla." Three tiny bratwursts were placed in a small baguette-style roll and handed to me by the cook. They tasted awesome - well worth the 2 euros.

After reaching the Hauptbahnhoff (train station) I took a train to the former Nazi Party grounds. Nuremberg, which already had a history of mistreatment of Jews, was one of the most important cities of the Nazi regime. Selected for its importance to the Holy Roman Empire, Nuremberg hosted the Nazi version of the Reichstag, a mostly symbolic political assembly. The city was also the site of the annual Nazi Party Rallies. I first visited the Kongresshalle, an unfinished stadium built for the Reichstag out of stone mined by concentration camp inmates in Hinzert in Luxembourg, that now holds a museum on the Nazi Party. I began an audiotour - the first one I've ever taken, I believe. Not sure how long it would last, I visisted every exhibit, triggering a button each time to learn about the beginnings of Adolf Hitler - his attempted overthrow, imprisonment, and burdgeoning political momentum. Two hours later, the Nazis still had not begun their aggressions, so I picked up the pace a bit, and ended up skipping the war itself. I was overwhelmed by the details, but got a good sense of the context of the party - none of it excusable in any way.

Next I took some pictures of the Kongresshalle itself, then walked around the neighboring lake, watching someone sail a laser sailboat in the gusty, shifty wind. Seeing a sailor in the shadow of the Kongresshalle was a bit surreal to me, an image that despite my lack of photodocumentation, will linger in my mind.

Past the lake was the party ground site itself, called the Zeppelin field; it was also the site of Zeppelin launches prior to the Nazi Party. The grounds in their heyday amounted to about a quarter square mile of grassy expanse surrounded by grandstands that could seat thousands of people. At one end, was a much higher grandstand, with a podium area for Hitler and his cronies to address those in the crowd and on the field. Hitler youth, the SS, the Wehrmacht (regular army), and the German Labor Service all marched at the Party grounds. Now, the grandstand is in in aesthetic disrepair, while the grounds have been converted to parking lots and soccer fields. The museum provided some excellent before and after photos to show what the grounds would have looked like full of Party-goers, lit with torches, and flying swastikas. While i was there, I watched a native German jokingly give the sig-heil salute atop the grandstand as he posed for a picture. He quickly put his hand down hoping no one would notice - I was probably the only one to see him in the mostly abandoned area. Below a woman was learning to drive a motor cycle, while cars passed through every once in a while.

Back in Nuremberg center, I checked into my hotel around 5 PM for some badly-needed rest. The room was spacious but not the cleanest or nicest. Luckily no one was there to interrupt my nap. At 8:30 I went out for dinner, wandered the still-bustling streets a bit, and returned to the hostel.