So yes last weekend we went to Nuremberg but we had such a great time that we decided a return trip was necessary and this time to stay the night!
Our hotel was a European chain hotel and well located on a main shopping street. The room was simple, clean, and comfortable but quite interesting under the eaves of the building with a steeply slanted ceiling and steep spiral staircase to get up to the room.
Der Junge taking a rest
our hotel
Kiwi also taking a rest and enjoying the sun from the skylight
So the food that we both miss the most is Mexican. And we try in every "larger" city to find Mexican restaurants. Nuremberg actually has 3 in its old town. During our stay we tried 2 out of the 3... "Chilis" was the closest but we still have yet to find a satisfying Mexican restaurant. Mexican food is just not supposed to have green beans and carrots in it! Bet you can guess where we will be eating on our visit back home in August...
"Mexican" food and German beer of course!
***
Nuremberg was a major target for bombing during WWII as it was where the Nazi Party held their huge Nazi propaganda conventions – the Nuremberg rallies, from 1927 to 1938. On 2 January 1945, the medieval city centre was systematically bombed by the Royal Air Force and the U.S. Army Air Forces and about 90% of it was destroyed in only one hour, with 1,800 residents killed and roughly 100,000 displaced. The Nuremberg Trials were specifically held in Nuremberg because of the significance of the city to the Nazi's and the symbolic value in making it the place of Nazi demise.. Despite the devastation, the old town was rebuilt after the war and mostly completed by 1966 and to a great extent, restored to its pre-war appearance.
The Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady)
in Church platz
St. Lorenzkirche (St. Lawrence's Church)
Church side view
On the way to the Nuremberg Imperial Castle, der Junge needed to make a restroom break. Well, in Nuremberg (and many other European cities), there is no such thing as free public restrooms. They do have really nice, well-maintained free-standing WC's... for a fee. You put 50 cents in like a vending machine and the door unlocks. Pay-WCs are also at the train stations and airports. So, it is a good thing to plan ahead and make sure you have coins for in case you need to go! The restrooms do not accept cash or credit!
Public restroom
Interior
Onward to the Castle...
Tunnel entry to Castle
Nuremberg Castle, 1220 (view of secretarial building, well house and tower)
At the Castle wall, overlooking the city
(An aside: The hotel included breakfast but it wasn't really any good. However, they did have nice looking oranges. So I grabbed an orange to take with me to eat later, not realizing that it would not fit in my purse or my pockets. So I ended up walking around the Castle holding an orange...)
My orange from breakfast
in Castle courtyard
door to Castle
The castle is part of the German National Museum and has a vast collection of historical defense and assault weapons such as body armor, firearms, spears, and shields. After the 16th century, firearms replaced traditional weapons which then became ornamental status symbols. As a result, the traditional weapons are more intricate and embellished in the centuries following.
Shining Armor
contemplating the Shining Armor
Spears!
Swords!
Guns!
more Armor!
Stained glass windows in the castle
decorative hand guns
I am not sure what this was but I thought that the drawings on it were interesting
The Well House was built in 1563 with the Tiefer Brunnen (Deep Well) inside that goes 50 meters into the rocky ground. It was the castle's most important water source during times of siege. Today it maintains an average water level of 3 meters.
The ticket we purchased was for a tour of all the castle buildings in addition to the museum but due to confusion (on the ticket-seller and our part) we missed the guided tour that is required to tour the other buildings (Well included). I tried the 2 doors to the Well House just in case we got lucky and could get in to see it... but no such luck. Oh well!
checking the doors!
Sinwell Tower
Our ticket does get us in to the Tower, however at the entry is a HEAVY creaky door that you hope will not lock behind you and this... eeeeyow...
the first impression!
But we continued up...
looking down the tower stairwell
and the view was pretty awesome!
Looking down from the top
does not like posing
asking to take a posed pic together...?
Castle from the tower view
We headed back to the hotel after touring the castle to collect Kiwi and make the drive back home. But before I finish this post, I would like to show a montage of the various strange sculptures and fountains in Nuremberg...
1)
strange, no?
just kidding!!! I could not resist...
2)
This grotesque sculpture below by Jürgen Goertz is called "Hommage a Dürer" and sits in front of the house where Albrecht Dürer lived. It is a satire on Dürer’s watercolor Der Feldhase and depicts a dazed or dead rabbit with a swarm of mice coming out of its busted-up crate.
Hommage a Dürer by Jürgen Goertz, 1984
Der Feldhase by Albrecht Dürer
Albrecht Dürer, born in 1471 in Nuremberg, was a famous German painter, graphic artist, mathematician and art theorist. I wonder what he would think of the statue that is now in front of his house?
3)
Next we have The Marriage Carousel fountain by Jürgen Weber. The fountain was created in 1977-1984 to cover the ugly hole of an air shaft for the subway which runs underneath. This sculpture caused quite a controversy by its drastic expression and high costs. It is a sculptural depiction of a poem entitled The Bittersweet Marital Life by Hans Sachs, a shoemaker and poet, in 1541. Hans Sachs describes the ups and downs of marriage, his wife is sometimes the angel, sometimes the devil to him.
Weber selected six scenes and designed a roundabout with six carriages, each in the shape of an animal that matches the scene:
- the loving young couple in the swan bed
- the older man holding his wife in chains, tearing off her dress
- eternal fighting of an old, almost skeleton-like couple on a giant lizard
- the caring mother feeding her children in a pelican who, referring to an ancient Christian legend, tears open her breast to feed her offspring with her blood
- the gluttonous woman eating while her desperate skinny husband starves, carried by a wolverine
- the young beauty, rising from a shell like Aphrodite,
-the admiring trumpeter and billy-goat that represents lust
Here are a few of the scenes:
the loving young couple in the swan bed
the gluttonous woman eating while her desperate skinny husband starves, carried by a wolverine
the older man holding his wife in chains, tearing off her dress
This is a bit of the poem:
"Bitter-Sweet Married Life"
God be praised and honored
who has given me a god-fearing wife
with whom I have lived for twenty-two years
God gave me a home even longer
Although in my married life
both sweet and sour have often happened
'My wife' is heaven and hell, devil and angel, peace and strife.
4)
Last but not least, and there are many more that I did not include...
The Schöner Brunnen (Beautiful Fountain), constructed in 1395 by Heinrich Beheim, is among the oldest pipe-fed fountains in the city. This fountain is a replica made in the 1900's of shell lime and the original sandstone one is in fragments at the German National Museum.
The ironwork around the fountain was finished in 1587 by Paulus Kuhn and there is a ring in the wrought iron that is moveable. The ring has no joints or seams and the legend is that it was put into the iron fence while the fence was being built by an apprentice who was in love with Kuhn's beautiful daughter. Kuhn did not want the daughter to marry the apprentice because he thought the apprentice wasn't any good and he did not want to condemn her to a life of poverty. The apprentice, wanting to prove his worth, incorporated the ring into the fence without the master knowing as a way to prove his skill as an ironworker. But it was too late, the master sent the apprentice away and the two never married.
The superstition is that you will have good luck if you turn the ring 3 times, and if you are a female you will get pregnant. But, most people don't know that the gold ring in the front is not actually the real ring, it is the "tourist" ring that was placed there (and is frequently replaced) so that it would be more noticeable. Locals will tell you the real ring is actually in the back of the fountain. Of course, we didn't know that when we visited and we turned the gold ring! Check out the Youtube video of the unknowingly funny German man who is super happy to bestow the secret of the ring! (and you can also get a taste of how it is to communicate in small town Germany with people who know less English than I know German!)
Also interesting, during WWII the fountain was covered with a concrete shell and thus survived the war unscathed.
Schöner Brunnen
And that concludes our trip to Nuremberg. I am certain we will return. If for nothing else, Nuremberg is reported to have the BEST Christmas market! See pic below for the 2011 market, more than 200 stalls and 2 million visitors!
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