I went to Nuremberg--and it was FREEZING

December 15-18

I'm leaving for Italy on Saturday, so I guess I really better catch my blog up before I go. If I don't, I'll just be setting a precedence of laziness, and then I risk not writing about Italy! Now that would be a shame. I know how much you all are looking forward to those incredibly long posts.

Well, this time I'm going to spice things up again with pictures. It gets kinda boring looking at posts with just text. And if I'm saying that about my own blog, then I know it must be boring.

Saturday I took the train to Nuremberg with Judith and Tabea, two girls I know from Gegenwind. We were planning on getting the Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket, which is a really good deal because it only costs €35 and you can use it for up to 5 people. We figured, eh, €10 a person is pretty good. But while we were buying the ticket, two other people came up to us and asked where we were going. When we said Nuremberg, they said they were also going there, had already bought a Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket, and did we want to split it with them? So we each ended up only have to pay €7. It was even better for Judith and Tabea, because they came back Saturday night, so they got a round trip for really cheap.

We got in around 11:30, ate lunch, then went to my hotel so I could drop off my stuff. I was really glad they were with me. I definitely could have found it myself, but it helps having people who speak native German! The trip out to the hotel took longer than we thought, mostly because it was reeeeeally cold. When we got back into the city center, the first thing me and Judith did was buy long underwear. That was probably the best €5 I've ever spent. Long underwear may be dorky, and come up almost to my armpits, but it's warm. We walked around the Christmas market for a while after that, looking at all the booths and food. There wasn't really much different from the Christmas market in Ulm, but this one was way bigger and there were a lot more people. I was surprised by how many Americans (and Japanese) there were. I know this is supposed to be the most famous Christmas market in Germany, but I'd never heard of it until a few weeks ago. Maybe I'm just culturally ignorant.

Anyway, we bought gingerbread and Christmas gifts and called it a day. Judith and Tabea took their train back to Heidenheim and I went back to my hotel. The next day I got up early to take advantage of the free breakfast at my hotel, then I checked out and went back into the city center. It was really really cold again, so I decided I couldn't stand being outside the whole time until Jonathan got there. Instead, I went to the German National Museum, which was pretty interesting. There was an exhibit of silver made in Nuremberg in the 1700s and 1800s. There were also several rooms filled with objects found in a "typical" Renaissance home, which was really cool. Another huge room had all sorts of musical instruments from different periods. Probably the most interesting exhibit was one about changes in clothing in Germany from the early 1700s to present. It was fairly predictable--I think American clothing followed about the same progression--but it seemed like German clothes were always just one step behind. For instance, it seems like women in America started wearing pants earlier than women in Germany. The exhibit went into a lot of detail about the styles of clothing, when they changed, and what caused it. One thing I was really surprised about was that apparently a lot of women, not even that long ago, used to wear black wedding dresses! There were a few examples and several pictures from only about a hundred years ago.

I spent a while in the museum, probably 2.5 hours. After that I went to the train station, scarfed down some lunch, then met Jonathan! He was able to find his way to Nuremberg all by himself. I mean, I did have to coach him a lot ahead of time, but it worked out. We put our stuff in a locker so we wouldn't have to go to our hotel first, and walked around the Christmas market for a little bit. It was, of course, really really cold out, so we didn't stay for too long. We got some food to go and then found our way to our hotel. It wasn't actually that far away, but we had to take the S-Bahn and then the bus, but since it was Sunday, the bus came approx. once every hour and a half. Luckily our hotel was only a ten-minute walk from the S-Bahn stop, but it was freaking cooooold. Oh well, better than waiting outside forever.

The next day we got up semi early and went back into the city. First we went to the Imperial Palace, which is at the top of the old city. On the way, we stopped and looked in a few of the really huge churches, partly because they looked cool, and partly because we were freezing. If it's possible, it was even colder on Monday than it had been on Sunday. We also found Albrecht Dürer's house, but didn't go in because it cost money. When we got to the castle we looked around a little bit, but again didn't go in because we're cheap. Afterwards we walked back down to the Christmas market and got some lunch. It was so cold out that I convinced Jonathan that we should go into McDonald's and I'd buy some fries so that we could sit at a table. Jonathan is pretty anti-McDonald's, but he was cold. After lunch we looked around the Christmas market a bit more then went on a tour of the dungeons under the old city hall. The tour was (of course) in German, so naturally Jonathan didn't understand, but I had a hard time too. The guy had a fairly heavy Bavarian accent. I'm just finally able to understand Schwäbsich--there's no way I can learn Bayerisch too. The tour was interesting, but not very long. Apparently the Nurembergers weren't too concerned with finding out the truth back in the day. Either that or they were very confident in their detective work. They mostly just tortured whatever confession they wanted out of the prisoners.

After the tour we walked around a little bit more, then decided it was way too cold to do anything else and went back to our hotel. We ate at a Chinese place near the hotel (all the German places were too expensive, plus I eat German food all the time) which ended up being pretty good. Then we came back, went to sleep, and Jonathan got up at 4 AM to take the train to Stuttgart to fly back to Atlanta.

Annnd, now that I've finished this post a few days later, I'm off to Italy! Look forward to some cool pictures!