Category: International Travel – Inside Germany

Back to Nürnberg, Part One

On By StevenIn International Travel - Inside Germany2 Comments

This weekend, I found myself with a free Saturday-  no plans.  What I did have was a BahnCard, a nearby train station, and a surge of wanderlust.  But where could I go that would be interesting, but wouldn’t involve a hotel or an overnight stay…  well, I never did get to see all the touristy stuff in Nuremberg, so that seemed like a winner.

Administrative note #1:  I referred to the city in the title of this post as Nürnberg, and in the paragraph above as Nuremberg.  Both are correct- Nürnberg is the German word, and Nuremberg is the English spelling.  (See also: Munich and München.)

Administrative note #2: I’m splitting this trip into two posts because I’ve got about twenty photographs and there’s a good and logical place to split them apart.  Moving on!

Every trip to another place so far has started with the same thing:  Trains!  And while the view from the train last time I travelled was snow covered fields, this time around the green is starting to come back.  The snow that was there melted off, and the plants are pretty happy about it.

The trip to Nuremberg on an ICE (Inter City Express) train is roughly an hour long; a very quick and comfortable ride.  Once I got to the city, I followed the signs to the tram, which is basically a ground level train system.  The streetcars in San Francisco are more or less the same thing.

Side note:  The crutches the girl in this picture is using?  They’re very common in Germany.  Frankly, I think they’re much better than the sore-armpit crutches that are commonplace in the US when people sprain an ankle or what have you.

The #9 tram takes about ten minutes to get to the Dokumentationszentrum Reichsparteitagsgelände, or the Doku-Zentrum for short.  This is the Documentation Center Nazi Party Rallying Grounds.  It’s a museum in the unfinished Congress Hall where many Nazi party rallies were held.

There is a tremendous amount of archival footage from the Nazi rallies, along with artifacts from that time.  Although Nazi symbols and paraphernalia are illegal in Germany in the present day, that wasn’t always so.  There’s an example of old army man toys- the same kind that children in the US play with all the time.  The difference between little green US Army men and these is obvious and striking though:

It’s also interesting to see the commemorative things-  this is the sort of products that the Franklin Mint sells today, except this was all Hitler all the time:

There were also newspapers on display from many nations during that time period.  It was interesting for me to see the political cartoons of the time from the American newspaper.

There were a great many photographs and films of bombings, of allied troops reaching Nuremberg, and so forth.  There was an entire section dedicated to the Nuremberg trials, and the original books, logs, and tapes of the Goering interviews are all on display here.

The exit path of the museum contains a section with chips that have the names of many concentration camp victims on them, along with the names of the camps.  It’s designed to look like a train track that goes on and on-  very striking.

All in all, this was a fascinating museum.  Since my arrival, I’ve seen lots of news reports about Nazi activity- as I said previously, it’s illegal here now, but there are still pockets of Nazi activity in some of the cities.  While I don’t think anything like the Holocaust could happen again, this was still a pretty sobering experience.

Luckily, the rest of the Nuremberg trip was all fun and games.  And lots of walking.  Lots and lots of walking.   That will all be in the next post.


Down To Kempten

On By StevenIn International Travel - Inside Germany4 Comments

On Tuesday and Wednesday, I took some time off work for my first solo overnight out-of-town journey by train since arriving in Germany.

It’s been pretty cold for the last few days, with the temperature staying well below freezing.  This has the benefit of giving us more sunlight, though, so the train ride was populated by views like these-  fields of snow, blue skies, and the occasional road or small town.  I love the blue skies though-

Near the end of the trip, I was further south, near the Austrian border, and in the Alps-  much more snow, more white, and more trees covered in white.    At the start of the trip, however,  there was a lot of green in the distance, as in this photo.

So much snow…

At the midway point, I had to change trains in the Munich Bahnhof, which is the central train station for the city.  The Munich Bahnhof is, to date, the coolest thing I have seen in Germany.    When I was walking between my trains, I saw all the trains lined up at their platforms and I couldn’t help but think that this place reminded me of spacedock from the Star Trek movies.

The stopover in Munich also gave me a chance to get a fresh butterbreze, or buttered pretzel.  I am addicted to butterbreze- they’re my crack.  One more train ride and I was in the little town of Kempten, down south.  My purpose for the trip was a concert, but first I had to get to my hotel near the concert venue.  Both locations were a little bit more than a kilometer away from the train station, so I went on foot.  This allowed me the opportunity to laugh heartily at this store:

Apparently, the idea of “US Streetwear” here is synonymous with gangster rap- it was sneakers, sweats, giant hats, and gold bling.    The entire store was unintentionally hilarious.

My hotel was roughly 150 or so meters from the concert venue, and both were across the street from a shopping mall-  this gave me the opportunity to get some food before the show and to people-watch, which is always fun.    The hotel, The Hotel Am Forum, is a nice place with a very friendly staff.  When they saw me struggling with the German, they immediately switched to very good English.  The rooms were clean and well maintained, and the hotel had a nifty floor structure-  you go up a spiral staircase to get to your room:

But all of this is set-up for the reason I went to Kempten in the first place.  I was there to attend a VNV Nation concert at The bigBOX Allgäu.  I was originally not sure why they chose Kempten instead of, say, Munich for the show.  However, the bigBOX turned out to be a pretty excellent concert venue.  The bigBOX has an upstairs for super huge events, and a downstairs area for smaller shows like this one.

When I got to the bigBOX, a question I didn’t even know I had was answered right away-  what do a few hundred concert-goers do with their coats during the show?  In restaurants here, it’s not uncommon to have coat racks or hooks near your table for you to hang up your coat while you dine.  In a place like the bigBox?  There’s a garderobe (wardrobe) with an attendant-  for one Euro, they will hold your coat and give you a numbered chit to retrieve it after the show.  This is a brilliant and elegant solution-  I had assumed I’d just have to hold onto my coat for the entire show, and I’m glad I was wrong.

I’ll conclude this post with three pictures from the show.  VNV Nation puts on a great live show.  They truly enjoy playing for their fans, and it shows.  I’ve seen them about half a dozen times, but all the other shows  were in Florida. This is more or less what they look like.

ICE Train

Nuremberg

On By StevenIn International Travel - Inside Germany3 Comments

Friday was a holiday here in Bavaria. It was Epiphany, a Christian holiday celebrating the visit of the Magi to the infant Jesus.  Since the office was closed, it seemed like a great day to take a day trip out of Regensburg.   First stop- the train station!

ICE Train

The ICE (Inter City Express) trains here are amazing.  They look a bit like Disney’s Monorail trains.  They’re fast, quiet, and smooth as glass.  The seats are incredibly comfortable as well, and it was actually very affordable.

The destination?  Nuremberg!   I’d heard that there was a toy museum there, and indeed there is- Nuremberg is apparently quite large in the toy community, and there’s even an International Toy Fair held there every year.

The train station in Nuremberg is significantly larger than the one in Regensburg, so we had to walk a bit to get out of it.  This is in the center of it:

Nuremberg wall.

Once in Nuremberg, we were on foot, so it’s hard to miss things like this whopping great cathedral.  I like the one in Regensburg better, but I think that’s just home-team pride speaking.

The goal for the day was to visit the Spielzeug, aka the Nuremberg  Toy Museum.  It was four stories tall and contained toys going back to the middle ages, including a great toy train section and an entire room full of creepy porcelain dolls.  They also put ALF, Babar, Garfield, E.T., and some Star Wars figures into the same display case, so that was fun for me.  Unfortunately, this picture is the only one I can show you, because they didn’t allow photography inside.

Toy museum

After we finished at the museum, we walked around the city for a while.   Almost everything was closed for the holiday, with the exception of restaurants, cafes, and museums, but that didn’t stop the street musicians from trying-  I’ve never seen so many accordions one any day that didn’t involve a Weird Al concert.  We also saw people dressed in the appropriate costumes for the holiday, and we ran into some Mormon missionaries who, as amusing coincidence would have it, one lived in the town where our company’s Utah office is located.  There was also this man, the bubble maker.  He was fascinating to watch, and the second bubble photograph seen here is my favorite picture from the entire day.

Bubble manBubble!

I didn’t learn of Nuremberg’s famous castle until after we returned from the trip.  (Note to self: When travelling in Germany, always check for castles.  They’re everywhere here, like Starbucks back in the U.S.)  I did, however, learn of Schöner Brunnen, the site of a rather amazing fountain surrounded by a wrought iron fence.  There is a golden ring welded into the fence which is said to bring good fortune to those who touch it.  Naturally, I had to see this one for myself…

Schöner BrunnenNuremberg Ring

That was pretty much it for the trip to Nuremberg though, except for lunch (average pasta) and dessert (amazing apple strudel).  I really need to re-think the idea of traveling on holidays.  It’s got to be much more interesting when things are open.

Now I need to decide where to go for my next trip!