Day 2 in Nuremberg was enjoyable! We woke up whenever we felt like it and hopped on the train to town to get started with our day of sight-seeing. We started out by taking the subway to the courthouse where the Nuremberg trials were held, but were notified that the room that the trials were held in is under renovation until 2010, so we were a little sad about that. The courthouse itself is massive and interesting to look at.
After the courthouse we went back to the old part of Nuremberg and met up with Drew while he was on lunch. We decided to walk up this huge hill to the main castle and look at the city (since the castle itself was somewhat boring to look at and cost money). The view of the city was really great and I will eventually piece together all the shots for a panorama, but for now I will just go with a few random shots.
The next plan for the day was to visit the Documentation Center which is a museum dedicated to showing the Nazi parties rise to power and all the horrible things they did as well as how they transformed Nuremberg into one of their main rally cities.
The museum is located inside of a section of the never completed Congress Hall which is a huge coliseum style arena that was planned as a place for all of the upper members of the party to come to Nuremberg to hear Hitler give speeches as well as planning and other important aspects of their war mongering. This section of Nuremberg is particularly interesting because of the sheer number and size of buildings built to display the power and might of the Nazi party in Germany. The Congress hall looms over a beautiful recreational park and made me feel the same way that photos of the Chernobyl power plant makes me feel. It's huge, useless, and was part of something that once cause a lot of death and suffering.
Another area we visited opposite of the Congress hall across the lake was the Zeppelin Field which was a giant expanse used for parades and rallies. The architecture is reminiscent of the roman or greek empires. Many steps and towers made out of white limestone. We climbed around on the main grandstand which used to have countless pillars lining the top of it with swastika banners and a huge swastika sculpture accenting the top. All of which were blown up and torn down by the allies after the Nazi defeat.
While making our way back to the old town a young German kid totally pan handled us for change even though he didn't speak English. He kind of creeped me out a bit.
We met up with Drew after he got off work and ate dinner at a hotel that serves legit Bavarian food as well as his favorite german beer Andechs. He ordered me the most german meal he could think of and I'm not even sure what it was really other than knowing it was pork and had a ball of weird mashed potatoes and a pile of sour kraut. I really enjoyed it that one time but I think I wouldn't last long if I ate it on a regular basis.
We made it home without incident after hanging out at the hotel for a while longer. I've really enjoyed my time here so far.
It's almost 1 in the AM so I will write about "tomorrow" on the bus. I am too tired to crank out two blog posts at once.
G'night!
No comments:
Post a Comment