Viaje a Germany: Nürnberg

The weekend before Lent, we had a 4-day weekend to celebrate Carneval. So my friend Susan and I decided to take a trip to Germany. 

Susan and I began our journey at 6:30 Friday morning on the bus to Madrid. The ride was rather uneventful, and we arrived in Madrid at around 12:30. Our flight to Frankfurt was scheduled to leave at 3:15.  This experience at the Madrid airport was much more pleasant than the previous and there was Ian Goldsmith's doppelganger on our plane, but our return to Oviedo was unfortunately again full of misfortune.

We arrived in Frankfurt at around 6:00. At the suggestion of my friend Anke, I had been trying to arrange a Mitfahrgelegenheit. This is a carpooling system in Germany. Drivers advertise on the website and people can message them to ride with them and pay much less than taking the train or bus. I had originally arranged a ride, but that day the driver decided to leave earlier, so we could no longer ride with him. We weren’t able to arrange a different ride, so we had to take the train to Nürnberg. The train is expensive (46 €), but it was the only choice we had. We arrived in Nürnberg at around 10 and met Susan’s friend E and her boyfriend S in the train station. We walked to his apartment (and it was snowing outside!), talked and had a beer (I missed German beer so much!), and went to bed.

The next day we ate a lovely German breakfast including different rolls with meat and cheese, a soft-boiled egg, and yogurt. Then we set off to see the city. First we went to the castle. Apparently this was where the emperor used to spend most of his time. Something cool we got to see was the well. It was inside a tower, supposedly so it would be a secret where the water came from. It was very, very deep. I couldn’t really understand most of what the tour guide was saying since it was in German, but apparently you had to be really careful a rat or something didn’t fall in because it would rot in the water and get everyone sick.

We continued on to the rest of the city. S was very knowledgeable about Nürnberg, so we got to learn a lot of the history. First we saw some interesting sculptures.

St. George slaying a dragon

This statue is supposed to represent different aspects of marriage.

Sometimes you get fat.

And you have kids.

And you want to kill each other.

But other times you're happy.

Then we went to St. Sebald and later St. Lorenz. They are the two protestant churches in Nürnberg. There were on 2 different sides of the river that runs through the city and apparently competed against each other, each making their towers a little higher than the other.

St. Sebald

This is the main square with the Catholic church. One time in Nürnberg history, there was a plague. So the important people got together and decided the best way to get rid of the plague would be to get rid of the Jews, build a church, and provide fresh food and water. So, they blockaded the Jewish district and burned it down. They then built the Catholic church and the main square complete with a fancy fountain where markets were to be held. By this time the plague was gone, so they decided their efforts must have worked.

The main square with the Frauenkirche

The fountain in the main square

The next day we visited this really cool museum that had rooms from different houses that had been mostly destroyed from around Nürnberg and talked about Nürnberg history. Then we ate a late lunch at this delicious Asian restaurant and then it was time to meet our Mitfahrgelegenheit!