Nuremberg

One of the places I had been looking forward to seeing in Germany was Nuremberg, probably the most significant Nazi city. Nuremberg is where the Nazis rose to power first, where the famous Nazi Party Rallies were held annually, and where laws stripping Jews of their rights were passed. Many of the largest and most significant Nazi buildings/stadiums/etc were also built in Nuremberg. All of these reasons contributed to why the city was chosen for the war crime trials (Nuremberg Trials) after the war - it gave symbolic value in making it the place of Nazi demise.

Nate and I headed to a wonderful museum called the Nazi Documentation Center where we spent about half our day. The museum wasn't about WWII or the Holocaust, instead it focused on the evolution of the Nazi movement. It analyzed the Nazi phenomenon to understand how it could have happened. I thought it was fascinating and especially enjoyed the many videos with interviews of Germans who had participated in the Nazi Rallies, etc. Since it was a museum, we don't have many pictures to show of that part of our day, but here is one of Nate in the Nazi Congress Hall where the museum is located. The Congress Hall was only half finished (it would have been twice as tall for example), and would have held 50,000 people for their annual Party gatherings.


Notice how Nate is rolling his eyes and actually giving a fairly natural smile. He struggles with smiling in pictures (a few days ago Nate was showing our blog to someone at work, and she immediately commented that Nate needed to work on his smile....). I think he has made progress smiling on command, but I am always instructing him when I take his picture ("don't show your bottom teeth", "more top teeth", "put your chin down", etc). In this picture Nate was apparently making fun of my instructions on how to produce a false smile, and he ended up giving a genuine smile and rolling his eyes at me :-) I thought it was funny.

After the museum, we went on a walking tour of the old town part of the city. Nuremberg was 90% destroyed in the war, so the medieval looking buildings are often reconstructions, which is common in Germany. Here I am at a tower guarding one of the four medieval entrances to Nuremberg (Nurnberg), where a huge wall surrounded the ancient city. Most of the wall is original.


This so-called tower house dates to around 1200 (I imagine parts of it are restorations). This was before Nuremberg had a city wall - requiring the locals to defend their own homes. This is the last remaining house of this style in the city and was basically a one-family castle back in the middle ages. Now it houses a medieval restaurant and...a T-Mobile store (and probably other things in upper floors).


As part of the walking tour, Nate and I visited Lorenzkirche (St. Lawrence Church) and took turns going inside since churches typically don't allow dogs, though restaurants and other places do. It was rainy and cold out and poor Snoopy was shivering. When I came out of the church, Nate had Snoopy on his lap and had wrapped him up in his coat to keep him warm. Snoopy was suddenly very content and no longer shivering.


This is a picture of the Holy Ghost Hospital from the 14th century built on the river.


At that point we decided to have dinner, and by the time we finished at the restaurant it was already dark and it was raining even more. We decided it best to end the walking tour early and head back to Stuttgart. We were nearly an hour away from our car (between walking and taking the tram) and Stuttgart is a 2 hour drive from Nuremberg. Besides the rain, it was another good day in Germany.