Nuremberg, Germany

 On the way to Berlin from Munich we decided to stop overnight in Nuremberg as we were interested in the WW11 history here. We hired a guide for half a day who did a good job of giving us the history and taking us to the sights…

Nuremberg has one of the most intact fortified castles in Europe and stands above the city of approximately 550,000 people. It was first built in 1000 and represented the power and significance of the Holy Roman Empire. The walls and towers are still intact and surround the city below…

Don walking through one of the gates in the thick walls.

Our guide picked us up and brought us first to the place called Erhenhalle which was used as Nazi Rally grounds. The memorial was originally built as a memorial to WW1 soldiers but Hitler took it over as a memorial for martyrs of Nazism. This is what it looks like today…

And this is what it looked like in 1933…

Today the Memorial is used as a memorial to all fallen soldiers…

Hitler chose Nuremberg as a base in the 1930s as it was a central position from which to reach out to the rest of the country and Europe. During the Nazi reign here many railways were built to transport soldiers as well as people to the camps…

Hitler had great plans for Nuremberg including building a Nazi city and some of these buildings are still to be seen today…

Here is the unfinished Congress building that he modelled on the Roman Coliseum. He intended it to seat 50,000 and again a place for his speeches and rallies….

The walls with the yellow bricks are original to the building…

It is now being finished to become a documentation center of the Nazi history here in Nuremberg.

He did manage to finish this stage where he would enter from the middle door to  the podium to address the crowds who were expected to attend, salute him and stay at attention for hours…

The US military blew the top of and it was declared unsafe however we could still climb the steps and stand on the podium and imagine…

We climbed to the podium…

Here would have been the view through the Nazi regime…

Here is what it looks like today and once a year the grounds are used for a BMW car race…

Our guide gave us so much history it made our heads spin! There are many company  headquarters in Nuremberg which were also associated with the Nazis…Hugo Boss who made the uniforms, Bayer who produced much of the ingredients for the gas used in the camps, BMW, Volkswagen and other German car makers that contributed to the war effort. 

And Coca Cola who introduced Fanta in Germany during this time…

We then went to the Palace of Justice where the Nuremberg Trials took place…

Here is Courtroom 600 where the trials were held…

The Palace of Justice was selected by the Allied Powers as the location for the International Military Trubunal because it was the only undamaged facility extensive enough to accommodate a major trial. The site contained 20 courtrooms and a prison capable of holding 1200 prisoners.

 The site also had a very informative exhibit which explained the trials, here are the main defendants who were many of the top officials of the Nazi Party…

Many of them were sentenced to death, but unfortunately Hitler, Himmiler and Goebbels  had committed suicide and could not be tried.

It was a very interesting morning…

Otherwise Nuremberg is a very pretty city…

 Great little restaurants to eat local…

Sausages boiled in beer…

The sausages are made every day and cooked over open fires on beech wood…

Nuremberg sausages are small like breakfast sausages served on pewter plates and Don had the liver dumpling soup. 

The local beer here is red, a little sweet and strong…it is called the ladies beer.

Christmas markets are big here in Germany and Nuremberg is getting ready for theirs as well so lots of lights around the city…

Lots of street markets…

There are many streets with half timbered houses….

It is also a city full of canals and bridges…

And of course there has to be at least one church in the center of the city…

This church is called St. Lawerence Church and was built in 1250, it is an Evangelical Lutheran Church and is quite grand…

We enjoyed our brief stop in Nuremberg both for the history and the beauty of the city. Now on to our last stop for this trip, Berlin.

 

Munich, Germany

 We left Cologne for a five hour train trip to get us to Munich…train travel is easy and reliable but expensive here. Munich is the capital of the state of Bavaria and has 1.5 million people so the biggest place we have visited so far.

We stayed in an apartment hotel which was interesting, a small studio with all we needed in an hotel run by biofuels. Here is the courtyard…

It was located in a culturally diverse neighbourhood with many Turkish people who are the largest minority here in Munich. After the devastation of WW11 Germany needed cheap labour to rebuild and most of the workers then came from Turkey. Don got a great haircut from a Turkish barber…

We were also around the corner from Theresienwiese, an 100 acre  field where Octoberfest is held every year. It is the largest beer festival in the world and attracts over 7 million visitors over 2 weeks…too bad we missed it!

The festival originated on October 12, 1810 in celebration of the marriage of the crown prince of Bavaria. They had a great party and it continues to this day. 

We were very close to Central Station and lots of public transportation so it was very easy to get around Munich. 

Many trams…

Our first visit was to Marienplatz which is the central square in Munich, on approach we could see the New Town Hall which is a very impressive building…

It was built in 1905 and is used today as the mayor’s office, here is the inner courtyard…

Another interesting thing about the building is the sounding of the bells at 11am and 12pm when the characters move and perform a dance. I love these clocks as they are so intricate and still work so well after many years..

Marienplatz is a very busy place with Mary’s Column in the middle…

It was erected in 1638 and has a statue of the Virgin Mary at the top.

 

A broader view of the New Town Hall…

The plaza is surrounded by many cafes and places to eat…

It was a cold day so a coffee, latte and some apple strudel hit the spot! 

The Germans love their bread as it seems everyone is walking around with a paper bag eating some type of bun, pretzel or pastry…

Another thing that Germans love is their beer and no better place to experience this is at Hofbrauhaus München which is a 3 story beer hall built in the 16th century. It holds thousands and is always full with locals and tourists…

 The beer is huge and the music is loud…

Munich also has a huge market called Viktualienmarkt which is close by the central square. There are many stalls selling food, produce, flowers and so on…the sights and smells were quite pleasant….

Don was thinking about what he was going to eat, lots to choose from…

The produce here in Germany is amazing. As we like to cook most of our meals when we travel we have discovered a vast array of local products in the supermarket. We have also discovered how much cheaper food is here compared to Canada!

Christmas is a big season in Germany as many towns and cities have huge Christmas markets starting in November  so there were signs of  Christmas everywhere…

And of course Germany is also known for its’ sausage with different regions having their own speciality and here in Munich it is white sausage. We bought some to cook and they were tasty…

 As in all the other places we have visited in Germany the skyline has been dominated by church steeples while here in Munich the main church which is the Church of Our Dear Lady has two round towers which are 99 meters high. A city law says that no other building in the city centre can be any taller so no skyscrapers here! 

It was built in the 16th century…

The stain class windows are brilliant…

It also has an interesting feature called the Devil’s Footprint which is a footprint embedded in one of the tiles which Don now has his foot put in…

Here is the legend and yes the wind does blow cold around the Cathedral…

Munich is a city with great plazas and here in Odenplatz stands the yellow church built in the mid 1600s in an Italian style by one of the rulers as a thank you to God for the birth of his long awaited son…

It was really ornate…

On the other side of Odenplatz stands the Royal Residences…

It is very large and stretches quite a long way down the street. It is the former Royal palace of the Wittelsbach monarchs of Bavaria and opened in 1365. It suffered a lot of destruction in the Allied Bombings and was partially rebuilt, though most of the facade is painted over as they ran out of money.At the end the original structure can still be seen.

One of the courtyards..

The Palace is guarded by four giant bronze lion statues supported by pedestals with a half-human and half-animal face. The nose is shiny as many of the citizens go up to rub the noses in hopes of wealth and good luck. While we were there we saw a wedding party doing the same.

Behind the Palace is the English Garden which is one of the largest urban parks in the world. Since we were there a few days we got a chance to walk through part of it on a beautiful sunny afternoon…

Munich has many grand avenues such as the one running through here…

Large buildings such as the Opera House…

Another day we took the bus to just outside the city to the Nymphenburg Palace which served as the main summer residence for the former rulers of Bavaria and opened in 1675…it was massive! 

We also past the headquarters of BMW which is shaped like a four cyclinder engine…

It is just across from Olympic Park which is the site of  the 1972 Summer Olympics and is still used today by the citizens as a huge recreational complex. Two interesting facts about it…a lot of the grounds were built with the rubble of WW11 which was quite a lot after the war and two it is the site of the Munich Massacre which was a terrorist attack carried out by eight members of the Palestian militant organization called Black September. They killed two members of the Israeli Olympic team and took nine other hostages who were later killed in a failed rescue attempt. 

I couldn’t get a good picture of the Olympic Park from the bus so this is one from the Internet. What is unique about this park as opposed to many other Olympic sites is that it is still fully utilized 50 years later for recreational purposes and many concerts are played here in the stadium.

We both really enjoyed being in Munich as it feels grand, open yet still quite accessible…would definitely recommend a visit here if you should come to Germany. And now on to Nuremberg!