Day 28 Friday 28 April 2017

Quick blog entry, this is the view from my hotel room this morning!

It is 9.00am and still snowing

How cold is it going to be on the station platform this morning????

A photo from the train just out of Munich, obviously a lot more snow on the ground here than in the city.

Well I finally found my castle today, I know that it is a castle cause it is at the top of a bloody big hill.  Much more of this and I will have legs like a mountaing goat, I don't mean hairy and smelly, I mean taut and muscley.  Luckily I have been keeping fit on a diet of sausages, sauerkraut, potatoes and beer.  Nuremberg castle isnt a big castle as far as castles go, but it is old and at one time was one of the main castles in the Holy Roman Empire which was a pretty big deal back in the day.

Nuremberg is another of the German cities that was almost totally destroyed in WW2, or as I call it NTGW (Not the Great War), and was rebuilt after the war.  What I find amazing is that they rebuilt in the style of the original city, with the old medieval style buildings, including the churches and public buildings replicated so that as you wander around now you think that these buildings are hundreds of years old when in fact they are less than 70 - 80 years old.  The castle was heavily damaged and has been substantially rebuilt.

How old do you reckon this building is? Prize for neatest correct entry

Nuremberg was heavily bombed as it was an industrial centre and transport hub but was also seen as a city that had been integral to the rise of Nazism in Germany in the 1930's.  The nazi rallies that we have seen in the old black & white movies were held here and the infamous Nuremberg laws that codified the nazi views on racism were passed here.  

Of course the Nuremberg trials were held here after the war, but that is a different matter and will be dealt with at another time.

I am doing a walking tour tomorrow that includes a lot of the old town but also visits the site of the nazi rallies.  It is going to be a balmy 12 degrees tomorrow, might have to break out the sunscreen.