Nuremberg

Before I start I'd like to say I really didn't like my last post. Particularly, I didn't like the scrapbooking (is this one word? or should it be hyphenated? everything gets it with the red underline...) picture I included, because I started thinking maybe people would think it's a picture of me scrapbooking. It's not. Don't be confused.

Nuremberg, Germany.
It was fun. But I'm beat from traveling! Even such a little trip! It was cold, of course... surely a few degrees colder than here in Prague. Going on a trip in this cold weather can be difficult, because you're standing the whole time and you can't just relax on a bench and people watch. We stood and people watched plenty, but we realized we were on our feet for basically two days. That was a little rough, but the rest rocked!

I have two albums with Nuremberg pictures (the first starts with a few in Prague on Thanksgiving). To see pics click here and
here.

We arrived in Nuremberg after a pleasant and fast-moving 5 hour train trip. We dropped our two backpacks at the Hotel Victoria and went for lunch. Then we went to the Nazi Documentation Center Museum which is in the old Nazi Congress Hall, which was far as I know, was never finished. We walked around a lot and saw the Zeppelinfield, where the Nazis would rally together and share their craziness and hate. It was freaky, and strange. The stands were overgrown which made it even creepier than it was.

The rest of our trip was spent on a Rick Steves' walking tour, eating Nürnberger Bratwurst on a bun, drinking glühwein (mulled wine) and hot alcoholic egg nog - all from stands on the streets.

There were so many glühwein stands, and when you get your glühwein you pay a little extra for the annual cup of the market, and carry it around to the other stands for more wine/egg nog/etc, and then you can keep the cup as a keepsake to remember your glühwein-drinking days in Nuremberg, or you can return it at any stand and get your money back. We kept ours, of course. We also got some cups from another stand that were different from the cups all the other stands were using. We like being individuals, so we kept those, too.

Our hotel was very nice. It was quite fancy which we felt we could handle since it was only one night that we would be there. It was right at the beginning of Königstraße, inside the wall for the old town, so it was a great location. We were able to easily get around, and make our way to the Christkindlmarkt, which is the annual Christmas market that draws 2 million visitors every year. Some say it's the biggest in Europe. It was big, and pretty great. Of course, kind of like NYC street fairs, there seemed to be a limit to what the stands were selling... it was kind of the same thing, over and over again. So there was glühwein, bratwurst, gingerbread, ornaments, hats/gloves/scarves... and the same over and over again. There were some differences, of course, but not much. Regardless, it was a lot of fun to walk around and see everything. It was very festive and Christmasy, which I love.

People were pretty controlled and friendly and not that big of a pain in the ass, except for the few who did the tourist stop-dead-in-their-tracks and not move thing, right in the middle of a giant thoroughfare... but then, that always happens.

We barely made our connecting train on the way back, got stuck in a cabin with some smelly people and then the lights went out making it impossible to read for the remaining 4 hours. 45 minutes before we came into Prague the train broke down and we had to wait for it to be fixed... but only for about 25 minutes. It didn't ruin the trip in any way.

It was a great time, and I'd definitely recommend the Nuremberg Christkindlmarkt to anyone... it was great holiday fun. It was so festive and nice.

I'm a big Christmas fan and any excuse to feel all warm inside while I walk around in the cold - whether from happiness and children singing, or from the wine - make for a great time for me.

Last note: Speaking of children singing... we happened to catch some little German kids singing Christmas songs in front of a church (Frauenkirche I think) and it was really cute so here's the video. Unfortunately I missed taping them singing "O Tannenbaum" but this other thing is funny and cute, and I like how the teacher sounds singing in German.

blog madness!

You know what's funny?
Looking through blogs.
At the top of my blog, at the very top, there should be a little button for you to go to the "next blog". You should do it. It's great. When I'm bored I do this, and just see what's out there.
There are an alarming number of "krafty" and scrapbooking blogs out there. And, for some reason, the majority of blogs I run into are in other languages... I'm not sure if that's because I'm in a non-English speaking country or what. But, it's great. And fun. And sometimes you actually find something worth reading. But, more often, you find things to make fun of.

We are leaving for Nuremberg tonight. Or tomorrow. Depending on how you look at it. We are taking a 5:15am train from the station in Prague, and so we are waking up at 3:30 and Andy's dad is driving us to the station. So we will be getting to bed very early tonight.

We will arrive in Nuremberg at 10am, which is a much better deal than taking the Student Agency bus, which would have left at 11:30 tonight but arrived in Nuremberg at 4:15am. What the heck would we do!? No, the train is better, and quite frankly I feel safer because although the Student Agency buses (which are not actually driven by students, as far as I know... I'm not sure why they are called that) run all the time, all over the place, there was an accident a month or so ago, and people died. So, I'm cool with the train.

We are excited about Nuremberg, since we are just going to be there for like 31 hours, but sometimes those are the best trips (like our Vienna trip last year that was sooo awesome!). So, we will arrive, visit Nazi sites, eat, shop at the Christmas market, eat, drink beer, shop, walk around, take pictures, eat and drink and come back. What could be a better trip!? AND we're staying at some fancy 3 star hotel, so that's exciting. It might just mean that there's a bathroom in the room, since apparently all the stars mean something like that, and I know nothing about this, but whatever, I'm going to Germany and that's exciting.

Dresden

We first went to Dresden, Germany on our first trip together to the Czech Republic. Both Andy and I are huge Kurt Vonnegut fans and we were interested in Dresden because it had been bombed by the allies on February 13, 1945, while Vonnegut was a POW being held in an underground prison camp, which he wrote about in Slaughterhouse Five.

Another interesting piece of history about this event was that while the allies were aiming at Dresden, they nearly leveled Prague in error. Prague and Dresden are quite close to each other, especially when you are up in a plane looking down. There was supposedly a navigational error, and actually some bombs were dropped on Prague (affecting some areas of the city, such as Zizkov and Vinohrady, I believe, that are not the main old historical center of Prague) but ultimately I seem to remember that Prague is considered "untouched" by war.

When we visited the city the first time we saw old wreckage from the bombs. This time, though, we didn't. I could swear we were in some of the same spots, but there's a massive amount of construction going on there, and Andy heard that Dresden is expected to be finally built back up by 2010. This is kind of sad, because although the wreckage is sad and destructive and all that, it's a big piece of history that is quite fascinating. I'm glad we saw it the first time (of course, my pictures from then are not digital, otherwise I'd post them here).

But, this time, our trip wasn't so much about history. It was about shopping. Andy's brother Lukas and his girlfriend Katka went to Dresden last week and brought back all kinds of German goodies for us, so Andy's parents decided they wanted to take the trip. It's only about a two hour drive, so we went this past Saturday. It was a nice day trip. We bought a few things, mainly liquor or interesting German food. Here's the pictures. Dresden Pictures

Here's a video, too. My videos are not exciting, they are mainly just a glance around, but I like seeing them since they include the sounds and feel of the place and time, a little bit more than a simple picture.
Oh, yeah, and sorry for the weird guy who pops his head in toward the end... he follows me everywhere and is quite a nuisance! :-)