Day 22

            Nürnberg, here we come! We were having breakfast with Egon and Christa by 8:00 a.m., and they insisted we pack a lunch to take along.  They are such generous people, and extremely interesting to talk to.

            Egon walked us to the “new” train station – Feucht Ost (east) – a few blocks from the house, so we could catch the train into Nürnberg.  Dea and I had never ridden a German train before, so that was a fun experience all by itself.  Its only a short ride, and was a local train, which meant it stopped at every little station, but still only took us about 15 minutes.  We bought day tickets, which means we could ride home on the same ticket, and could have used the city bus system as well.  The ticket was 9, 8€ for both of us, and we could have taken our four kids along with us as well, if we had 4 kids, that is.

            We got off at the Hauptbahnhof, walked under the tracks to one of the gates in the still-existent wall around old Nürnberg, and our eyes bugged out in amazement.

            First we stopped at a little “handicraft mall” where all the shops have handwork.  We saw antique shops, pewter work, lace work, toys, etc.  We managed to avoid spending money there, but just looking was wonderful.

            Then we stopped at a little church that had been destroyed and rebuilt after the war.  Can’t even remember the name of it right now!

            From there we walked to the Church of St. Lorenz.   It is a Lutheran cathedral.  Nürnberg  as an independent city made a decision in 1525 to be a Lutheran city, so St. Lorenz is Lutheran.  It  is a magnificent building!  It was pretty seriously bomb damaged in 1945, but has been beautifully rebuilt.  Took lots of pictures.  There are really 3 organs in the building, all played from one console.  I have a hunch, which I’ll have to check out, that some of the early LCMS Loehe settlers in the USA who helped found the LCMS (Frankenmuth group) emigrated from this area.  The people in this part of Nürnberg are called the Franconians, as are the Michigan settlers, and the large church in Frankenmuth is called St. Lorenz Kirche.  I think there must be a connection.  We also discovered that there would be an organ recital at 12:15.!!!

            It was too early to wait, so we went to the Nürnberg information center to purchase our tickets for a 2.5 hour walking tour of the city, which started at 1, then did a bit more exploring after that. 

            Then we went into the Frauenkirche, which was originally the Imperial Church.  It is now Roman Catholic.  One of the important things about Nürrnberg is that it was the primary seat of the Holy Roman Empire for centuries.  Every time a new Holy Roman Emperor was elected, he had to hold the first Diet (Parliament) session in Nürrnberg.  This was the imperial church, and was originally designed to be a fortress church where the HRE crown jewels were to be stored.  While we were taking pictures and looking around, an organist and soloist were practicing in the church – it was beautiful!

            From there we headed back to St. Lorenz for the organ recital.  The recitalist played all three organs, sometimes one after the other, and at the end, all 3 together.  The whole room literally shook to the point where you could feel the music rather than hear it. 

            Then we headed for the tour, and made it on time. 

            Before we left, I asked Dea if there was anything she absolutely wanted to see while we were here.  She said “a castle.”  I promised her that we would, and we have seen several, but most of them have  been palaces rather than castles.  Today we saw an honest to goodness castle.   It’s built on a solid rock foundation on the highest point in town.  It was a lot of work to climb up the hill but it was worth it.  The view was outstanding.  We heard some great stories – ask us about the horse’s footprints in the castle wall sometime.  This was the Holy Roman Emperor’s castle, and he used it whenever he was in town.  There’s lots of artwork, living spaces, dining halls, chapel, and it goes on and on.  One of the impressive things was the deep well.  It is so deep that the tour guide poured water from a pitcher into the well.  Water falls at a rate of 10 meters/second, and it took 5 seconds for us to hear the splash.  Then she lowered some candles on a rope down to the bottom so we could see all the way down.  This castle had an ample supply of water for no matter what.

            We headed back down the hill from the castle (It’s much easier going downhill than going uphill!), went past Albrecht Dürer’s house and stopped at St. Sebalds church.  This is also a Lutheran church now (since 1525), and contains the remains of St. Sebald, one of the patron saints of Nürnberg.  It’s strange to see such a thing in a Lutheran church, but I suppose  the fact that it was once a Catholic church explains a lot.  It has the only original Albrecht Dürer painting in  Nürnberg. All the others in town are copies, even though this was his town.  There’s also a very nice organ in the cathedral, and some wonderful pictures of the bomb damage (the church was nearly destroyed) and reconstruction following WW II.  We did not sense a lot of hostility in this area towards Americans, even though we were part of virtually destroying the town with our bombs.  They have more bitterness towards the British than the Americans.

            After the tour, we decided to try the Nürrnberg brats.  They are small and short – you can fit 3 of them in a bun, and a standard order is 6 on a plate.  We shared one plate.  They are so small because hundreds of years ago, one of the mayors said that all the restaurant doors had to be locked by 6:00, so they started making the brats small enough to push through a keyhole so they could keep selling them!  They are a bit milder than what we are used to.

            The rain started up again just about the time we finished the brats, so we headed back to catch the train to Feucht.  We had supper with our hosts, and then went to an outdoor concert by their church.  The Feucht Singverein (community choir) and the Feucht Posaunenchor (brass choir) had a joint concert.  It wasn’t professional , but was very enjoyable and was well attended.  The rain came back and washed out the last number.

            We came back and sat with Christa and Egon and their son Stephan in the sun room (even though it was night) and tried a little bit of just about anything you could think of:  Rauchbier (smoky beer from Bamberg), other beer, ice cream with several kinds of liqueur on it, then we had to sample the liqueur without the ice cream, and finished up with champagne.  Stumbled off to bed and slept VERY well!