Nuremberg

Last Tuesday afternoon, I hopped onto a plane for Nuremberg for the first of three stops in Germany as part of a bucket list item to attend Oktoberfest. Since my dad got sick, I’ve prioritized having these big experiences at least once in my life, and that mentality has continued long after his death. Although I haven’t really intended it that way, so far it’s worked out to about one big ticket item a year. This year, I already had the chance to go on a (short) safari in Africa, so getting to attend Oktoberfest was a bonus. Unfortunately, my grandmother died just before I left. So while my trip wasn’t impacted, my mom and my sister, who I was meeting there as part of a longer trip they were taking, had to cut their trip short. Still, my sister got to hit her bucket list item (Vienna), my mom headed to some new places and some she hadn’t been to in 24 years, and I got to attend Oktoberfest and visit two new cities. So overall, it was still net positive for everyone, despite the trip getting cut short for my travel buddies and the monetary, time, and positive mood losses that came from that.

We decided to go to Oktoberfest this year for a few reasons. First, because a few of our cousins went last year, but because of school conflicts on my end and passport issues on my mom and sister’s end, we didn’t end up getting it together. Secondly, my friend Mark was running the Berlin marathon and was going to travel Germany for almost a month afterward. His timing aligned perfectly with our prospective timing, and his family was planning on going to Oktoberfest, too. And third, in March of this last year, we finally got to Hawaii, our 50th state. With all 50 states officially off my checklist, I’ve felt a lot more flexibility and have been able to travel without feeling like the last state is still looming over my head every time I go back to somewhere I’ve been before.

I flew directly into Munich, where I met up with my mom and sister a bit before noon on Wednesday. We grabbed some sandwiches while we caught up and waited for the train. Then, we hopped on an hour-long train ride up to Nuremberg.

Nuremberg is the second-largest city in Bavaria after Munich. The old town was deeply devestated by Allied bombings on Germany. However, it is probably best known for the Nuremberg Trials, an international war crimes tribunal held in the city beween 1945 and 1946 to prosecute top-level Nazi officials for their international crimes, including crimes against humanity for the Holocaust and other atrocities committed off of German soil. Based off of Anglo-American law practices, the Nuremberg Trials set the international standard for prosecuting war crimes and crimes against humanity in the years since.

We arrived in Nuremberg early in the afternoon. Our hotel was right by the main train station, which was also conveniently located right next to the edge of the old town.

We dropped our bags and wandered through the old part of the city. It was a disgusting, rainy day, but luckily one of our main foci when travelling is church-hopping. We hopped in and out of churches, avoiding the worst of the cold and taking in some history of the city thorugh its rebuilt churches. Larger churches in Europe are also often located on town squares, so we had the chance to pop into a few of those “platz”, including one that was hosting a fall equivalent to the famous Christmas Markets.

We got to the edge of the old town area, walking for a bit along the town walls and towers, until we got to the castle. We walked to the top of the hill hosting the castle, getting a few great views along the way despite the weather. We stopped in on the castle grounds to warm ourselves up with an afternoon snack, then began our descent back down into the city. By then, it was getting late and we were getting cold, so we continued our wandering with the goal of also starting to think about dinner.

Since it was my first night, I wanted a really traditional meal, and we ended up finding a restruant reccomended to us by one of our guidebooks. The food was incredible, as was the beer. Then, in the rain, we ran back and checked into our hotel.

In the theme of things never truly being done when going back to school, at 9 PM on the first night I was in Germany, I had an important committee meeting for the next step in my PhD. This was something that had been a long time coming and one of two accomplishments in the last month that means I’ll be able to start making some serious progress. While taking an important meeting while jet lagged was not ideal, it was the only day and time my committee was able to meet over the course of 2+ months, so it had to be done. Thankfully, my mom and sister found ways to entertain themselves while I was occupied, including utilizing the hotel’s sauna.

We woke up the next morning (I was not feeling refreshed. I have not had a full night’s sleep since I arrived over 5 days ago). This was the day we needed to end up back in Munich to check into our hostel for the night, so we only had until about 5 to do touristy things.

We began with the Nuremberg Trials museum, which was extremely well-done and informative. I hadn’t realized they had the location of the trials memorialized beyond just a plaque on a building, so I am super glad my sister insisted on the museum. We learned that the hotel we were staying in had housed some of the people involved in the trials! The museum took longer than expected (absolutely no complaints, it was impressive), so by the time we were finished and took the train back to the old town, it was lunch time.

We wandered around and did a bit of souvenir shopping before sitting down for a lunch of sausages, pretzels, (a beer for me) and some other German staples.

Our long morning didn’t leave us much time to do any of the farther-out options we’d discussed, but we ended up at the Germanic National Museum, which turned out to be an incredible choice. They had old tapestries, stained glass, and statues, as well as a hollowed-out old church and cloisters, paintings, the world’s oldest surviving terrestrial globe, and lots of other German historical items from the Middle Ages, the Renaissance, and after.

Feeling like we’d been successful with the time we had in Nuremberg, we headed off on our evening train to Munich to catch up with Mark and his family.