Nuremberg Hotels
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The City of History
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Fussen is a small little town with a smaller population than Cal Poly. The main attraction that causes the town's size to quadruple in the summer time are two large castles. These are about 5 km away up in the hills. We went to both castles, spending about 5 hours there. It was only 10 euros to see the castles, which I wasn't expecting. There is no transportation up to the castles so there is a spot of hiking involved. Since you are only allowed to enter the castle with a guided tour group, we had to go to the closer castle first. There were two routes to get up to the castle, one labeled with a stick figure walking a dog, the other with a stick figure carrying a backpack and walking stick. The one labeled with the backpack took 10min shorter that the other one, and since Chris was with us (the exercising enthusiast) we took the harder route. This turned out to be about a 5 min hike up a bunch of stairs, so it was actually not bad at all. The first castle was the home of the royal family: King Maximilian, his wife, and his two crazy his sons Ludwig and Otto (talk about some bad genes having two mentally unstable sons...I guess thats what happens when you have been marring your cousins for the last century). This was a very modestly sized castle, only four stories. The servants had the bottom floor to live, cook, and do laundry, the queen had the second floor, the king the third, and the children the fourth. We were only allowed to see the king's and queen's floors, but it was still impressive none the less. All the paintings on the walls were actually painted on to the walls and told stories of past events, both facts and fiction. So some more fun facts about crazy king Ludwig. So when his father died he became king at the age of 19. He took over the castle and made some adjustments to the kings bedroom. He had little transparent stars put in the ceiling so that with lit from behind it would feel like you were sleeping out doors. He also had a moon installed with adjustable plates so the face of the moon could change. He never married and was declared mentally unfit to rule at the age of 41. His body and the body of his psychiatrist were found after the two went for a walk. It is still a mystery as to how he died. But he did have a rather unusual obsession with the composer Wagner, who he had over to his castle as often as he could. So in his craziness, Ludwig built a second and more grand castle on the next hill over, dedicating it to Wagner. This brings us to the second castle. I don't know what prompted him to build a second castle right next a perfectly good one he already owns, but he did. And it was never finished because he died before the construction was complete. Only the top floor, first floor, and kitchens were finished. There is a lovely visitors center on the third floor that I don't think Ludwig intended to build. Again we took the path marked by a backpacking stick figure, only this time it wasn't an easy 5 min hike. It was a 40min hike that was at a 30 degree incline the entire way. We were all grabbing our sides once we reached the top. This castle is the castle that Walt Disney based sleeping beauty's castle on. It was just like a fairy tail castle, which kinda made it not seem very real. We have seen many castles now and this one was just a crazy kings whim, so it didn't really have much history or meaning behind it. No one even lived in it, as soon as the king died the country stopped construction and turned it into a museum. Of what was finished, the castle was very elaborately decorated on the inside. There is not a blank piece of wall in the place. Everything is covered in decorative patterns, gold, or paintings. I would go crazy with so much on the walls. There was also a fake cave made between two rooms that was suppose to have a working waterfall. The cool thing about this castle was the way it looked at a distance. It really looked like sleeping beauty was actually living up there. After we were escorted through the castle we hiked up to this suspension bridge that was seated over a long complicated waterfall. It gave a very pretty view of the castle and the hike up there gave a great view of the original castle and the two lakes it is situated by. We made it back down into valley between the two castles that is packed with shops and restaurants.We ate at a place that my parents recommended, since they were there a week earlier. Again not being brave with food, Braden ordered the Bavarian mixed plate which was a plate bits of potatoes and pork covered with a fried egg. It was odd, but Braden said it was really good. We went back into town and tried to explore the city a little bit. The place is a really small medieval like town that had a few main roads that were too small for cars to drive down, but that didn't deture the cars at all. It started raining right after I managed to find a strange yet tasty desert. There was a whole shop devoted to Ballz. It reminded me of the SNL sketch with Alec Baldwin and the radio talk show ladies, schwety balls. They were a ball of deep fried dough covered in what ever you want. I had the schokoball, which I am sure you all have guess is the chocolate covered one. It was very good, but I couldn't finish it. Thankfully I have two guys I can pon all my extra food onto. Since the rain kept increasing in hardness we made it back to the hostel. I stayed in the rest of the night, longing for a good nights sleep, while the boys went out for dinner at the local sports bar. Apparently they only recognized it as a sports bar because thats what it said on the menu, there were no working tv's in the place playing sports.
We left Fussen the next morning for Nuremberg. We were happy to leave because the rain had now reached torrential levels. Thankfully Nuremberg was nice and sunny. Nuremberg is one of the most well preserved medieval cities in Europe, and has the buildings to prove it. We were able to find our hostel very easily just inside the city walls. Instead of exploring the city first, we headed out to see the darker history of Nuremberg. This city is the place Hitler was constructing his headquarters. His plans were never finished but the remains of the unfinished buildings are still there, as well as a very informative museum. This museum is called the documentation center and is build into the remains of what was suppose to be the congress hall. It was really well done because it was a sharp piece of modern architecture embedded in an old brick building. We only had an hour and a half in this museum and that was clearly not enough. We hardly got through half of the rooms before we were kicked out. There was so much information about Hitler and what he did to Germany. We could of easily spent a day in there with all the information. We had leave the museum, but we decided to walk around the area. We walked into the center of the congress hall which is twice the size of the coliseum. On the outside of the congress hall there was a fair going on, which struck me as odd because of where it was taking place. But the Germans have decided to use this area as it was originally used in the 1800's, as a leisure and games area. It was actually really neat to see that they have taken an area that was going to be used for evil and turn it to a place of leisure. Those Germans aren't gonna let anyone rain on their parade. We walked down a large road that Hitler build to connect the congress hall and the imperial palace so his army could have parade marches between the two. This road was huge, having the capacity to land two 747's side by side. We turned and walked around the little man made lake approaching Zepillinfield. This is the only building that was finished because most of it was already there. This was a extremal large amphitheater that had stone stands lining the square boarders. This is where many of the Nazi rallies were held and filmed. There used to be a large gold swastika that was perched on top of main stands, but the US troop blew it up when they had seized Germany. They have let shrubs and grass grow over the stone stands and have put two football pitches in the center. The front stands and speakers platform are still intact, however. So we went climbing onto these. We walked around a while and then finally went and stood on the speakers platform. It was truly chilling to stand where Hitler had stood. I couldn't stand there very long with out getting the heebee-geebee's so we booked it back into town.
We wandered the streets of Nuremberg at twilight seeing some of the major sights, but not going in cause they were all closed. There were a few really beautiful and large cathedrals, as well as a town hall that housed dungeons. We hiked all the way up to the castle which was a large stone fortress on top on a hill. This gave a spectacular night time view of the city. We explored as much of the castle as we could, but it was mostly closed off. We walked back down in search of food and found a fantastic Italian restaurant. It was buffet style, but classy. I had the most amazing salad with rucola, cherry tomatoes, and fresh Parmesan over a balsamic dressing. Its making me hungry just thinking about it again. After our more than satisfiing meal, we set out to see one of Nuremberg's beer halls. We found a nice large one that brewed its own beer and was underground. We seriously considered ordering 5 liters of beer because it came in a wooden barrel, but we wised up and got 2 liters which came in a glass jug. We sat drinking and playing cards until we could stay awake anymore. I really enjoyed this city and it is definitely on my list to go back to.
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