Nuremberg and Bamberg
Trip Start
Mar 05, 2008
1
76
107
Trip End
Jan 11, 2009
Nuremberg,
Bavaria,
Germany
Saturday, October 4, 2008
Nuremberg was really enjoyable. It had a beautiful old town, centre square & weekend markets, a couple of beautiful old churches, and an entire Kaiserburg complex (complete with castle, gates, gardens, etc).
Now I knew of Nuremberg because of the War Trials after WWII, but we had no idea the part that Nuremberg played during the Third Reich ... until we went to the Dokumentationzentrum! Over three hours later we emerged, now knowing all about the Nazi Rallies that were held in the city & the massive buildings Hitler either did have (or was planning to have) built, to live out his dream as King Pratt of the Entire World!
There were photographs & footage; we even toured around the local area looking at places from the Great Road parade strip, the Party Rally Grounds, the Franken Stadium and the Zeppelin Grandstand. It turned out that the campground we stayed at the night before had been part of the massive area used by the Nazis during this time!
So we didn't get away until around 6pm, and this left us just enough time to drive to Bamberg before it got dark. We got up next morning and headed into the town centre, not really sure what we were going to see. But it was really good - a quiet, quaint, cobbled, old town area on the Regnitz River - it even had housing on the river-front known as Klein Venedig (Little Venice)!
Bamberg's Altes Rathaus (Old Town Hall) is even perched on it's own little island in the river. The frescoes on the outside walls were also amazing - some of them were 3D to make it look like people were escaping from the building!
The cathedral was full of tombs, statues, monuments & memorials, and we also took a tour of the New Residenz - a four winged complex built in the late 17th Century and lived in by King Otto of Greece & his missus (once the Greeks threw them out of the country!)
We had had a really good day and then headed up to Leipzig. We found camping, then set up for the night. All that in only two days ... and there's still more to come!
