Nürnberg, Germany

Holy Cow.  It seems there is just something about Bavaria.  That's two times now, once for Oktoberfest in München and now, that I have traveled by slow train into Bavaria and it was as nuts as last time.  Of course, last time we didn't have seats for a two hour leg...but that's part of a different story.  Rachel and I really want to see a lot of Germany while we're here and a trip to Nürnberg's famous Christmas festival seemed an ideal time to visit Nürnberg and if you glance at the first paragraph of the linked story, you'll know that weekends are a good cheap time to travel.  So we were kind of expecting a ton of people.  What we weren't expecting was that there would also be a Football game going on and apparently some sort of anime convention!  The train for the latter half of a 5 hour trip was stuffed with furry-eared costumed 15 year olds and boisterous-red-and-white-clad drunk 20 sumthin's banging drums.  And of course, it seems that the game didn't start right away so the football fans were wandering the market for a while.  Well, whatever.  On to the market.

Wow.  It was huge and spanned block after city block.  Stalls filled with food, drink and crafts everywhere.  And a crap-ton of (~50 billion trillion) people.  Nürnberg is home to the Nürnburger which is a small roll with 3 small bratwursts stuffed in it.  Add a little mustard and it's the most awesome little snack.  They must do something different with their brats because it was really good.  Lots of chocolate covered fruit, roasted nuts with different toppings, waffles with all sorts of toppings, dumplings, potato poppers and of course hot chocolate and glühwein.  

Stall after stall.  It looked like it was divided up into sections and one such section had stalls with different city names and countries on the signs above the stalls.  Rachel noticed it first that these were Nürnberg's sister cities selling things from their lands!  So, what were some of the cities?  Glasgow in Scotland, Venice in Italy, Nice in France, Kraków in Poland and...Atlanta in the US.  Atlanta?  Well, whatever.  We wandered over and saw Oreos, JIF peanut butter, Reese's, in fact a great many things that we haven't seen in 3 and a half months.  Guess how much the JIF was costing?  Go ahead.   €15- !!   Holy cow!  I want some peanut butter but that's ridiculous!  

To get out of the mass of people, we decided to go up and visit the castle, which turned out to be different than one I've seen since being here.  I could not tell which structure was the 'main' castle building.  This castle had a great many buildings and appeared to my minds eye as a mini-city.  It looked very functional.  We took in the view and then wandered down again, winding our way down some side streets, ducking back into the main market area when it suited us, and generally heading back the way we came.  Of course we grabbed a few more snacks on our way out.  It was then just a matter of a 5 hour train trip back to Giessen.  Overall, it was a great trip to Nürnberg and I think I'd like to go again when there isn't so much hubbub.  

Addition: I forgot to mention the music.  There was a bandstand setup that was hosting a choir when we first got there and later a brass band of young kids with a few adult members.  They were both doing traditional carols.  Near the sister-city section, a group of about 7 were singing with accompaniment from a drum, jingle bells, clarinet and recorder.  They were from Romania and, I assume, singing Romanian carols.  It was cool.