On Life and Love

Nuremberg: Day 1 (Monday)

(Note: it’s looking like I’m going to be a day or two behind on each of these. That’s not the worst, I guess.)

Agenda:

  1. Get checked in at the apartment
  2. Get food
  3. Walk around and see some stuff

A pretty chill agenda, brought on by the fatigue of travel and wanting to ease ourselves in a bit.

I teased this in the last post:

A small stand with German instructions for (maybe) how to flatten a wrinkled public transit ticket.
Oh, fuck. How does public transit work?

I wish I had a picture of what Google’s live translation made of that photo, but it was garbage. Something about wrinkles. Translating now based off of that picture reveals that we should have had our train tickets stamped for validation. Oops.

But we made it!

We were too early to fully check in at the apartment, so we made our way there and dropped off our luggage (remember, my luggage was lost/en route). 

Dante sitting in the window seat of a tram in Nuremberg.
Dante and I took a tram after the subway! Please don’t ask how long it took us to be sure of where the big-ass tram station was.

 

A tower at the city wall.
A few of these towers have been visible on our walks through the city.

 

A view of the city from near our apartment, showing a cloudy sky, a major road, and some commercial buildings.
A view from near our apartment.

(It’s not really very cold here–mid 30s (F), maybe–for which I’m quite glad. Scarf, coat, and gloves are serving me well, although I wish for my hat in the evenings.) 

Then were right back out in the gorgeous streets of Nürnberg. 

Two pedestrian entrances and a car entrance to the old city.
Two pedestrian entrances and a car entrance to the old city.

 

The small road between the main Nuremberg wall and the wall against the road.
A view down into the space between the walls of Nuremberg.

Aside: an early thing we noticed about Nuremberg, presumably in part due to the season: there are lots of bakeries/dessert places/stalls at the Christmas market/etc.

The storefront and interior cabinets of a baker of some sort.
Random bakery in Nuremberg.

After dropping off bags, the first order of business was lunch. I was so tired and hungry that I had no eye for all the sweets. Dante wanted a burger, so we stopped by Kuhmuhne Burger Bar, which offered the fanciness I was looking for with the classics Dante wanted.

I didn’t drink, but I was quite curious about the gins on this menu that I hadn’t heard of.

Moorgin aus Kolbermoor certainly sounds German, right? Is there a gin culture here?

So I got a fancy burger. Heads up: as of this writing almost every food picture is partially eaten, because I’m not a food-picture-taker very often in normal life.

A very messy half eaten burger from Kuhmuhne Burger Bar.
Um, can we be glad for a moment that I ordered well done? Yikes.

Apparently the custom here is to eat burgers with a fork a knife, which suited this one very well. I might carry this practice on when I have a messy burger back in the States.

We wandered…

A construction site in Nuremberg
Look, when you work for a construction company, you start to notice sites wherever you go.

And wandered some more…

A promotional photo for a music group called Letz-Zep.
Dante: “Do you think they mean Led Zeppelin?”

And saw lots of cool old buildings…

A narrow street in Nuremberg that's lined with three story buildings.
I love the architecture and the curvature and the stone roads…

 

A large stone building at the corner of an intersection.
A rather majestic corner building, in my opinion.

 

An old, stately building on a major thoroughfare in Nuremberg.
I can’t resist an old building on a random street, especially in Nuremberg. Believe it or not, I’m sparing you some.

Eventually, we ended up at the Christmas Market:

A view of the Christmas Market in Nuremberg from just outside.
Our initial view of the Christmas Market. Browsing time!

 

View down an alley, showing more Christmas Market stalls.
The market fills nooks and crannies of the area.

 

A view of Schöner Brunnen in the main Nuremberg square.
Schöner Brunnen is a fountain in the main square where the Market is held.

 

Early evening picture of some Christmas Market stalls.
Now we’re kinda in the Market…

See how dark and dim things were? It was, like, 16:00. The weather has been generally dreary, but sunset is clearly earlier than home.

A row of storefronts in Nuremberg, with focus on the cartoonish decorations above the doors.
Aren’t those little decorations adorbs?

 

Lit trees and market stalls with a large building (likely a church) in the background.
The backdrop of the (I think) church is just gorgeous.

 

A large, old building with a string of lights reading "Market der Partnerstadte".
One more entrance to the Market, but look at that gorgeous building!

 

A tall round/faceted building, possibly part of a church.
Hey, I took pictures of everything today. Don’t expect me to know what these buildings are.

 

One segment of an old church.
Okay, this is definitely a church. 😀 There will be a lot of pictures of this in various lights.

 

The belltower of the major church we see a lot of on this trip.
The belltower of the church we’ll pass by… a lot. It’s very noisy.

 

A statue of Albrecht Dürer in Nuremberg.
Aaayy, this dude is kinda a big deal around here. Statue, house, restaurant.

We after our little Market perimeter walk, we headed to the apartment. Our host was wonderful and had put up with my uncertain arrival time (courtesy of luggage shenanigans), our early arrival time, our inability to open German doors, and my phone sending double messages in AirBnb.

A partially eaten cookie in the palm of my hand.
My host bakes! Linzer is sold in pie shape at the farmers market in Charlotte. The cookie form is tasty.

That night was spent in the apartment, relaxing until my luggage arrived. Bad news for this blog, though: I left the power cable to my Surface at home. Being on a phone makes these much more difficult to put together. WordPress… ain’t serving me perfectly well. 

Teaser for Day 2:

The long hallway of a former monastery that is incorporated into the Nuremberg National Museum.
How do you feel about monasteries? Because I think they’re pretty cool in this context.