Nuremberg

In follow-up to our Dachau Concentration camp visit, we next headed off to Nuremberg to visit the Nazi Rally Gounds and take a look around on the 2rd December. Everything here closes on the Christmas Eve and Rachel had a few errands to run on post so it was just Andrew, the kids and I who set off...

Another train ride.  Pheonix was not sad.

One of our favourite passtimes while travelling is spotting weird signs along the way.  As a matter of interest, I saw a big sign on the side of a building whilst driving Andrew and Rachel to the train station the other day that said 'sparkasse' - Andrew informed me this was for a bank! lol

I love how the parking meter signs don't give any illusions as to the fact they are there to rip you off and you will be 'losen' some money...

The Rally Ground was just as poignant as the Concentration Camp.  It was a huge complex in it's day but now it quite morbidly stands as an unfinished arena, never to be completed...a reminder of the fervent passion of hatred and murder that was once stirred by a basically unremarkable man.

Rally Ground Entrance

Inside the museum, each visitor receives a personal audio guide set to a language of your choice and you tap in the number of the exhibit to hear a commentary about that particular item.

We certainly knew where we were straight away.  As we were standing at the counter waiting to pay our admission, Andrew picked up one of the tennis-raquet shaped audio guides to have a look at what it was.  The clerk promptly marched over to him and, bruskly, in a very strong German accent informed him, 'Wunce you have paid, you vill get one of those.'  Oops.  (Audio-guide nazi!)

One of the first exhibits was a short film of two modern day young adults who were riding their skateboards around the rally grounds and then keep finding different historical scenes....and I thought Japanese were strange!  Now I have thought about it, it is probably quite appropriate for German people to see how important and relevant their nation's horrific history is to present-day Germany, but at the time we were viewing it, we were sitting their wondering what skateboarding has to do with Nazi-ism.  Probably lost in translation....

Enigmatic picture of the Fuhrer that you approach by a little gangway

The sheer volume of people on the 'favoured side' only outdone by those who suffered at their hands

What has always really struck me as fundamentally terrible about the holocaust, aside from the blatantly obvious, is that one was born into their 'right to live or to rule'...no matter what a man might achieve or not in his life, unless he made a fatal mistake of denouncing his class' or 'superior' race, there was nothing he could do to escape his terrible fate.

The grounds were never completed.  What now stands is a delapidated arena, stripped of it's grandeur and laying in the ruins from allied bombing.

Apparently these walls were to be another 30ft higher

This is what happens when I tell my children to look sombre

The following exhibit are all little cards that contain the name of one of the prisoners who perished on the trains during transportation....these are the ones they had the details of...

We soon had had enough depressing history, so we set out to explore the beautiful old city of Nuremberg, perhaps take in the Toy Museum and check out the famous Christmas Market.

As we were making our way around on the trams, I took this lovely picture of my beautiful daughter and her handsome uncle....

Here are some pics I took as we walked around the old town

We had worked up quite an appetite, so we decided to hunt down something to eat.  I figured that we were so close to the border of Italy that we should try the pizza....wrong choice!!!!

For some reason, pepperoni in Germany is not the beloved sausage meat that we all know and love, but this ugly little green 'pepper' vegetable/fruit.  And the tomato that I was expecting on my pizza was in fact the tomato paste base.

Salami pizza with mushrooms, tomato and pepperoni????

It didn't help that the waitress was rude as....lesson learnt!  Will wait until one day we visit Italy before we sample foreign italiano again...

 By the time we got to the Toy Museum, it was only 20mins until closing time.  Naturally, we played 'Find the scariest-looking doll.'  Basically, put an axe in any one of these doll's hands and we have the makings of a blockbuster movie, I'm sure....

We finished off our day with a wander through the Christmas Markets...



The markets were quite magical, but very expensive - I picked up a simple black knitted hat that had 49 Euro written on it's tag (about $A60)...and I'm pretty sure it was synthetic.

It was quite an interesting day and evening.  Once we got back to Goetteldorf, we enjoyed a nice relaxed evening snuggled up watching 'It's a wonderful life'....