| From: brong@zebkrahn.brong.net (Bron Gondwana) Date: Thu, 15 Aug 2002 08:28:01 +1000 |
We thought we'd lost my tickets (we needed the Austria/Germany/Benelux ticket validated for travel into Austria the next day), so searched everywhere, to find that I'd given them to Kate in a container that she didn't realise contained them. At least they were still there! We went on a walking tour - not quite as impressive as the Berlin tour, but still worth while. Hilights included the Hangman's House - when they extended the city, some bright person had the idea to build a house for the hangman on the old bridge that was part of the inner wall. The hangman can't live inside the city because it's a "dirty" job - but over the water didn't count as in the city. Nuremberg has always been a rich city, and they couldn't just destroy the old bridge, because someone's parents had paid for that bridge. This was a recurring theme - nothing is destroyed because someone paid for it once. Even the protestant church contains catholic statues and other paraphanalia from last time it was a catholic church - some 800 years ago. Nuremburg also has a statue of a hare - a most disgusting looking thing. It has a human foot poking out from underneath, and looks evil. They had a competition for who could design the town mascot, and chose a little "example" statue of a hare by the artist, who then built the full size one completely differently. They have the sample one out the front of the final one so you can see the difference. Still, they had a contract, and they paid for it. A lot of people are still annoyed about that. We toured the castle on the hill overlooking Nuremberg (the place where every Emperor of The Holy Roman Empire was crowned) including a well over 60m deep. They lowered candles down to show how deep it was, and also that the air is clean due to good ventilations tunnels. After the castle we went on a tour of the underground cellars. Originally designed to store beer, they were used during the war to protect valuable works of art, and also people. Changes were made to the ventilations systems for the war bunkers, which nearly caused them to collapse years later when they became waterlogged. It's supposed to be fixed now though. The tour was in German, and our paper guides in English didn't cover as much as the guide was saying, but it was still very interesting. We tried to find the watch museum without much luck - oh well. You could easily spend a couple of weeks looking at all the cool sites in that city! At least we got to the station and had our tickets validated while we were searching. |
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