Erlangen and Nuremberg, Germany

Erlangen

My last couple of days in Harste passed too quickly. I spent most of the time blogging and sorting out my photos, baking chocolate speculoos brownies to take to Erlangen and Mainz, heading into Gottingen to pick up the film I left to get developed, packing and cleaning the house. Admittedly, I spent a lot of time Facebooking and painting my nails and was still vacuuming the house at midnight and packing at 2.30am, but we got there in the end! I also got in a few runs after realizing five nights in Italy had seen me gain 3kg!

Erlangen

I was up early on Thursday morning, wanting to leave time for final cleaning tasks, but I ended up running late and did a mad run from Hauke's house to the bus stop with my bags only half done-up and my arms full of stuff I'd grabbed on the way out. I'm sure I've left stuff behind, I just hope I managed to turn all the lights off and shut all of the windows!

Lissa and I

I arrived in Erlangen at noon and met Lissa at the train station. I worked with Lissa in 2009-2010 at Victoria University, like Philippa who I visited in London. She's living over here for awhile while her husband is based here for work. We went back to her apartment to leave my bags there, and sat chatting for a bit, before going out for lunch. We brought asian food nearby, it's kind of funny to go somewhere with someone else who doesn't speak the language either for once! Then we went for a big walk around Erlangen, but I was too busy talking to pay too much attention. The buildings in Erlangen look more like those in Wurzburg.

Erlangen

We had dinner with her husband, and they went off to German lessons while I said I'd go for a run. I'd originally intended to sleep in Nuremberg, but they had the keys to an empty apartment in the building, so I stuck around for the night. Unfortunately, I grabbed the wrong key on my way out and ended up locked out of both apartments, and spent a hour sitting in the stairwell!

Nuremberg

I was moving pretty slowly the next morning and only made it to Nuremberg around eleven. My Lonely Planet was buried in my pack, so I just walked into the city to see what I could find. Nuremberg was bombed pretty heavily in the war, but there are still some amazing buildings there, and everything has those beautiful red rooves.

I grabbed some sushi for lunch and sat outside the town hall to eat before continuing with my walk. There were a lot of buskers and little market stalls that gave the place a great atmosphere, and a lot of statues or fountains, some of which were really creepy! The city also still has it's town wall, big parts of which are still intact and look really cool.

Nuremberg, one of the weird statues

After walking past some churches, plazas and town halls, I stumbled upon the Nuremberg Castle and ended up doing a tour of it. It has existed in some form or another since at least 1105, and had three seperate sections, an imperial section for the Kaiser, a section for the Burgraves (the state rulers) of Nuremberg when it was a state of the Holy Roman Empire and a section for the municipality. It's in pretty good nick, they restored it really well after the war, and its the first castle I've been properly inside as opposed to the palaces I visited in France and Spain.

Nuremberg Castle

The tour was in German, so I didn't really get that much, but it enabled me to see through the private wings, a unique chapel that has a lower section for the working class, upper section for the higher class, and a gallery above that for the royalty. We also saw a deep well, which didn't interest me, and I went up the tower to get a view over the whole city. I much prefer going up ancient castle towers than modern sky-tower-type buildings!

View from Nuremberg Castle tower

Then I had to rush back to the train station. I wish I had spent more time in Nuremberg, there is a museum dedicated to the rise of nazism that I would have gone to had I had more time, and I'm sure that if I opened Lonely Planet I'd find more cool stuff to do there too, it seems like an awesome place and really left a good impression on me.