Nuernberg Weihnachtsmarkt

Yesterday we had a trip planned to Nuernberg for the day! The Christmas Market is really famous there and some bus company was having a deal on trips to Nuernberg, so we decided that it would be a good idea to spend our day there! Zach had booked it ahead of time and we were all planning on going except Hannah, because she had her building's Christmas party to go to. We were told that the bus was going to leave at 7:30am, so I went to bed pretty early the night before so that I could wake up in time! My alarm went off a few times that morning, but I did not truly wake up until my shutters banged against my window hard enough to scare the bejeezus out of me! The rain was coming down hard as I made my way to the train station, and when I got there I had to wait a while for everyone else to show up. Zach showed up first, followed by Jake, and then the bus. We got on the bus, paid, and waited for Rachel to come, but the bus started to pull away as soon as the clock changed to 7:30. Poor Rachel got left behind. I called her from the bus and told her: good news was she didn't have to pay, bad news was we already left. When I called her a few minutes after pulling out, she was waiting at the station pretty confused, but looked at it positively in that she could now go back to bed. So we started the 3 hour bus ride to Nuernberg one man down. I spent the bus ride sleeping on and off and listening to my music to block out the giggling, chatty older ladies that we picked up on the way. When we finally got there it was raining still, but lighter than earlier. We walked a ways and found our way to where we wanted to go!

We first saw this tower, and figured we were headed in the right direction.

Here was the Hauptbahnhof  (main train station).

We walked a little further past the train station and the tower and saw this sign. I should have taken a closer picture, but it says Zum Christkindlesmarkt (to the christmas market).

We walked a little further and saw this! We were definitely going in the right direction.

Now, a little lesson for traveling anywhere in Germany: If you want to get to the center of town or find any market, your best bet is to walk towards the big church in the middle of the city.

As we walked on, we found ourselves on a bridge over the river, and this statue was right on the edge.

The view from the bridge.

The other side of the bridge showed another bridge decorated by a Christmas tree.

 When we crossed the bridge we found this sign:

Nurnberg Kids Christmas

 And this statue:

A little creepy.

 Instead of heading in the direction of the Kids market, we decided to keep going towards the actual market.

And we found it!

The second church we saw that day in Nuernberg. This one was right in front of the market!

It was a really pretty church! With moving pieces to the clock.

 Here they are going off.

Next, we decided to walk around the market for a while before heading off through the city to do other things!

The boys looked at their cars.

They had this little nativity set under the straw roof, and there was also a church in the background.

The church again!

They had two big Christmas trees in front of the church.

Not really sure what it was, but they had this big decoration up over a few stalls, and it was definitely pretty.

The buildings there were quite a sight.

Yet another church.

This building, which was lit up later in the night, had some cool drawings on it.

Here's the market! There were probably about seven or eight rows that you could walk down and see all the different stalls.

While we were walking the market, we saw these horses pulling a carriage! They were really pretty, and really big, horses!

 After we walked the market, we decided to set off in search of the museum on the Nuernberg Trials. With map in hand, Jake boldly led the way. We did get lost along the way, but it was a good thing, because we got to see more of the city this way! And it's pretty easy to get lost with a map that doesn't tell you street names, honestly who makes maps in Germany?! First Boeblingen, now this!?

The church with the two towers!

One of the sights along the way. We turned left here and found a bridge that took us in the right-ish direction.

View from the bridge.

Zach and Jake walking along the bridge.

Here's a full shot of the bridge!

We slowly made our way away from the churches and into the newer part of the city.

 We walked around for a while, and found a school and a school bus, which was actually just a city bus that just said Schulbus on the front of it. Also, as we were walking around a little lost, I kept seeing kids of all ages just walking around. Schools in Germany allow their students to leave school during lunch and go get food elsewhere, but it really just seems like there are always kids out on the streets and walking around, regardless of the time of day. Don't they ever go to school?

On our lost way, we found an Aldi, which we decided to stop at.

After the Aldi, we walked through a parking lot to get to the next street over, in order to hopefully find our place on the difficult map. When we were walking, we found a bunch of gators in the parking lot!

After a good 45 minutes of walking around, we finally found the museum.

Here's the building.

 Once inside, we bought our tickets, picked up our headpiece guides, and dropped our things in a locker before heading up to the museum.

The first stop was the trial room itself. It had been renovated, and is used today, but it was really cool to sit in the room and listen to the history of the place.

For those of you who don't know, the Nuernberg Trials were trials that brought those who played a part in the devastation of World War II to justice. Although the one that put the 21 Nazis on trial for their crimes was the most well known, there were actual after trials that tried doctors and other players in the war on trial.

This is the door that the 21 accused walked out of.

They had these windows for observation. Back during the time of the trials, they had windows like these where the cross is today. The whole trial was a big media story.

A before and after shot of the room.

Here is a model of how the room looked during the time of the trials.

 Now, within the museum, they had readings, video, and artifacts from the trials.

These are the benches that the accused sat on.

Sign in front of the benches. Says, "Sitting benches of the accused at the Nuernberg Trials 1945/46. On the front bench sat Hermann Goering, Rudolf Hess, Joachim von Ribbentrop and Wilhelm Keitel at the Nuernberg trials...." The next sentence says who sat on the back bench.

In the exhibit, they had the room plan of the trial room mapped out on the floor, in terms of who sat where.

This museum was very interesting. Usually museums lose my attention after a little while, but there was so much information here.

They had these machines that let you read little biographies of the accused and their defense attorneys.

They had video of the trial on display, and it was amazing to watch. I was truly perplexed by how calm these 21 men were, when they were facing death for their awful crimes. Only three were acquitted, which I found interesting. My favorite video was of Rudolph Hess when he was called to plead guilty or not guilty, he just said "nein", which they had to take as not guilty. He was a little crazy. Before the trials, he crash landed his plane in Scotland looking to negotiate peace between Germany and Great Britain, thinking that he could still save them. What a strange and awful person.

Well enough about history, from the museum, we found our way back to the Christmas market. On the way we found another little Christmas stop, but this one seemed to be just booze.

Some sort of drinking station.

By this time, the lights were all lit up and it was beautiful.

What a sight.

Don't be distracted by the man who has no face, the children were singing Christmas carols and all sorts of songs with little hand movements! It was adorable.

The church and the trees all lit up.

After we walked through the market, and stopped a few other places, it was back to the bus station to catch our bus back to Tuebingen. When we were walking back, however, the wind and the rain picked up and it was awful. As we were walking Jake's umbrella flipped inside out a few times and he made several sounds of surprise and frustration. As we were walking, Zach was saying that his umbrella was so great and was made of steel, even in the wind it was fine. Just as he said this however, the wind completely destroyed his umbrella. I'll have to post pictures of it later, because they're on Jake's camera, but it was probably the funniest thing ever. Sorry Zach, but that's what you get for making fun of Jake's umbrella haha. It wasn't even his umbrella, so it wasn't too devastating when it broke, but it was pretty funny. 

The ride back was terrible. We were all soaked from the rain, it was cold on the bus, and I kept getting sick from the motion of the bus and from not being able to see where we were going. Plus, on top of that, no matter how loud my music was, I could still hear the guy behind me snoring! They weren't little snores either, they were big sinus-y painfully sick sounding snores. It was not a fun ride back, but when we finally got back, we made a quick stop at the store before parting ways for the night in the slightly flurrying weather. It was, overall, a good day.