Around The World Without Flying: Nuremberg, Germany

I was very excited about seeing Nuremberg, which I had seen in 1980. That first time the old town was a delight to see and I still remember their delicious gingerbread, which turns out not to have ginger in it at all, so I found out this time. It is mainly made from nuts and spices, and still wonderful to eat! (We were given a sample on our walking tour.) This is a very old tradition. The spices were possible because Nuremberg was on an old trade route.

Back to the beginning. My day started with a surprise I could have done without. This was the morning when I was flossing my teeth and the cap flew off one of my molars. Luckily I managed to retrieve it from the basin before it went down the plug hole. We are talking about a very expensive little piece of ceramic. It took hours in the dentist chair and a couple of thousand dollars to install that cap, just a few months ago. So I was not a very happy petunia. After alerting our tour director that I would need a dentist, off I trotted to our excursion, very conscious of this great gap in my mouth.

Our group was exceptionally fortunate to have a university graduate in philosophy as our local guide. He was so knowledgeable and showed such insight and wisdom, it was a great pleasure to listen to all he had to say about Nuremberg, its history, its architecture, and so forth.

We first visited the old walled castle and he showed us all the design features that were built into it to protect the inhabitants. He also told us that the ruler appointed an Italian architect to design the whole complex but strangely, when he finished his work, the Italian was murdered close to the castle. Of course, there is speculation that this was to keep the many secrets of the castle solely in German hands.

Goodness - the number of walled cities, fortresses and castles I have seen on this trip - and all designed to protect people from invasion from one group or another. What a terrible life - so much focus on battles! And, inevitably, on injuries, suffering and loss.

Anyhow, we then walked through the old town to the main square, which had a phenomenal monument full of gold carvings. There we went to a bratwurst restaurant and had a typical German feast of bratwurst, mustard, bread roll and beer or soft drink. Delicious! Much tastier than the bratwurst I can buy at home. They also are much smaller sausages than we have at home. But there was an interesting reason for that. Apparently people loved them so much they sneaked off to the butcher to buy them on Sundays, when they were not meant to cook. So that the priest did not find out, they paid the butcher through small hole in the wall of the butcher shop and received their small sausages in exchange. Larger sausages would not fit through the hole!

Later on we strolled around on our own for about an hour. Most shops were shut, unfortunately, as it was the Whitsunday public holiday, but at least tourist shops were open - and doing a roaring trade.

Back to my tooth. It was too hard to get a dentist on a public holiday, but our tour director did some research on dentists at the town we were visiting the next day. I ended up going to a public dental clinic of excellent reputation and there a lovely and very competent, gentle lady dentist who spoke fluent English fixed the problem in just half an hour - no needles and no pain. How lucky was that? As my friends on the cruise said, if you are going to have something like that happen, how lucky it happened in Germany where the standard of care is so high! The cost of the treatment was very reasonable too, I think. It included the work their dental mechanic had to do on the cap to prepare it for ‘gluing’ it back on. (How fortunate the clinic had a dental mechanic working on site with the team!)

One of the layers of protection - people had to walk into the castle through a tunnel.

This is a scene inside the bratwurst restaurant - out of order because it was taken with my phone.

Before the tunnel, we crossed a bridge over a dry moat. This photo was taken on the bridge.

This is what we saw on emerging from the tunnel. But we did not go through this archway.

Yet another layer of protection - very thick walls. Round towers were used as they were less vulnerable to being destroyed by cannon balls than square towers - less surface area to hit.