Day II (Part 1) - Nürnberg

Friday, 10 June, 2011 - Up bright-eyed and bushy-tailed and out the door by 8:00am. I had, from that moment, eleven hours (giving myself an hour's leeway to go back and get my bag and head to the train station with ample time to make sure I was at the right platform) to see everything I hadn't seen the day before and I was going to fit it all in, dang it. Or so I thought. Most places didn't actually open until 9:00, so I wandered a bit and got a quick breakfast before heading over to the Germanisches Nationalmuseum (The Germanic National Museum), where I spent way more time than I had intended. It houses a really fascinating assortment of antiquities such as:

The Golden Cone of Ezelsdorf-Buch, 11th - 9th century B.C.

 Armor and Weaponry

Prunkschlitten (Ceremonial Sleigh), Munich, 1683

Globe, hand-painted, solid wood, 1520, conspicuously missing the Americas...

Of course there were paintings and the like, too, with work from Albrecht Dürer (1471-1528), Nürnberg's most famous resident.

By the time I left, well past noon, my stomach was indicating its displeasure at being neglected with a series of the usual low grumbles and my feet were already a little sore (out of practice, really, with walking/touring continuously throughout a day), thus I decided to head to the closest of the potential restaurants I had marked on my map. This just happened to take me to this lovely little example of a Gothic church, St. Lorenz (Lorenzkirche - West facade finished in the early 1360s).

Well, it actually took me to Nürnberg's only remaining tower house which is caticorner to the church.

Nassauer Keller, restaurant in the cellar of the tower house - really neat medieval atmosphere complete with vaulted ceilings and suits of armor

Sticking to my plan of not consuming potentially E.coli contaminated foods, I settled for a delicious lunch of lamb. Once sated, I backtracked along Karolinenstraße, the street leading to the church (which, by the way, royals preferred to travel up when visiting the city so as to approach the church straight on). Down by the Weiße Turm (white tower) there's a deceptively charming-looking fountain just begging to be investigated.

So I did. It turns out this fountain, the Marriage Carousel (Ehekarussell), sculpted by Jürgen Weber and put in in 1984, is based upon Hans Sachs' poem "The Bittersweet Married Life". It cycles through the duration of a relationship, from courtship to marriage to slovenliness to horrific death. Oh, and there are animals interspersed among the various stages, including a stork eating its own heart out. Don't you love the Germans?

 

  "Until death do you part"                      

 Wandering back towards Königstrasse, the main street, I passed by a shop with a woman outside offering samples of some of their bread and some tomato-based spread. Having tasted it and finding it to be delicious, I couldn't just continue on by, so I popped inside and was greeted by a lot of pink and floral pattern and a very cheery woman.

As I was the only patron in the store for a decent period of time, she continually offered me samples of all sorts of breads and spreads and juices and baked goods, reiterating with each new tasting that everything in the store was vegan and homegrown, "Just like your grandmother does it!" (for those of you who know Grandma, I think you would agree that 'vegan' is not quite her style). After being fed my second lunch tapa-style, I felt I couldn't leave without buying something (and, don't get me wrong, everything I ate was delicious!), so I settled on some classic German gingerbread. No, not like the little men you make and eat at Christmas, but thick, doughy cookies called "Lebkuchen" (aside: who knew Nürnberg is the most famous exporter of these delicious treats?!). The woman seemed so pleased with my choice that she insisted on giving me some pamphlets to take home to my family (obviously excluding my grandmother, who must already bake cookies like this all the time) so they can order some, too. It's almost as if she didn't trust me to not eat them all myself! So, if you're craving the most delicious gingerbread you've ever had, you could go to www.LebeGesund.de (they do have an English translation), and order a package of them... or many. Their English order form only seems to offer dark chocolate covered ones (not that that's a bad thing that it's their only choice!), but if you search for 'Lebkuchen' on their regular German page then they have the simple sugar-coated ones. Either way, she said they ship them to the US regularly, so I would imagine you could get either one...

Finally free of the temptations of Lebe Gesund, I continued my Northeasterly course until I came across... a farmers market in Hauptmarkt, the Market Square (Frauenkirche in the background). 

There I was suckered into buying more Lebkunchen. Oops. But in my defense, a lot of the stands were offering free samples, too, and it just tasted so good! In hindsight I can actually admit that I don't regret those purchases. I still have one bag of five remaining.

Also in the square is the Schöner Brunnen (Beautiful Fountain), which used to bring clean drinking water to the citizens.

The bottom is ringed with figures representing the arts, such as astronomy, music, and philosophy. Above them are eight religious figures (which demonstrates that religion is higher than the arts and sciences), and the prophets are at the top.

This gold ring in the fencing is also supposed to bring good luck to anyone who spins it three times.

Anyway, to work off the vast amount of the food I had recently ingested, I figured it was time to make the hike up to Nürnberger Burg, the castle overlooking the old city. Once I got a little ways from the Hauptmarkt the streets began to ascend pretty rapidly towards a seemingly unattractive building until I rounded a corner and finally got to take in the fortified 12th century royal residence and burgrave and Imperial City buildings.

 There's the typical museum, a 165 foot well called the "Deep Well", a Romanesque chapel, various old buildings, 

 

a garden, and an opportunity to climb Sinwellturn (the round tower), which was built in the late 13th century, but I one of my favorite parts was simply the view out over the old city.

From there I started back towards the southern end of the old city, though turning right to walk through the western side, passing the Albrecht Dürer House, Dürer's last residence and now museum, along the way.

Across the street is a large interpretive sculpture of one of his most famous paintings, "The Hare". Keeping in German style, it's also a bit macabre with mice and other rabbits gnawing at it and a human foot sticking out from underneath.

Continuing along, I turned down a random side street and came across perhaps my favorite find of the entire trip: a studio with a bunch of really neat horse paintings. Well, I saw one painting of a horse that I was rather fond of in the window, so I went inside and discovered that this man, Daniel Prapone, seems to only use two topics as his subject matter; the rooms were filled with horses and nude women. I was quite taken by some of the horse paintings, though to be honest I wouldn't normally think of them as a style I'm crazy about as they have an abstract quality to them, but they also have some influence of impressionism with the focus on light, movement, and visible brush strokes (though his are much thicker than traditional impressionist works). We chatted for a while, and I really wanted to purchase one of two rather large paintings, but they were both about €200 more than I wanted to spend, so I settled for a smaller painting - the first I had seen which initially drew me inside. Downside: I still had three more days of travelling that I would then be doing with canvas in hand.

By this time it was getting to my final hour or so in the city, so I ate some more Nürnberger for dinner and killed some time browsing through a set of half-timbered shops, the Handwerkerhof, near the Frauentor entrance. There were various German crafts including leather work, glass blowning, pottery, brass and gold goods, and, of course, more Lebkuchen.

After that it was about time to get my bag and head to the station to catch my train to Fulda and on up to Copenhagen...