Nuremberg
27th September
So farewell mountains, cable cars and Choughs, it’s time to leave Austria behind. This morning we dragged our bags for half an hour to the station for the next leg of the journey. Sunday morning at 8am is the best time to see Innsbruck old town, it was deserted and I could get a proper look at the lovely old buildings without being stuck behind loads of tourists.
Our OBB express took us prompltly at 8.20 to Nuremberg via Munich. Lots of people wearing lederhosen and dirndls got off to go to the beer festival. I think it’s just a big fancy dress party for men who like to wear leather shorts. In London there are special clubs in Old Crompton Street for that kind of thing. The journey took 4 hours, and was very uneventful, which is exactly what you want.
I didn’t know much about Nuremberg, and it’s much bigger than I anticipated. It is the second biggest city in Bavaria after Munich, and is very industrial, Seimens is the biggest employer. The city was very important to the Holy Roman Empire, and is in the centre of Germany. The Nazis chose it for their rallies in their 1930’s, which is what most Brits remember it for, which is a shame. We chose not to visit the rally grounds, I know enough about the Nazis already and it is all grim.
Nuremberg was heavily bombed in WWII, and 80% of the old town was destroyed. But it has been beautifully restored, and the old town is full of grand buildings and most of the old city walls are still standing. Also the old town is really big, it takes half an hour to walk across it. In Innsbruck it took 5 minutes to walk across the old town.
It was Sunday and the sun was warm, and the old town was packed with families enjoying the cafes and market stalls. The ladies in the Tourist Information gave us maps and told us where to visit. The biggest church is a huge twin-towered Gothic edifice dedicated to St Lorenz. In a park behind it there was a very lively beer festival going on, with many, many cabins selling beer and sausages.
We ate in our flats on some evenings and out at restaurants on others. Last night we ate in, and had noodles that came in a block wrapped in plastic. I really like them, but not too often. They were washed down with an excellent Austrian Gruner Veltliner from the Hofer supermarket.
For a change we went to a Vietnamese restaurant and had really good ramen with beef and soft eggs. I ate almost all of it with chopsticks, aren’t I a clever boy? But I dropped one stick on the floor and had to use a fork and spoon for the rest of the slippery noodles.
28th September
We carried out many hours of research for our Interrail trip, looking at the rail map of Europe and Google Maps. Google would give us an idea of the travel time between towns. Our criteria for places we wanted to visit were:
- Towns we hadn’t been to before.
- The route had to include the Rhatische Bahn in Switzerland.
- It had to include some “seaside time” along the route.
The YouTube channel “Home from Away” suggested several good places in Germany and Austria, and “Rok Goes Around” was very good for Italy and Croatia. Nuremberg is not an obvious destination for a holiday, but the videos we watched showed it was very historical and engaging and close to other good places.
This morning we took the train for about 40 minutes to the city of Bamberg , and it blew us away! Bamberg is a UNESCO world heritage site (like the Upper Middle Rhine, the Bernina Express route and Venice) and it has 1,800 listed buildings. I had never heard of it before we researched the trip, but it is an amazing place.
The city has a very long history , and a thousand years ago it had a castle and a cathedral. In the middle ages it was the seat of the Prince Bishops of the Holy Roman Empire and flourished as a trading and manufacturing centre. It is on the river Regnitz, which is a tributary of the Main which itself is a tributary of the Rhine. The Regnitz river once had 40 waterwheels in the centre of Bamberg.
The walk from the station is down a pedestrianised street lined with cafes and bakeries (Germans love their beige food) through the Grune Makt, an old fruit and veg market. Then the Old Town Hall (Aldt Rathause) comes into view, and it is very striking. It is constructed on an island in the middle of the Regnitz, and has been destroyed several times, but it has existed in its current form since the mid 18th century.
The old town is full of strasses and narrow gasses with a mixture of half timbered buildings, bigger stone houses of the merchants and baroque mansions of the wealthy.
The Tourist Information office (always lovely people) directed me to the Schenklera Brewery where I could taste their famous beer made with beech-smoked malt. It was dark brown and delicious, with a smokey bacon flavour. The menu looked very enticing, so we both had pork schnitzel with potato salad.The potato salad looks like yellow mushy peas in this photo, but it was actually yummy. The meal was very, very substantial, and ideal with smoked beer.
Walking up a hill we reached the Cathedral of St Peter and St George. built in the 13th century. The interior is surprisingly undecorated for a Catholic church, without any of the painting, frescoes and gilding we have seen elsewhere. The most interesting feature is a stone statue of a king on a horse, created about 1230. It is thought to be the first equistrian statue sculpted since antiquity, and the sculptor managed to make the king look like he was wearing drag and had a perm with a tiara.
Oppoosite the cathedral is the huge Residence of the Prince Bishops, who ran the city for the Holy Roman Emperor until Napoleon and his Bavarian allies came and spoiled their fun and secularised the city.
The “blimey that’s amazing” doesn’t stop there. On the top of a hill overlooking the city is the Monastery of Michaelsberg. It was originally founded in the 11th century, and had its ups and downs, including several years of occupation by Swedish troops in the 30 years war. Swedes aren’t just Abba and IKEA yer know.
On our return to Nurmemberg we walked though the old town to the Pegntiz river and had some Primitivo and olives, bloody lovely.
Walking back through the old town we saw at least 50 cops, 6 of them on horses and all “properly tooled up with shooters” as Danny Dyer would say. In the street there were about 20 silly old buggers waving flags and probably being rude about immigrants and gay people . The other side of the cops were another small band of young people waving rainbow flags. I expect all those cops would be pleased with the overtime, but some poor sod from the council would have to clear up the horse shit.
29 September
Our plan today is to see Nuremburg old town properly, and try some local food and drink. We had already picked up a pocket guide from the TI office, so we set off into town with a plan. Our flat is literally “the wrong side of the tracks”, we have to walk through a tunnel under the railway tracks to reach the walls of the old city. The walls of the old city are 5k in circumference and 80% are still standing, so there is a lot of old town to see. Most of the old town we have seen have just been a a few hundred metres across, but in Nuremburg it is much bigger. It is a mixture of historic old buildings, modern retail streets, and municipal buildings. In one pedestrianised shopping area there is a statue called the marriage carousel which depicts the different stages of marriage. The sculptor must must have had a very unhappy marriage.
There are many picturesque bridges over the Pegnitz river, and most were perfectly rebuilt after the wartime bombing destroyed them. Near the delightfully named Hangman’s Bridge is the Executioners House Museum. The sign on the wall didn’t shout “Come in for a good time”.
Nearby is the Bratwurst Museum, which was actually a shop selling sausage-related merchandise. It is on Bratwurst Gasse, which sounds like a condition that I suffer from. I wonder if there is a Baked Bean Gasse?
Along Tanners Lane there are 20 beautifully preserved houses, but I’m sure that 500 years ago it was a very stinky place since dog poo was used to tan leather.Walking uphill gradually, and then more steeply, we reached Nurembeg Castle which dominates the town on a sandstone crag. The Holy Roman Emperor regularly visited with his court as part of his non-stop tour of the Empire. The castle was only occupied when he was visiting Nuremberg with his court.
There was a great view of all the roofs of the old town, with the spires of the churches projecting above them. In the distance, industrial Nuremberg was visible, tall chimneys, a telecoms tower and office block.
Just outside of the walls of the castle is the house of Albrecht Durer (1471-1528). He was the one of the leading artists of the Rennaisance north of the Alps, and is famous for his self portraits and illustration of a Rhinosuarus. The house was built in the 15th century and has survived remarkably well. It was badly damaged by bombing in the war but not destroyed like many houses near by.
Durer was an expert print maker, using both wood blocks and copper engraving. His original workshop has been furnished with reproductions of the equipment he would have used.
Culture is all very good for the soul, but does nothing for the belly. Near St Sebalds church we found the Goldenes Posthorn, a 500 year old restaurant serving local food. It took me very little time to select a roasted Pork Shoulder with Potato Dumplings washed down with Tucher Rotbier. After my travels in Austria and Germany, I think I am now at least 50% pork.
Next on our list of places to visit was the German National Museum, which is their equivalent to the V&A. It is housed in a magnificent building, a modern exterior which encloses a former Carthusian Monastery. The entrance is concrete, glass and steel, but you turn a corner and enter a cloister and then a sunlit monastery church.
The museum contains huge collections of religious sculptures and paintings. For many hundreds of years, the only subjects for art were Jesus, Mary and the Saints. So the paintings are nearly all of these subjects, a bit…samey. In the 17th century artists started painting biblical and mythological characters, so lots of men with beards and loincloths and bare-breasted ladies gambolling in forest galdes
The 20th century art was much more interesting for me. The Nazis didn’t like it of course, and non-traditional art was called degenerate. The artists had their work destroyed or they fled overseas.
After a couple of hours I had my fill of German high art and needed a beer. So we found a cafe next to the Pegnitz river and I had my final Helles lager of the holiday.
30th September
I packed for the final time, thank God, and went through the moving out routine. I checked the sockets for our phone chargers, looked under the bed for odd socks and made sure I had my passport (several times). All my travelling worldly goods were squeezed into the little suitcase and my rucksack, and off we went, again.
At the Bahnhof we stocked up with food for the journey, and German bakeries are really good. Then we spent the rest of the day on trains:
- Nuremberg to Frankfurt
- Frankfurt to Brussels
- Brussels to St Pancras
- St Pancras to Waterloo
- Waterloo to Whitton
We got home at about 8.30, dragging our little wheelie suitcases back on a very familiar route from Whitton Station back to our home of 39 years.
Postscript
People always ask “what was your favourite bit of the holiday”. The most beautiful day was the journey from Chur to Tirano through the middle of the Alps on the route of the Bernina Express. We travelled over 196 bridges and through 55 tunnels, its is an incredible engineering experience with the best views I have ever seen.
An unexpectedly wonderful experience was Bamberg, a town I hadn’t heard of until a couple of months ago. It has so many preserved old buildings, there is almost too much to take it. It is a UNESCO World Heritage site, and so are the Upper Middle Rhine, Venice, and the Bernina Express route. So we ticked off four UWHTs in a single holiday. Beat that Palin!
The best meal I had was a fantastic fish risotto in Venice, and the best wine was an Austrian Gruner Veltliner. The beer I enjoyed the most was the Union lager, which is the standard beer in Ljubljana. The best breakfast I had was a toss-up between the Eggs Benedict at the Petite Cafe in Ljubliana, or the Burek at the Trubar cafe. So Ljubljana wins on points for the best food and drink altogether.
The best flat for sheer convenience was in Ljubljana once again, because it was right in the middle of the Old Town. So like school kids, we could go home for lunch. A close second was the flat in Trieste where the hosts left little helpful notes all over the flat and actually gave us two bus tickets.
Useful Tips for Interrail Travellers
- Research your destinations thoroughly before you go, so you have an idea of where to go before you leave.
- Stay as close to the city centre or old town as you can afford. You don’t want to walk for miles or get a bus into town if you can avoid it.
- Always visit the Tourist Information to pick up paper maps and find out if there are any festivals or other events going on.
- Take a water bottle with you, if you are walking around on a sunny day it is thirsty work. Dehydration can happen without you feeling particularly thirsty, as I have found out to me cost.
- Get to the station half an hour before the train leaves so you can find the right platform, buy snack and have a pee.
- Have small change available so you can pay for a toilet.
- Have a phone SIM that includes European roaming, and take a battery pack for long days out when you are using Google Maps a lot.
Altogether we travelled 2,916 miles (4,693 Km) by train over the course of a month and spent 59 hours on trains. we also travelled for about 7 hours by Flixbus in Croatia and Slovenia, because there were no trains.
Brucie Bonus
A few days before the end of our trip we both got alerts from Interrail that they had a sale on for next year. Tickets for a month were half price, just £353 for a month of rail travel in Europe, First Class! So we are off to the Baltics and Scandinavia next year, you only live once.
