Day 8 - From Nuremburg to Austria

---

Today was World War II history day as today we are visiting the sites of Nuremburg. Jody was particularly excited as she has been reading a lot about Hitler and the Holocaust, and we heve both been watching a lot of WW1 and WW2 documentaries lately. The included tour was a visit to old town Nuremburg, bu we were both looking forward to the optional tour to the Nazi Rally sites and the Nuremburg courtroom where the Nazis were charged with war crimes after WW2.

We began our tour this morning by meeting our local tour guide who’s name we missed, but she was a lovely elderly woman who was originally from Minnesota and who had moved here for love when she was 18 and has never been back to the states. She was very knowledgeable about the rise and fall of the Nazis and about the Nuremburg sites as well. She was also plainly anti-Nazi when she described the history without the hesitancy the German tour guides seem to have.

We began our tour at Zeppelinfeld, literally Zeppelin Field, a meadow where Count Zeppelin had landed one of his famous Zeppelins back in 1909. Hitler held his first large rally in this field back in the 1930’s and determined that all future rallies would be held in Nuremburg. Zeppelinfeld had a huge podium built at one end of the field, with bleachers for dignitaries and the outer perimeter was lined with a series of concrete piers with terraces between them for spectators to stand. This is the huge field we always see in the movies, with Hitler speaking from the podium and formations of troops parading below. Some of the original buildings are still standing today, though portions of the field are currently used as a soccer field and parts have been paved over for use in auto racing. The column on eithers side of the podium were demolished in the 1960’s as they were determined unstable, and a lot of the remaining structure has fallen into disrepair.

One of the big problems with these Nazi sites is that they were hastily constructed and not using the best materials and techniques. Consequently, damage from ice and snow particularly have caused a lot of deterioration. Germans are torn between preservation of the structures, and a concern that restoring them to their former glory would be glorifying the Nazis. At this time, preservation studies of the structures are under way.

Next we borded the bus and headed over to the Kongresshalle, Congress Hall, which is a horseshoe shaped building intended to emulate the Coliseum in Rome. The outer façade is stone and is very impressive, standing next to a man-made lake from the Middle Ages. The interior is unfinished and is made up of used bricks of various colors with shoddy mortar between them. The intent was to cover up the bricks with marble sheets, and to install a cantilevered roof above the entire structure. This was to be the meeting place for all the party leaders from around Germany to come hear Hitler speak and deliver orders of what the party should be doing. The building has been used lately as a storage facility, but suffers from the same deterioration due to shoddy construction as the buildings in Zeppelinfeld.

In one of the adjacent buildings that is part of the Kongresshalle , there is a documentation center that holds lots of the original Nazi documentation. It is currently undergoing renovation, so we were able to visit only the temporary museum. In the museum there were some interesting artifacts showing the rise of the Third Reich and what happened in Nuremburg during the war, and what has happened since.

After the visit to the Kongresshalle, we were back on the bus to the Nuremburg courthouse where, after the war, the German war criminals were tried. The original courtroom 600 used for the trial was still in use until recently as it was the largest room available in the Nuremburg courthouse. Recently a larger courtroom was added to the other end of the courthouse so that room 600 could be turned into a museum. It is currently being restored and can sometimes be entered, but today we had to settle for viewing the courtroom through some windows above that were once part of the press and observers gallery. The room was much smaller than we had imagined from seeing the Nuremburg trials in documentaries. The small museum attached showed various scenes from the first trial.

According to our guide, the first trial of the 24 most famous defendants is the one we always think about when we think of Nuremburg and it’s the only one that included judges from all the allies. There were 12 trials in all, but after the first, the Cold War had begun, and most of the allies had dropped out of being judges, so the remaining trials were conducted by the Americans. There were plans for many more trials, but after the 12, a few years had passed and by now the Cold War was in full swing, and by then Germany became an ally in the Cold War and further trials with an ally seemed wrong.

It was a great bit of history to finally visit Nuremburg and all the important things that happened here. Now when we watch a WW2 documentary, we will be able to picture where in Nuremburg these events had taken place. By now it was getting close to lunchtime, and since we were between ships and technically homeless, there was no way to return to the ship for lunch. So lunch for 165 of us was at a local German restaurant in old town Nuremburg and it was great! We just had a quick lunch of a salad to start and a plate of sauerkraut, sausages, and scalloped potatoes. We both skipped the sauerkraut, but the rest was delicious! I think there may have been some ice cream for dessert, but we only had an hour until the bus and we had not explored old town Nuremburg. So a few of us skipped dessert had headed out into the courtyard to check out the shops.

Old town Nuremburg is a small portion of a much larger city of over 500,000 people. Old town is the original walled city and a lot of the original wall was still standing which is amazing since Nuremburg was a strategic target in WW2, and about 90 percent was destroyed. Other that old town, Nuremburg looks like the typical modern city with lots of urban sprawl. But the center of old town has the typical 12^th century church, which was originally built Catholic, changed to Lutheran in the 16^th century when all the churches in Nuremburg became Lutheran and no Catholic churches were left. Sometime later, it reverted back to Catholicism, and today while Lutheran is the predominant religion, Catholicism is a close second.

While visiting the shops, we were able to pick up a couple of t-shirts and a magnet, but Jody managed to find an unusual, cast and machined pendant and earrings from a local artisan, so she ended up with even more jewelry. Our shopping mission more than complete, it was time to head back to the bus. After yesterdays fiasco, we made sure to keep a lookout for fellow passengers, and to be sure we knew where the rendezvous location was. This time we were a little early and got on the bus without any problem.

We were now on our way to our new ship, the Viking Vidar which was unfortunately about 2-1/2 hours away in Austria. Luckily, we made a comfort stop about halfway through at a chocolate store Seidl Confiserie which was this huge chocolate shop with what seemed to have every chocolate known to man. It did have a little café, where I managed to get some chocolate chip ice cream and Jody got some sparkling water, but search as we might, Jody couldn’t seem to find some plain dark chocolate bars, jus a lot of fancy stuff. In the end she decided that she probably didn’t really need any more chocolate, so we gave up and headed for the bus.

By 5:00 we had made our way to Passau, Germany and met up with our new ship. We got to our room and our luggage had safely arrived. We were unpacked and on the sundeck in 15 minutes. Unfortunately, we’re not really scheduled to be in Passau until Friday, so our parking spot tonight is only temporary. Tonight we will sail to Engelhartszell, Austria for the night, leave on the bus in the morning and return to Passau on Friday. It will be a long bus ride tomorrow, but we will be back on schedule by Friday!

---