Nürnberg

Nürnberg Cathedral

This past weekend started out with going to a club on Friday night and experiencing the true night life of Munich. This city is so quiet, calmed and Pleasantville like that for a minute I doubted there was one. But to my surprise Munchners can party in ways other than drinking beer. We went to an area filled with clubs, something similar to a CocoWalk, located near the city center. Each club offers a different type of music, environment and crowd. We ended up going to a club recommended by our Brazilian classmates. They had been there before and had become acquainted with the bouncers (one of them who was from Brazil) and therefore were able to enter without being carded. Not that I was worried about being carded but we had 3 seventeen year old girls in our group who otherwise wouldn’t have been able to go into a club. The place played mostly pop music as well as some Brazilian and Latin music including a little bit of salsa, merengue and to my surprise Regeatton. HereI am, thinking, I had finally gotten away from “La Gasolina” but not. They played it along with some other Reagetton classics (if such things exists) plus some other ones I had never heard.

On Saturday there was a hiking trip planned to the mountains for which I didn’t even attempt to get up. I went to sleep so late it didn’t make any sense for me to go hiking all day long. I wouldn’t have made it. But at the end it worked out that I didn’t go. In the afternoon Carlos and Geraldine (2 friends of mine from Colombia) called to let me know they were in town and wanted to get together. They live in Stuttgart (about a 2 hour drive from Munich) and decided that same day to drive to Munich to meet up with Carlos –Carlos from Munich from now on- and myself. The 4 of us went together to school back in Colombia so you can say we had ourselves a little German School reunion. We spent some time around the city in the afternoon and then went to dinner to a Mexican Restaurant on Leopold Strasse: a street on the east side of Munich and close to the University which is full of shops, restaurants and coffee shops along the sidewalks. It was great seeing them, and spending time catching up, reminiscing about our good old school days, and getting ourselves updated with what is going on with each one of us and our other friends. We laughed a lot and like it always happens when you meet with friends we made lots of plans for the future. I had a wonderful time!! Unfortunately by the time they called me I had already left my house and had not taken my camera with me. So I don’t have any pictures.

For Sunday our group of usual suspects had planned a trip to Nurnberg; a city about 1 hour and 40 minutes, by train, to the north of Munich. Since it is located in the state of Bavaria we took advantage once again of the Bayern ticket (5 persons for 27 Euros). We met early in the morning at the main train station, got a coffee and a croissant to go and headed to the walled city of Nurnberg. Fortunately this weekend we had great weather: clear and sunny with an average temperature around the 80´s. The first thing we did when we arrived was to visit the “Germanische National Musem”. In my opinion, it is nothing out of this world. However we did learn that if you enter the museum with a minor, then 2 or 3 other people can enter the museum, together with the minor, as a family and pay less per person than the regular price of one adult ticket. Since one of the girls in our group is 17 years old that is exactly what we did, and of course we made note of this detail for future reference.

Museum* Nürnberg Cathedral

*Entrance to the Germanishes Museum. Each one of the 30 columns has engraved one of the 30 human rights in a different language.

After having lunch we walked along the old city’s pedestrian streets, stopped often to take lots of pictures, and tried to enter one of the many church towers along our walk to see the city from above. One of the towers was closed on Sunday and the other one was under renovation: so no luck with that plan.

Views along the tour of the city center

We made our way to the castle on the other side of the old town and walked all the way to the top to once again try to enter the tower. Once in the castle we discovered there were 2 types of tickets: a full price ticket to enter the museum, the castle, the tower and the well, and a more economical ticket for just the tower and the well. Since our goal was to climb up to the top of the tower we went for the second option. We planned to once again use the “minor” card to purchase the tickets. For some reason I ended up being the spokesperson for the group so I told the cashier we had a minor in the group and needed to get 7 additional tickets for the tower and well tour only. The man told me that the tower was closed for renovations. We told him we were not interested then since the tower is what we wanted to visit. He then told us he could do something for us (he was going to “hook us up”): give us a free entrance to the well tour and then have a tour guide take us to a room in the castle with, according to him, the best views of Nürnberg and we would just give the guide a good tip. I translated to the group what was going on and the guy continued talking to all of us in English. We looked at each other, debated somewhat and finally decided to accept the offer. Then the guy says: OK then I give you a ticket for 1 teacher and 6 students. When he said that I turned around and looked at one of the guys in our group who was by then cracking up. He tells me: he just called you teacher. I tried very hard to contain my laughter (as did all the rest of the group), thanked the guy, picked up the tickets, confirmed the time and place we were to meet the tour guide and left. When I looked at the tickets I realized he had given us 2: one for one adult and one for 6 school kids. The 8th person was the seventeen year old girl from Spain so she didn’t need a ticket. We couldn’t stop laughing for like the next 5 minutes. We all thought it was hilarious that the guy had thought I was their teacher. Of course they started to play along by asking me: teacher when was this castle built? Who lived in this castle? At what time is the bus picking us up to get back to the station? We toured the castle museum for about 20 minutes to kill sometime before meeting our tour guide. I also played my part and told them the story behind a trumpet displayed on the museum which was built specially for the King of Sweden. We me the tour guide and headed to the well together with another group of people. He also took us to the castle’s double chapel and the room with a view of Nürnberg. While giving the tour the guy asked if anyone in the group knew what a double chapel was and where else in the world you could find other famous double chapels. No one answered. He then looks at me and said: "Well, I guess we all now know what one of the questions on the test is going to be." I just smiled and said : "Yes we do!!" What else was I supposed to do? I had to play along. The views were not that spectacular but we laughed so much and so good that it was all worth it. We then headed back to the train station to catch up the train back to Munich not without first stopping at a Gelateria to get some delicious and refreshing the ice cream.

P.S A Double Chapel is 2 story chapel with 2 separate entrances where the first and second floor are not connected. The first floor was attended by the workers of the castle while the upper level, with better ventilation and a view of the altar, was reserved for the nobles. Although there are a couple of these kind of chapel over Europe perhaps one the most known ones is the double chapel in Assisi, Italy.