Nuremberg: Town & Nazi Party Rally Grounds

Besides visiting the Christmas market in Nuremberg, we enjoyed walking around the city as well. We were lucky that it wasn't excessively cold, but we were glad to have gotten a "sleeping bag" for Charlotte's stroller to help keep her warm during our wanderings. 

We enjoyed some delicious pastries each morning right off the main square. That's the face of a girl who doesn't yet realize we are SPLITTING the donuts!!

Just outside the pastry shop, markings for various floods in Nuremberg. 

We walked up a surprisingly big hill to Nuremberg's castle, which was quite an important place back in the heyday of the Holy Roman Empire. Most emperors stayed at the castle frequently, and they also held lots of important meetings ("diets") there as well. We enjoyed the great views from the top (all the huffing and puffing to get up the hill was worth it!). 

This shows how steep the hill was!

View of Nuremberg

Running around on the cobblestones at Nuremberg Castle

Huge entry door to Nuremberg Castle grounds

A quick view of some of the architecture of the town; lots of pretty bridges and churches to be seen here.

Finally, on our second full day in Nuremberg, we took the bus to the Reichsparteitagsgelande. Oh, you don't speak German? Me neither -- that long word basically translates to the Nazi Party Rally Grounds. There is a very nice museum on site that is dedicated to the history of the rise of Naziism and to making sure that it doesn't happen again. It was very well done, although not necessarily ideal for an almost 2-year-old. Paul and I traded off who was watching Charlotte and who was reading/watching the infographics, so we both got something out of it. After going through the museum, we walked around the enormous rally grounds, which most notably includes the Grosse Strasse (Grand Street), where huge parades were intended (although it was never used for this purpose), and the Zeppelin field. The Zeppelin field was a very large deployment area, and you could really get a sense for how many people would have been present when it was full. It was the size of several football fields, conservatively.

It was a very sobering place, and we were interested to see how the German people have toed the line between preserving a place of historical significance but not glorifying it. We were surprised to see how run-down and overgrown certain areas of the grounds were, but again -- perhaps this goes into the 'preserve but not glorify' mindset.

Part of the Zeppelin field, where speeches were made at Nazi Rallies

Walking along one edge of the Zeppelin field

View of the Zeppelin field from atop the speaking platforms