When I arrived in Nuremberg, the Justizpalast (Nuremberg Trial Courthouse) and Reichsparteitagsgelände (Nazi Party Rallying Grounds) were actually the first places I went to. It was an overcast, gloomy grey day, which I usually like when I'm not travelling or on holiday. I still wish it hadn't poured when I was in the Old Town, but the weather was curiously fitting for a city that had once lain at the heart of the Third Reich.
Despite my GPS, I wandered around the Bärenschanzstraße hopelessly lost for a good ten minutes before a frau tending a coffeehouse flapped a teacloth at me. I walked over to her and she asked me where I was going. I said the Courthouse, and she pointed me in the right direction.
It was just all very dismal, and the streets of Nuremberg were completely deserted, for some reason, which creeped me out slightly. Even the Justizpalast, which I thought was a tourist hotspot, was completely devoid of human activity. I wondered if it was closed because it was Saturday, but managed to find the entrance, which stated quite clearly that it was open. I pushed open the EXTREMELY heavy oaken door and went in.
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| The extremely heavy door. |
The tickets were 5 euros I think. I chatted to the ticket ladies for a bit, who asked me for my nationality, since they wanted to keep a record of the people who came. I asked them where they got the most visitors from. To my surprise, they said the US. Not quite sure why that surprised me, but I think I was expecting the UK, or Germany, since we were in Bavaria, after all.
The first place I went to was the infamous Courtroom 600.
They had a very good audio guide. Apparently the Room isn't always open to visitors, so I think I may have gotten lucky, if you can call this lucky, getting to see a court room where people were on trial for acts of genocide.
The rest of the Justizpalast was a gallery where there were photos and short documentaries. There was a short piece on the Yasukuni Shrine and the trials of Japanese war criminals, which obviously hit a lot closer home, since we used to be a colony of the Empire of the Sun, and were coerced into fighting for the Axis powers in WWII. I wish we had something like this to commemorate what the Japanese did to us. There are some aspects of history that should never be forgotten.
The next place I visited was Reichsparteitagsgelände - Nazi Party Rallying Grounds. It was the terminal station for one of the tram lines, and it was also a gallery, rather similar to the Justizpalast. The real Rallying Grounds was located about 20 minutes away from the gallery by foot, and it was a beautiful, tranquil place - the surroundings, I mean. I'll get to that in a moment.
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| Map of the concentration and death camps throughout the Third Reich. |
The gallery and the Rallying Grounds were separated by a lake. I remember stopping to wonder at the beauty of it, and I remember wondering if Hitler too had looked over the lake and meditated upon its serenity.
The Rallying Grounds itself was horribly unkept. I remember reading somewhere - or my German friends might have mentioned it - that the Germans didn't/don't want to remember what they did during the SWW, and so they don't really make much of an effort to preserve things or places that were left behind by the Nazis. This tattered stadium was all that was left. I remember standing there, trying to imagine the Führer giving his speeches to the Nazis. Also reminded me inexplicably of Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade - I think this was the exact same location that Indy went to, when he went to get the diary back from Elsa.
After this, I took the tram back to my hostel, went to the Old Town which I already wrote about, and got caught in a terrific downpour. Went back, had dinner at the Chinese diner next to the hostel because I couldn't be bothered to go anywhere else, and went back to my incredibly comfy room and took a nice long hot shower. Spent the rest of the evening writing in my journal, listening to music and talking to my friends on Skype.
The next day I caught a train to Munich with my Bayern ticket. The Korean boy said goodbye to me before I left at 7am. Last coffee in Nuremberg - this set me back a whopping 4 euros. Regardless of the ridiculous pricetag, I still miss this so much. I miss all the buses and trains I had to catch, all the early crack-of-dawn getups, all these solitary (and extremely expensive) morning coffees that I swallowed before hopping on board to my next destination. Seeing this photo again reminds me of a thousand other coffees I had on the Continent, drowsy and sleep-riddled, tentative, exhilerated, wanderlusted. Coffee represents so many things to me; serendipity, solitude, travel, being on the move, trains, buses, books, journals, hostels, friendships, Europe, thunderstorms, doing things my way, lack of sleep. When will I be back again?
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| Those other travellers in the background |
And it's Auf Wiedersehen Nuremberg.
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| That's what I like about railtracks, they always lead somewhere else |
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