theatre of the absurd: Nuremberg

This entry is so long overdue that I think I must have forgotten all of the important details, and all the things worth remembering. But still, since I'm hopelessly stuck on my research, writing something else for a change might inspire me. Might.

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.

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.

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?

Those other travellers in the background

And it's Auf Wiedersehen Nuremberg.

That's what I like about railtracks, they always lead somewhere else

As I mentioned, I got up at the crack of dawn (like I always do) for that infernal morning bus. I headed to the hostel lobby, chatted a bit with the reception bloke when checking out, and went to the pool area to buy a sandwich and a whiskey cappuccino from their vending machines.

Whiskey cappuccino, oh my lord. This is one of the best things ever invented. I'd actually been ordering it from day one at the hostel since their coffee machine was relatively cheap and the coffee was surprisingly decent. Also, the name "whiskey cappuccino" is just so provocative and before you know it, you're on your second cup. Anyway, this whiskey cappuccino was MAGNIFICENT. If I ever go back to Prague, I'll stay at this hostel again, just for the coffee.

3 empty cups of whiskey cappuccino, some korunas and a tram ticket.

I found that I had enough change on me for 3 cups so I sat there and sipped away. I miss that morning, I really do. Other early travellers were up and about, looking just as bleary-eyed and dishevelled as I felt. I took out my itinerary and went over it again, then put it away and sat there and thought about nothing in particular while I munched and sipped away. Tomorrow I have to confront my demons, a prospect which I both relish and fear. I've been running for a year now. I don't know what it'll be like. There is the probability of my chickening out. But then again, it'll always be there so might as well grit my teeth and go with it.

Prague at 6am, sun's just rising. Waiting for the tram, waiting for the dawn.

One last glimpse of the hlavni nadrazi.

5 minutes later, I still can't sleep. Still obsessing/worrying/going spare. Is there any way to turn the clock back? What would have happened if x and y had occurred instead of z?

I had a weirdly vivid dream last night. I dreamt that someone had broken into my locker - the sort that you have in hostels - and stolen some of my stuff. The padlock I'd used, which they'd broken into, was the blue one I'd brought to Europe. Anyway, my stuff got pilfered and so did this girl's, a girl I'd gone to middle school with, whom I didn't like very much back in the day, but we're not even on each other's facebook. To be honest I never even knew her that well. Back in middle school I disliked her because her hair was perpetually dandruffy and me and my friends all thought that was disgusting. She also had this lost puppy aura about her, and was forever hanging on to people who were too polite to tell her to get lost. Anyway, my stuff that got pinched was pretty much irrelevant stuff - eye masks and such - even in the dream, I had trouble remembering what I'd left in the locker - and I went to the police station to report what had happened. The officer was a retired member from the national guard who was stationed at my high school, 5 years ago now. And, what the hell. I can't believe it's been that long. So much has happened since then.

Anyhow, the police officer took my details and told me that they'd probably never be able to find the culprit but they'd try anyway. That was when I woke up, and reached for the alarm clock, and read the time on the luminous dials: 4am sharp. And I couldn't go back to sleep again, so here I am, typing away. What's my subconscious trying to tell me, I wonder. A phobia of people taking away my belongings, or in a broader sense, my losing things and never getting them back. This is probably because I've been watching the Phantom of the Opera's 25 anniversary special edition and Erik was one psychotic possessive-manipulating bloke if there ever was one.

Or maybe there's nothing at at all to see and tell and Freud's Die Traumdeutung is just a load of crock. Dreams are meaningless. (Do you honestly believe that, though?)

In any case, this post is supposed to be about the past and not the present so I'll get back to that. I hopped on the plushy De Bahn bus to Nuremberg.

Holy lmao the weather I got in Nuremberg was awful. It was freezing and pouring with rain, and the accommodation was German and expensive, although one good thing about it was that it was right next to the HBF so I didn't have to walk far when I got there. It was also surprisingly fancy - one of those hotels-turned-hostels, where the rooms are actually hotel rooms with four extra bunks thrown in. I managed to bag one of the proper beds, the original hotel bed, and it was BLISS. The ensuite bathroom and toilet were so extravagant that I almost cried. Spent far too much time in my cosy hotel-hostel room since the weather outside was simply abysmal. What else? Oh yes, the room was oddly empty: it was a six-bed "dorm" but the only guests were myself, a Korean boy who could barely speak English and a stinky Spaniard who smelt like he hadn't showered for at least half a year and didn't speak much English either. Didn't really want to talk to them, and in any case probably couldn't have even if I wanted to. The Korean boy's locker got stuck at one point though and he asked me for a penknife to pry it open with by drawing a surprisingly good picture, and I lent him my sewing kit. He was very skinny, painfully polite, and docile, which probably aren't very flattering adjectives for a young man.

I finished all the sightseeing spots that day, got caught in a whopping thunderstorm that soaked me to the skin and froze me to the marrow, treated myself to a Chinese restaurant for dinner that wasn't as good as I'd expected (although the owner was pretty nice), and then went back to the hostel and spent a heavenly half hour in the shower. Honestly, after being obliged to wander around in the pouring rain at about 5 degrees celsius for two hours, a piping hot shower in a spotless bathroom with shampoo and shower gel is astounding and otherworldly.

This is the Old Town, which was actually my last stop, but I don't think I want to write about the Rallying Grounds or the Nurembeg Trialhouse just yet so I'll start with something frivolous. Although the weather, urgh. Nothing to be frivolous about there. Nuremberg was one of those gorgeous Christmas towns you read about in your novels when you were little. Certainly, it reminded me very much of Philip Pullman's children's novel Clockwork. The clockwork tower with its figurines, its thatched-styled cottages, crisscrossing woodwork and barrels of mead are the stuff of fairytales. And, of course, Pullman turned those figurines into killer figurines.

Your standard cathedral. It started pouring like nobody's business when I arrived here.

The clock tower. Apparently there's a figurine show like the Orloj in Prague but of course I missed that one as well. I wanted to appreciate it more but being completely soaked/freezing wasn't really helping matters.