I still feel absolutely exhausted today after a rather crazy weekend. It seemed like such a good idea to book it, back in May, when I hadn’t even started looking at houses never mind decided to buy one in Nuneaton, and when I was blissfully unaware that I would be spending the following week working away from home in Oswestry.

It seemed like less of a good idea at 3.45am on Saturday, when my alarm went off Well, strictly speaking it was Tim’s alarm, because in a moment of madness, Tim had volunteered to get up and drive me to Birmingham airport. I had no idea how long this would take from Nuneaton, and there’s always the potential for us to get lost when I’m in charge of the navigating, so in all honesty we could probably have had an extra half hour in bed and I would still have got to the airport for 5.30 as required.

I feel rather guilty for having abandoned Tim for the entire weekend in order to go on holiday without him… especially because it was the weekend before his birthday… and in particular because today is his birthday and I’m not at home because of work He claimed he didn’t mind though, and he would have been thoroughly miserable if I’d brought him with me, because I was going to visit the Christmas markets in Nuremberg, and Tim is not exactly a big Christmas market fan!

We flew from Birmingham to Munich with Lufthansa, which would have been quite a pleasant experience were it not for the fact that Lufthansa have switched from hard cheese to soft cheese in their regulation cheese sandwich, and soft cheese is a rather revolting thing to try and eat at 7am in the morning. Especially when it’s a Saturday morning, because the best sort of Saturdays are those which don’t start until midday

We landed in Munich around 10am I immediately felt exceptionally happy, because if it doesn’t sound silly, Munich is my favourite airport ever I think it’s because I’ve flown there so very many times that I know exactly where everything is; the location of all the toilets, where the best place to eat a Vanilleschnecke is, and all kinds of other non essential things which make landing there a completely stress-free experience. Unlike landing at Frankfurt, which makes me wish I’d jumped out of the plane while I still had chance.

45 minutes on an S-Bahn later we arrived in Munich proper, where we had precisely 90 minutes before we had to catch our connecting train to Nuremberg. 90 minutes is a very insufficient amount of time to spend in Munich, but it was just enough time to rush to the edge of the Christmas market at Stachus, gobble down 3 Nuernberger sausages and a delicious Nutella crepe, then rush all the way back again

We actually rushed a bit too much, arriving at the station by 12.30 when we didn’t need to be there until 13.00. We speculatively approached the platform we were expecting our train to come in on, in case it happened to be there early, and to my not inconsiderable surprise, we found that there was indeed a train sitting there. Now I have travelled enough by train over the past four years to know that it is not necessarily to jump on trains indiscriminately if there is any doubt in your mind as to whether they are The Right Train, but I was with my family, and jump on it they did…

Five minutes later, it unexpectedly started moving. As you can imagine, there was not inconsiderable shock in our carriage Happily, the conductor made a timely announcement to the effect that the train was indeed going to Nuremberg, but even so it seemed a little odd, especially when this train didn’t feature on the Munich-Nuremberg timetable which we’d printed off the internet for reference.

Oh well, we sat back and began to enjoy the journey. The scenery was rather spectacular because it had been snowing on Friday night, and there was a light dusting of snow across all the fields. I flinched slightly when we stopped at Dachau, mainly because my geography of Bavaria isn’t terribly good and I didn’t realise it was on our route. My mother said she’d seen a TV programme about Dachau recently and how the residents were trying to rebrand it, but I imagine that must be rather a difficult task

We were expecting the journey to take somewhere in the region on 90 minutes, but by 2pm we’d made it as far as Ingolstadt, which I estimated to be about halfway. Another lady in our carriage was obviously concerned and she stopped the conductor as he walked through to ask him what our expected arrival time in Nuremberg would be. Imagine our surprise when he said 15.30!! It turned out that we’d accidentally boarded a very slow regional train, which called at every barn between Munich and Nuremberg and hence took the best part of 3 hours to reach its destination. Oh dear

By the time we finally reached Nuremberg we were all rather exhausted from sitting on trains, and had to pop into a cafe for a reviving Latte Macchiato… or possibly we just all have a dangerous addiction to Latte Macchiato, which causes us to book expensive flights to Germany several times a year Revitalised by caffeine, we squeezed our way along the packed streets of Nuremberg to our hotel.

The hotel was a little odd. I suppose there was nothing seriously wrong with it, but there were several things which were a bit unusual. There was only one lift, for example, and whilst the sign inside claimed that it was suitable for five people, it was rather a struggle to cram three in. My sister and I decided to use the stairs instead and managed to locate them by consulting the fire escape map, but imagine our surprise when we discovered that the staircase was furnished with windows that opened directly onto outside (that is to say, they had no glass in them!) and that when we got to the bottom, we opened the door and found ourselves outside in the street, as opposed to in the reception as we imagined!

I took the opportunity of being in the hotel to change into my thermal underwear, which I know is not a terribly glamorous thing to do, but I was so exceptionally cold when I went to the markets in Munich last year that I thought I was going to collapse and die, and I didn’t want the same premonitions to ruin this weekend for me

Suitably clothed, we headed out to find somewhere to eat. It so happened that we stumbled across a branch of Vapiano where I seem to end up eating every time I’m in Germany, despite the fact that I can never decide whether it is the most wonderful or the most disturbing dining experience I have ever had. If you’ve never been to a Vapiano, you need to organise a short break to a city which has one Basically you choose what you want to eat off the menu, and then stand in front of the chef while he cooks it. This is kind of amazing if you’re a fussy eater like me and want to tell him to leave the green things out, but also kind of stressful when you’re abroad and trying to make polite small talk in a foreign language.

Fed and watered, we set off to explore the famous Nuremberg markets. I’d always wanted to visit the famous markets in Nuremberg and I wasn’t disappointed Don’t get me wrong – it was horrendously busy, and especially on Saturday night, it was a real crush to get round the stalls, but the atmosphere was really, really good and despite the crowds, there was no aggressive pushing. People were content just to go with the flow and have a good time… or else they’d all drunk too much Gluehwein to care where they were going The market itself was the most tasteful I’d ever seen – no tacky Christmas displays or naff music And the quality of things for sale far surpassed a lot of the tat which the Germans try to sell in the markets they bring to the UK.

A lot of people have asked me why I bothered going to Germany when we have a German market in Birmingham every year, but it really is completely different. Things are cheaper for a start But apart from that, it’s so much more fun. In Germany you don’t get just one market, the whole city centre can be taken over by a series of markets with different themes. I went to the Cologne one year and experienced a Christmas market on a boat on the Rhine. In Munich last year, we found a medieval market with a hog roast and fire eating. This year in Nuremberg there was a special children’s market (complete with the most wonderful model train display you ever did say) and also a special market dedicated to stalls from the towns with which Nuremberg is twinned. We tracked down a stall from Glasgow, where a couple of Scots were bravely trying to sell “hot toddy” to some rather unenthusiastic Germans.

I have to confess that after our hideously early start, none of us were up for a late night and I was safely tucked up in bed by 9.30 Nevertheless, Sunday was another day and we didn’t have to leave Nuremberg until 5pm. After a rather sparse breakfast at the hotel, we headed out to see the sights of the town with less people around. We saw the house of Albrecht Duerer, although I have to confess that being as ignorant as I am of art, I didn’t recognise any of his works except for the praying hands, which I think I have seen on Christmas cards in the past

As we climbed up the slope to the castle it began to snow, and by the time we had reached the top and were looking out towards the town, there was a veritable blizzard. I took lots of lovely photos involving snowflakes which are on Facebook if you want to see them. I may not have the energy to resize them and upload them here

The disadvantage of snow is, of course, that it makes you rather cold, which was our cue to find another cafe for another Latte Macchiato After that, we commenced Mission “Eat as much German food as possible, before it’s time to go home again”. We found a lovely stall in the main market selling the famous Nuremberg sausages, so each had three of those in a roll but whilst delicious, it didn’t quite hit the spot. We were too embarrassed to go back to the same stall for a second helping, so we had to hunt out another stall selling the same sort of sausages for the following three. A spot of pudding was in order after that, so we polished off our second Nutella crepe of the weekend and washed it down with the best Gluehwein I have ever had in my entire life After that, there really wasn’t space for any Nuremberg Lebkuchen but, well, it had to be done

We did a bit more sightseeing in the afternoon in an attempt to walk off some of the food, and the most impressive thing which we came across was the church of St Sebaldus, an obscure German saint from the middle ages, who I have to confess I had never heard of before in my life. There’s been a church there since the 13th century though, which is pretty impressive, and it was very beautiful inside. The building certainly gave the impression of being very old, and so it was with great surprise that I noticed a display of photos from the church’s past. It turned out that the building had been completely destroyed by Allied bombing towards the end of the war, along with most of the centre of Nuremberg. Sad, but not entire surprising when you contemplate the city’s infamous history. What was surprising, was the fact that immediately after the cessation of war, reconstruction of the church had begun, with the result than in 1957 it was essentially looking as good as new You can see some of the photos of the destruction of Nuremberg here.

On a lighter note, we used our last hour in Nuremberg to do a bit of Christmas shopping and I finally succeeded in buying a nativity scene for our new house – yay!! It’s a really tasteful wooden one, with sheep and a palm tree, and it wasn’t as expensive as you’d expect a carved wooden nativity scene to be. We also managed to pick up some elusive Ritter Sport to feed our addictions

All too soon it was time to catch the train back to Munich This time we succeeded in catching the correct train though, which was an improvement, and the journey passed off without event. Babel met me at the airport, and I was safely home by 11pm. It was a very exciting weekend, but I certainly paid for it with extreme exhaustion at work on Monday. Oh well, by this time next year I don’t doubt that I will have forgotten the pain of getting up at 3.45 on a Saturday and have planned another trip ;)

Tags: Christmas markets, Germany, Nuremberg

This entry was posted on Wednesday, December 16th, 2009 at 10:42 pm and is filed under Germany. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.