the Castle and the old town festival of Nuremberg

The Castle from Am Olberg street

From the last blog, we went around Nuremberg from the trainstation to the Tiergartentor, one of the prettiest and oldest-feeling squares in all of Nuremberg, with its tall stone tower, it's stone tunnel of a gate, and its medieval cottage style buildings crammed together. When I was there with my parents, we went to my favorite spot for coffee and strudel: Kuchlbauer's Gastehaus. As it was already cold on that cloudy and wet September day, my mom was wanting some mulled wine and my father and I - being that it wasn't noon yet - were looking out for some coffee. 

"Haben sie gluhwein?" I asked for mulled wine. 

"Was?" was the response from the waitress. "What?"

"Gluhwein?" I said, trying to pronounce it a different way. And again. And again. Finally she understood. 

"Ja ja," she said. 

"Und zwei kaffee," I said. "Haben sie americano?"

"Was?"

"Espresso lungo?" 

"Was? Espresso?"

"Nein, nein, espresso lungo. Um, kaffee mit wasser. Lungo. Americano."

"Was? Espresso?"

This clearly was not working.

"Fine, ja, ja." I gave up and ordered my dad and me some espresso, then went off to the restroom. When I came back up, there was a glass of red wine in front of my mom - not hot red wine, just red wine - and two espressos. Another family came in and had been served americanos, what I was trying to order. I scratched my head. Later the mystery had been unraveled - what internationally is usually known as an Americano, and what some places, like in Italy, might call an espresso lungo, they call in Germany a cafe creme. Won't make that mistake again. But despite this difficulty, the cafe remains a goto place for me, simply because of the beautiful interior and atmosphere.

From the Tiergartentor, there are two ways to continue to the castle. You can go through the city gates: a long tunnel through the city walls that winds around the moat and then another entrance in the back side of the castle complex or you can go to the main castle gates by following the staircase behind the Zum Albrecht Duhrer (or the more common path down Obere Shmiedgasse). The advantage of the moat path is that you get to see the weird little gardens down below in the greenery of the moat where locals have allotments and tend to vegetable gardens. The other path takes you above Nuremberg where you get to climb up the steep driveway of the castle and then look out over the city. Generally I prefer this path, since its more of an epic and grandiose entry into the castle, and then taking the moat path on the way back.

The Castle from the tower

The imperial castle was built back in the days back when Nuremberg was an Imperial Free City of the Holy Roman Empire. Truly, those were its glory days, when each emperor would always convene their first Diet in the city and in the Emperor’s absence the mayor got to rule the sprawling city in his stead, with no other feudal powers overseeing him. The museum itself I had been to before and there honestly isn’t much there to enjoy. It has a wonderful exhibit on the history of the Holy Roman Empire and of Nuremberg’s place in it, but you can learn the same from a history book or Wikipedia. The original building received a lot of damage from the Allied bombing campaign and the only building to survive its true form was the chapel, which is admittedly quite a gorgeous piece of stone work with three levels and a center well, allowing for the Emperor to attend mass in a nice, heated room above the second floor, undisturbed by the filthy peasantry that chose to attend down below. 

Inside the chapel

From the castle we walked down the Burgstrasse, passing on the left the nice ornamental courthouse which was not the one made famous after the fall of Nazi Germany, where the famous Nuremberg trials were held. That one is the Palace of Justice, just outside of the old town, about a 15 minute walk away. The notorious room can still be toured, but only at very specific times, since it is still an active courtroom. The furniture has all been replaced and really, there’s nothing original there, but you get to at least see the same walls that the defendants were staring at as they were condemned to death for their war crimes. Finally we made it to the Hauptmarkt, which was the main town square, with its Schoner Brunnen standing as a crown over the city. The Schoner Brunnen – literally “Beautiful Fountain”, the Germans weren’t so creative on names – was built in the 14th century and is adorned with the symbols of the Holy Roman Empire.

At the head of the Hauptmarkt is the Frauenkirche, the weirdly small and country-chapel like, yet Gothic, Catholic church built in the 14th century. I say weirdly small because from the outside it doesn’t really look that large. But once you enter, it seems fairly large, like a brick built Gothic TARDIS, but the only time travel here is in the feeling of antiquity. Most of the statues were restored after World War II, but you can at least glimpse where many of the imperial ceremonies were held in Nuremberg from the time of Charles IV and onward, and this is where the Emperor Charles IV had his son baptized. 

The Frauenkirche and Old Town festival

Also at the Hauptmarkt is where most of Nuremberg’s cultural festivities are held. In the winter, this is where the sprawling Christkindlmarkt is. But as this was in October, we were there for the Old Town Festival, thinking that this would be Nuremberg’s version of Oktoberfest. It isn’t. If you’re reading this thinking about going, then let this blog be a great let down to you. The Old Town Festival is a giant flea market, with various crafts and junk made in China and Turkey for sale. You can get things from gloves, to purses, to jackets, to spatulas here. There really was no consistent theme, and unfortunately it was equally lacking in beer. No beer. Anywhere. I was baffled. How could there be a German festival without beer? How useless! Unless you are looking for a cheap plastic spatula made in China. After our fierce and frivolous search for beer, I apologized to my father and we headed up the Konigstrasse, which was curiously lacking in pubs or bars. As our last ditch effort to have a beer before catching our bus back to Prague, we went back to the cutsey medieval looking Handwerkhof, where unfriendly women in dirndls with overflowing breasts slammed beers down on our table, the frothy head dripping over, down the sides of our plaster steins. Finally, a place to rest and relax, before getting on the 4 hour DB bus, direct to Prague.