Historical war sights

Nuremberg Trial site

The hotel did an awesome breakfast for EUR11 and to my surprise, it did have some hot eggs and sausages.  Here I was thinking that it would be cold continental in Germany.

First up this morning was a visit to the site of the Nuremberg Trials.  We got there by underground just in time for their 0900 opening.

There was a lot of information available in German, complemented by an audio guide in other languages.  We spent an hour learning about various things that grabbed our interest.

With luck on our side, we finished our visit in Courtroom 600.  As this is still a functioning courthouse, it is sometimes in use and not available for visits.

The Nuremberg Trials go down in history as the first time war criminals had been brought to account for their actions.

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Nazi Party Rally Grounds

We partially backtracked by underground before taking the tram to Dokumenzentrum, a museum which held documentation regarding to Hitler, Nazism and Nuremberg’s role in all this.

Unfortunately, it was closed for renovation but instead we paid for getting into the temporary exhibit held in one end of the Congress Hall which showed the various buildings that made up the Nazi Party rally grounds, how they looked back then and what had happened to them.

Some were destroyed in the war, some demolished for safety or ideological reasons and others still stand.

The Congress Hall is probably the most significant standing structure.  It is a D-shaped building with a ceiling that was never completed.  It is twice the size of the Colosseum in Rome.

From here around 1115, we took a long walk around the lake to the other sites.  We found the Great Street and then the Zeppelin Field which could accommodated 200000 people in an area of 12 football fields, for Hitler’s rallies.

The iconic colonnades that was the backdrop were demolished by the city council on the grounds of safety, making the site less recognisable for those who are familiar with war movies.

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Rest of the day

We took a tram part-way back taking a break for lunch at a cheap place, when we weren’t quite hungry yet.

Near the hotel, we saw a fruit stand and had to walk away when the prices were around NZD16-20 per kg for nectarines and peaches.

Back at 1330, we rested briefly before contemplating visiting the two nearby museums.  Being a Monday, both were closed so we chilled till dinner time.

For dinner, we thought we’d take a tram in a different direction and hop off when we find a good happening.  Unfortunately, we did not encounter such an area and decided to backtrack on Line 8 to Dokumenzentrum as we had seen plenty of options en route.

But we changed our mind as we approached the old town, remembering that the Irish Pub had good meals at reasonable prices.  Disappointment set in when we saw the football crowd in there.  This time, with more courage, we asked to share a table and finished another day with a meal of burger and salad.