Nuremberg

I started out the day (Saturday, 9/14) with a painful back due to a pinched nerve - something that comes on me once in a while. I decided to take the day off from touring, and stay on the ship and be pampered all day. Dan chose to stay on board with me, too. That's the wonderful thing about a river cruise like this. You make your own decisions about what to do or what not to do We thoroughly enjoyed visiting with our fellow passengers that day (we weren't the only ones who stayed aboard), sitting up on the sun deck, and eating lunch together in the dining room. So ... no pictures of Bamburg.

The next day I was feeling a lot better, and we were in Nuremberg, which was a place we both had been eagerly looking forward to visiting. We had three options for a tour that day. One of them, a tour of Old Town Nuremberg, would have been interesting and beautiful; a second tour was a gingerbread cooking class; but we chose the WWII tour - one that would be a grim reminder of not-so-long-ago history. Through our tour bus window, on the way to the Nazi Rally Grounds, we did see glimpses of modern Nuremberg, although photos through bus windows don't always turn out well. One photo I captured from the bus was of the historic SS Barracks, which now - ironically, I thought - serves as the headquarters of the Federal Office for Migration and Refugees.

We also had numerous views of towers and sections of the wall that encircled the old city of Nuremberg. The wall and towers are still in good condition, though they were constructed beginning in the 12th century and ending in the 16th century. I wish we had had two days in Nuremberg, so I could have toured the old city inside the walls. But I'll never regret choosing the WWII tour.

This beautiful cemetery lies just outside the wall.

The bus soon brought us to our destination ... the Nazi Rally Grounds. They sit in an 11 square kilometer section of southeast Nuremberg. The photo below hangs on the wall of the museum we would come to later in the day. It shows the entire rally grounds.

Everyone has seen film clips of Hitler standing on the review stand, delivering his rally speeches, with the giant swastika at the top of the grandstand. His view, from that stand, was of Zeppelin Field (the size of 12 soccer fields). It was named in honor of Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin who, in 1909, landed one of his airships on this field. After Germany's defeat, in WWII, a victorious US Army blew up the swastika at the top of the grandstand.

We stood, looking up at that very review stand, and couldn't help seeing, in our mind's eye, Adolf Hitler standing there in full uniform, rallying the crowd, which stood where we now stood. If that wasn't chilling enough, we walked up the grandstand stairs and stood on the review stand, ourselves. I have to say that shivers ran down my spine at that moment. It may have been the most impactful moment of our entire trip.

Standing on the review stand, in the exact spot that Adolf Hitler stood and spoke to the soldiers and crowds.

Near the grandstand is a small pond. Looking across the pond we saw a structure that looked very much like the Coliseum in Rome. This structure, it turned out, was the Nazi Congress Hall and marked the entrance to the rally grounds. Like almost all of the buildings at the rally grounds, it remained unfinished and without a roof. Our tour guide took us to that side of the pond to see Congress Hall, which now houses a museum with a permanent exhibition titled, "Fascination and Terror." The museum is amazing! It starts on the ground floor and spirals upward. The first exhibits are about Germany and its devastated economy after WWI, and move on to Hitler's rise and fall. I did not make it through the entire museum, although I think Dan did. I found it extremely unsettling, and needed to return to the ground floor, where I waited for Dan at the little cafe, sipping a soft drink.

The back side of Congress Hall - never completed and never covered with a roof

The ground floor of the museum

Our young tour guide that day, a university student, said something that stuck in my mind. He said that every German child learns about the 3rd Reich and the horrors of Nazi Germany, but they are never made to feel guilty for that dark period in their history. It was not them. It was another generation. I was glad to hear that.

Back on board ship, in the afternoon, we navigated a canal, which a couple times turned into an aqueduct, passing over roads; and we went through one of the three highest locks. We also received some important news from our cruise director. I will post more about that part of the journey tomorrow.

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