Bavaria and Middle Rhine

Today, we bid ade to the Alpine region, and headed through Bavaria, all the way into the Franken region. Our base would be the city of Nuremberg. We didn't pick it for any historical reasons, but rather because when this was a Christmas Market trip, the city had one of the largest, oldest, and most well known markets, as well as having a central location for a lot of other good places to see, markets to experience in northern Bavaria. We kept it for this trip because we had discovered a lot of things we wanted to visit, whether there were Christmas markets or not.

We took the earliest train we could, after breakfast and our discount Bayern Ticket for the train kicked in. It was a fairly long ride, a little over four hours by regional trains, with a change in Munich. The trains were running a little behind, which is apparently becoming the norm in Germany, so we'd see what time we got there.

We stopped on the way to the train station to buy some food for lunch. Rolls at the baker's, meat and cheese at the butcher shop. We had water to drink, but maybe we'd pick up a beer. We had already seen Germans drinking on the trains, on the street, et cetera, and while illegal in Philly, it's fine in Germany.

We missed out train in Munich. By seconds, literally. We got off one train, just beyond the building, on an open platform, then ran down into the building, then all the way across to where the regional to Nuremberg (or Nürnberg for you purists) was set to leave. As we ran up-- bye bye, train leaving.

Thankfully, we wouldn't have to wait another hour, because another regional train going towards Nuremberg was leaving in about twenty minutes. So we sat down, ate our sandwiches and water, and waited.

Finally, we were on our way. A bit late. Okay, the last train couldn't have been "a bit late", could it? This was a new part of the trip for us. It wasn't long after we were out of Munich that we came into hop fields. The hops were still up, strung high to overhead lines, looking nice and green. Thank you farmers, for our beer.

We both kind of dozed off, but not for long. We pulled into Nuremberg. The station was ummm, kind of sketch. Not New York City subway sketch, but just big city, kind of dank and darkish in the tunnels leading from the tracks, busy, not as clean as it could be. Some people looking less than upright. Outside was much the same. A group of people hanging out on the steps, eyeing everyone in that way that tells us city folks to be on our guard.

But across the street- WOW. The walled Altstadt of Nuremberg.

Now though, we had to get to our apartment. Why we were dumb, and decided to walk, I don't know. We had that Bayern ticket and could have taken the tram, but no... It wasn't a really long walk, about a mile and a quarter, but it was hot, and we had bags.

Our host, who I had been in contact with earlier, was waiting. A nice guy named Volker. He took us up to the fifth floor (no elevator), showed us the apartment which was much bigger than it looked online. He gave us a little orientation: how to work the dishwasher, the washing machine, showing us the clothes drying rack, where everything was. Then with the maps showing us all the places he thought were interesting, the good restaurants, the local stores.

He asked us if there was anything we wanted to do, and we said, "Oh yes, we want to go the Nürnberg Volksfest," which was currently running somewhere in town. He was unbelievably pleased we even knew about this thing, and proceeded to give us extensive directions on how to get there by public transit. Told us to call if we needed anything, have fun, nice to meet you, thanks for staying at my place. Definitely recommend staying at his place, he rents on Air bnb and VRBO, a few local sites as well. Not the fanciest place, but clean, good location, great host.

When he left, we went around to the Netto-- the cheapy grocery store-- and got some food for the next few days of breakfast. We were, as I had mentioned, very Germanized by this point and went with butter, jelly, ham, and cheeses. I even bought some Quark, since I've been reading about it for so long.

Good start to our time here. No disasters. We changed, took off the heavy hiking shoes and boots, and went out to the Volksfest.Læs mere