Day 309: East to Nuremberg + the Vet

Poor little dog not looking much better today, but onwards we must go! Loaded everything up, packed him into his bag and walked over to the station. Nice little city Ulm, it's not going to be on everyone's hit-list, but we had a good time.

Getting the train to Nuremberg took about 3 hours, including a change in Ingolstadt, home to Audi. No time to visit the museum or test track, though we did see their enormous factory on the outskirts of town. Arriving in Nuremberg, it was only a few stops on the underground to our apartment in Gostenhof, a hipster district just west of the city.

Our apartment's owned by a lesbian couple who operate a cafe/bar/restaurant just nearby. It's basically a large studio, with a bedroom/living room, plus a small kitchen and dining room. A little old, but fairly typical of the 1950s apartment buildings that are literally everywhere in Germany. Will be fairly comfortable here for the next week, as we're staying until after Christmas.

Dumped our stuff then basically headed straight back out to our vet appointment at 3pm across the city. Two underground trains and a 10 minute walk later, we were there right on time. I will say, public transport in the larger cities in Germany is largely excellent, with good connections and pretty good reliability as well. You can plan your arrival to within a few minutes.

Although we'd booked the appointment originally to get Schnitzel his yearly vaccinations, we decided to focus on his back issue instead. The vet confirmed that it was a mild case of a herniated disc (so IVDD), and that a week of anti-inflammatories and 4-6 weeks of crate rest was the only cure. He wouldn't need surgery at this stage, which was a big relief! So we got him an anti-inflammatory injection for some immediate relief, plus a week's worth of tablets for him. Total cost of the visit was about 45 euros which was nice!

Made a follow-up appointment for the 27th (the morning we leave for Munich) so that he can get his vaccines too, since they can't be done while he's on the anti-inflammatories.

Decided that although we had three days of World Heritage sites to get through, we'd cancel all of them and just look after him instead. We had to come back to this area anyway since one site (a baroque opera house) was under renovation and we'd decided to skip it. So it's not the end of the world, and Schnitzel is the priority.

Shandos went out and bought a huge load of food since everything will be closed for three days over Christmas. Cooked up some pasta for dinner!Read more