Heilsbronn

We gathered for breakfast at 8:30 a.m. This hotel asks you to choose one of three breakfast time slots to control the crowd in the breakfast room. It’s a lovely room, but not very big. We were given champagne and our choice of delicate homemade cookies to begin our morning. Such decadence! Our big excitement was watching some hunky paramedics head on foot down into the subway – perhaps one of last night’s soccer revellers wasn’t faring so well this morning. (France beat England 2-1.)

We have our walking tour at 11:30 a.m. The meeting place is down at one corner of the main Christmas Market. After some false starts (it’s cold today so more layers, hats and scarves were required), we got down to the market and did some last-minute buying. Our tour guide was Tom, a native of Nuremberg. Rather than give us a chronological history of the city, he told us tales and stories, often using humour to soften some rather bleak moments in Nuremberg’s past. Nuremberg was known in the Middle Ages as a centre of innovation and trade. The first globe and the first pocket watch were invented here. Nuremberg is located almost exactly in the centre of Europe which put it on the many trade routes – the smart Nurembergers demanded to be paid taxes on the goods transported through their centre of commerce.

We started at the “Beautiful Fountain” and heard the sad lost love tale of the wrought iron trainee who put a perfect circle of iron on the fence around the fountain. I dutifully turned the ring three times while making a wish for the Seven Sisters group (hint – my wish involved traveling and safe returns).

We heard about the underground cellars that were built originally to store beer (a much safer drink than water in the Middle Ages) and how those cellars sheltered people and artwork during the bombing raids of Nuremberg in January of 1945.

We heard about Albrecht Durer, an artist, who changed the course of art in the late 1400s and early 1500s. Art until then had been dominated by religious themes. Durer began to paint and draw just ordinary life. This was a major shift in the world of art.

We also heard about the continuing rebuilding efforts in the city. Thousands of artisans have banded together and gathered donations to rebuild the buildings destroyed during the war in the style they were before the bombing. It’s incredible to believe that this effort continues more than 75 years after the war.

We visited the Imperial Castle (Kaiserburg). In the Middle Ages, the Holy Roman Emperors stayed here when they were in town (with their entourage of about a thousand attendants). The views from the castle wall were fabulous.

Tom finished off with a spiel about the town executioner and his tribulations finding a wife. Who wanted to be married to the executioner?? All in all, it was a good tour.

By that time, we were all pretty cold. Angela had spied a good café and had reserved a table for us. It turned out to be a room just for us, which given the loud and crazy name of the trip was a good thing. We had warm drinks, delicious tomato soup and seven desserts. Fabulous.

Then we split up. Some went to the German National Museum; some went to the Albrecht Durer Museum, and I headed off by myself. I wandered around the children’s market with its merry-go-round, Ferris wheel and kid-friendly arts and crafts booths. Then I watched a street performer play a didgeridoo, an Australian instrument that requires excellent breath control to play. I popped into St. Klara’s Church, just to see the architecture. There were people seated who seemed to be waiting for something to start. Lo and behold, just 10 minutes later, a fabulous choral concert began, presented by an excellent choir in a setting with pristine acoustics. The program was all Advent music, covering the 1500s to the 1900s. There, I finally got music on this tour!

Back at the hotel, we had pre-dinner drinks and snacks before our dinner reservation at a Spanish restaurant. We had dinner - some things were good; others were okay. The conversation was good. We talked about what we miss the most about home, other than our partners. My answer - big, fat pillows and fleece sheets. Just because we hadn’t had enough to eat, we went to one of the market stalls and got warm churros (long, skinny doughnut things) with sugar and cinnamon with a side dish of dark chocolate.

We have an 8:00 a.m. breakfast time slot.Read more