The Big Smoke

Having spent the previous Saturday night blundering around Nuremberg in the dark, we felt it would be a good idea to return the next week during the day. Therefore we set out this last Saturday once again, this time at about 12:00. It would probably have been a good idea to have left earlier, but this was as early as we could manage.

It's possible to get a train ticket that is valid for the whole day for 5 people anywhere in Bavaria for €25 on either Saturday or Sunday. This is called the Nice Weekend ticket. The drawback is that you have to travel on regional trains, rather than on the much newer and faster ICE trains. Therefore our journey took us about 1:30 hours. It was nice, and I was having a nice nap until half way through when a large number of drunken football fans got on and began making fools of themselves. Although I am looking forward to the World Cup, it will surely be a huge drawback to have large numbers of boorish drunkards roaming the streets day and night.

The main train station in Nuremberg is about the size of a small airport. It really has everything. Among other things, it has a cool model train set on display.

The christmas market itself is amazing. Apart from anything else, the sheer number of people is incredible. I would have thought that the locals would be all over it, but apparently they can't get enough. It must be the mulled wine that is sold in novelty cups. I was compelled to order myself a shoe of wine by the pure tackiness of it all.

Most of the market itself is a series of shops and stalls. There is lots of crafts and models and figurines and so on available, as well as many types of sausages and other food stalls. However, having arrived somewhat late we soon found that we were running out of daylight, so about 5:00 we started pushing our way through the crowd back to the station.

Some photos of the trip are here.