And to the Nazi Capital... Nürnberg

This weekend we planned to go to Nürnberg.
Before my trip I had no ideas about Nürnberg except that it had a race track :)

We hit the road on Saturday at 9am. My travel companions for this journey were Guillaume Michel and Janath Kumar. Guilleume is a French-man from the Dorm, nobody can pronounce his first name correctly, so we call him either: Michel, William or Le Fourgue (Fourgue is something given to you that is useless or unwanted... lovely nickname huh).

("Le Fourgue", Janath and me.)

The journey there was all along the autobahn, so lots of rolling German country-side trees, hills grass, the odd wind powered generator. We also had a DVD going for the trip, Harry Potter (the first one). But there was too much light and the sound wasn't very loud... so we read the subtitles and watched the brighter scenes. Kind of like reading a book.

We arrived in Nürnberg and you could immediately see the history of the city with the age of the buildings around the place.
We headed straight for the hostel to check in and park the car. After talking to the hostel person, we found directions to the old city. She recommended to walk around here and see the sites. The hostel was located just inside the walls of the old city, so it was a brilliant location.

Here is a view from the room in our hostel:


We wandered around the city to find about 3 or 4 cathedrals/churches, 5 or 6 watch towers (in the huge wall surrounding the city), a massive castle and many other buildings. You'll have to check out my photo gallery to see everything, because there was a lot to see. The best sight was probably from the top of the castle, where you could see the entire old city. Here's a picture below.



After our walk, we were all a bit shattered. So we headed back to the hostel. We were going to have a nana-nap, but ended up going into the common room. I had a sleep on the couch while the others played on the internet.

After an hour or so, others started turning up into the common room. This is where we met our going out group for the night. We met Ben from Perth, Ramsy from Detroit, and Dima + Ilnan from the USA (but were both born in Russia).

The two Russian-Americans were probably the most interesting (because I meet Aussies and Americans everywhere), they lived in Russia until they were 7, then their family moved to the states. The culture they explained was a little different. Apparently, Russians stick to their own communities when in other countries. Also, they both spoke English with no accent (well an American one) and Russian with no accent. When they travelled they both spoke Russian, and slagged off American tourists... which I found quite amusing.

We had several hours of chatting and sharing stories about where we'd been and where to next, while drinking the local beer. Now the beer at the hostel was amasing! Probably the best beer I have ever drunk. The hostel attendant said... "don't ask for a beer... ask for 'THE' beer". Which I may have to agree with. It was bottled and brewed locally, and you could only get it in very few places... one being the hostel.

After this, we headed out to see the nightlife. There was a big Romainian festival going on, but they were singing English songs. We walked to a pub near the castle and stopped in there. Had quite a few beers, talked more, had a few more beers, stumbled home.

All in all... it was a fantastic day.