First, sorry for the delays on these posts. I did a Nuremberg blitz (definitely should have booked another day here) and then took a train to Munich, so I didn't have a ton of time to post. Also, this blog app is not great, so it takes twice as long as it should to post entries and photos need to be added individually. I won't use it again.

I had a reasonably early start in the morning, and decided to go for a run to the sights I wanted to see since everything is pretty close. I picked a line through the streets and started on my way. The first two places I went were St. Lorenz and St. Sebald churches. The architecture and artwork in both was beautiful.

Next I went to the Durer house, a museum in the house where he used to live. I had seen some Durer pieces the previous day, which I was glad about. The museum only had copies of work, many of which were done by his students and contemporaries, and sadly the copies in the museum didn't do justice to the quality of his work. Durer was an internationally renowned artist in his day, so only a few of his works stayed in Nuremberg. He started his career as a book illustrator and did copper plate engravings for printing. Overall the house was interesting. He broke city laws and had a toilet installed in his main kitchen about a foot away from the stove. There was a lot of speculation about the rooms in the house since no one knows what they were used for. It didn't look like he had enough space to paint his larger pieces anywhere. The rooms weren't tall enough to accommodate anything large - had to duck to fit under the doorways.

Next I went to see the Imperial Castle. From the front it is just a giant wall. You can't see the castle at all and there is no clear indication of where to go. At first I couldn't find the entrance and wandered around the back to the garden. The path to the entrance was closed, so I went back the way I came and followed the long wall, walking up steep stone paths. When I made it to the entrance I bought my ticket for the tour, which was divided in 3 parts. I started the tour in the tower, walking up 113 steps to see the view of the town. It was beautiful but difficult to capture because there were black bars across all of the windows. Next I went to see the well, a 50m hole that was dug by hand. Finally I toured around the castle/museum itself, looking at the some of the historical pieces, including a large collection of armour and military equipment. It brought back memories to the first history class I took in university.

I went back to my air bnb and ate leftovers from the night before...just as good cold the next day! Yum!

My last venture of the day was a visit to the Nazi Rally grounds. I wish I had known how long the museum and tour took - I really could have spent a whole day just there, and probably would have gone in the morning and shortened some of the other parts of the day. I only had a couple of hours, so I chose to do the tour of the documentation centre, and tried to see the grounds as much as possible in the time I had. The museum itself was put together beautifully. I learned so much! Of particular note - my birthday was a public holiday in the Nazi calendar.

I was especially impressed by learning about the history of Hitler's rise to power and building/the vision for the grounds, which were so impressive. One quote that really stuck with me (I believe it was said by the designer): "The [Nazi Party] buildings are not intended for 1940 or 2000 but for centuries into the future" - definitely true, but not at all in the spirit they were intended. When I was done I tried to walk the grounds a bit but the whole tour was 11km - I didn't have enough time and it was starting to pour rain. It's definitely something I'll come back to see. I studied a lot about the war in school and through books, but the museum really brought the story to life. It was amazing to see how power and dominance was established, and the scale of everything.

I picked up my luggage and made my way to the train station to head to Munich. I told Sebastian I'd arrive around 7 for dinner. On the train ride I met the editor-in-chief of a German rock magazine (like Rolling Stone) and we chatted about music. He was really into prog rock, and gave me a bunch of bands to check out. He also told me King Crimson is on tour right now, but I looked and they don't have any Canadian dates.

I arrived in Munich just after 6:40 and made my way to meet Sebastian, Eva, and Maximilian, their six month old son. He is the cutest thing. It was great to see Sebastian and finally meet Eva. We had amazing homemade pizza for dinner, talked for a bit, and headed to bed early. I was tired after such a full day!