Saturday 14th Nurenberg

I forgot to point out that all the images in the blog can be enlarged by clicking on them and also can be played as a slide show. Videos have been impossible to load to date but I might try again one day.

Bill & Lee gave some thought to my question about 2% wine:

Bills immediate reaction (like yours) was scepticism. Similar stories abound with drinking of ale which is of that percentage. I know many of the great Hunter Semillons have alcohol of around 10%. Apart from that he's stumped. I can only guess that the grapes may have had very low sugar levels. But that doesn't explain the disinfection. Disinfection occurs in ale production with the heating of the wort. But maybe I'm missing the point as the juice being fresh maybe didn't need disinfection and was fermented by the wild yeasts. Possibly they heated it to stop the fermentation and therefore introduced disinfection. This would make it easier to drink. Lower alcohol levels would make it easier to drink in quantity. I don't think this helps!

So, Saturday was Nurenberg or Nurnberg. We opted out of the WW11 Tour of the Parade Grounds and Museum and instead chose the Medieval city centre. The ship met the busses at Zeil and will move ahead to Bamberg, where we will catch up this afternoon.

Oh lord I keep shifting from present to past tense and back again and I no longer know what day it is, nor where I am as the ship sailed down the middle of the Danube while we sat at the middle table in the dining room over dinner, with the river split down the river between Austria and Germany. Ches kept swaying backward and forward between the two.
Now the present tense isn’t even the same present tense
as the last paragraph. We have
spent some of the day in Passau and it’s now late afternoon, as for Passau, you’re
going have to wait for that. Actually the internet went down and it's 6.00am Thursday.

The consensus of opinion among the regular cruise
passengers is that Uniworld is the best of them all. I think I mentioned John & Moira from
Lincoln who have made 11 trips and the last 7 with Uniworld and last night we
had dinner with Akira & Kyoko from Kobe who have made three river cruises
and 5 ocean cruises. Again, they rated
Uniworld the best. Honestly, we can’t fault them. Everything is either anticipated
or at the mention of a slight problem or issue, it is resolved immediately. And that’s not to mention the problems with
the German lock strikes, and there will be more about that to come. I think I’ve already said that we plan on
another trip in 2015 and maybe we could even make it a Station St Shuffle
Cruise.

Anyway, back to last Sunday.

Despite not having the WW11 sites listed in our
programme, we did stop at the unfinished Nazi Convention Hall on our way in to
town. Hitler selected Nurenberg for all
his rallies, as it was central to all of Germany. Near the vast parade grounds already
established, he began work on a building reminiscent of the Colosseum. Oval with offices on the outside ring, and a
vast auditorium that was to be lined with marble and seating for 10’s of thousands
on the inside, it was to be roofed with a glass opening in the ceiling above
his rostrum so that the light would stream down on him. After 7 years the building ceased with the
intention to complete after he won the war.


Today the offices are used for sporting associations as
well as the offices for the Ministry responsible for the resettlement of
refugees, which the Germans proudly tell you is a slap in the face for the racism
encouraged by the Nazis. We drove into
the centre of the auditorium just to get a feel for how vast it would have
been. It now provides storage for the
Christmas Markets stalls

We were then off into the medieval heart of town, driving
around the fantastic covered walls and then walking up into the castle, over
the moat and around the curved drawbridge.
Curved to make it almost impossible to carry a battering ram to breach
the gates.

We toured the castle and battlements and continued down
into town on a mission to locate the famous “gingerbread” which really isn’t
gingerbread at all. How in the world
this ever became a issue is beyond me.
The Italians have no difficulty with promoting their Sienna Panforte
without suggestions as to a similarity to gingerbread.. The Nurenberg
gingerbread is simply a large cookie that is flour free, soft and packed with
spices in the same way as Panforte is.
Really very tasty.


Lebkuchen

The sweet, spiced dough has a centuries-long history in
German-speaking Europe. German Lebkuchen is different from the
gingerbread known in the English-speaking world. First of all, it may or may
not contain ginger. It also has a somewhat different consistency, both because
it is chewier and contains nuts and fruits. And the German confection has a
lemon glaze or icing on the top and is sometimes dipped in chocolate. Lebkuchen
varieties made with other recipes include Dominosteine, Pfeffernüsse,
and Zimtsterne.

Ingredients
3 cups flour
1 1/4 tsp. nutmeg
1 1/4 tsp. cinnamon
1/2 tsp. baking soda
1/2 tsp. cloves
1/2 tsp. allspice
1 egg
3/4 cup packed brown sugar
1/2 cup honey
1 cup dark molasses
1/2 cup slivered almonds
1/2 cup mixed chopped candied fruits & peel
Lemon glaze:
1 slightly beaten egg white
1 1/2 cups powdered sugar
1/2 tsp. finely shredded lemon peel
1 Tbsp. lemon juice
dash salt

Preparation
Stir together dry ingredients. In a separate bowl, beat
the egg. Add the brown sugar and beat until fluffy. Stir in honey and
molasses and beat until well mixed. Add dry ingredients to the mixture,
stirring well until combined. Stir in nuts and fruits. Chill overnight.

Roll chilled dough on a floured surface into a 14-inch square. Cut into 3 1/2
x 2-inch rectangles or use cookie cutters to form the desired shapes. Place 2
inches apart on greased cookie sheet and bake at 375°F for 12 to 14 minutes.
Let cool 1 minute before moving to wire rack.

While Lebkuchen is baking, make the lemon glaze. Combine all
ingredients and mix well. Brush onto the cookies while they are still warm.


When our walking tour finished we had just an hour to find the best Lubkutchen shop in town, photograph the hell out of the centre of town, the fountain and the river and to conclude, try the worlds best sausages.

The Lebkutchen shop is about the size of our bedroom on board the ship. With 6 people in a hurry to check out the variously priced packages and sample the wares, it was a bun fight. Actually a Lubkutchen fight. Having been first in, we at least tried a sample, settled on a tin and escaped before it got really ugly.

Being a Sunday, all shops except the souvenir shops, cafes and restaurants were closed. Like souvenir shops all over the world, the one on the square in Nuremberg is jam packed with ****. I'm always surprised that there is such a massive demand for **** and there was another bun fight taking place here. As it's right beside the fountain, it was a little difficult to avoid.

Ches climbed up on the fountain base, cracked her head on the gun barrel protruding beside the golden ring, recovered to turn the ring three times clockwise and will now either fall pregnant or have good luck. Probably the latter!

A quick five minutes to photograph the river from the bridge, and it is pretty.

Now for the final mission; the best sausages in the world. We had been shown a restaurant where they serve three sausages the size of your little finger in a bun with sweet mustard sauce. The question was, if we wanted to just share a bun, did we sit for waiter service or ? The what was resolved when having checked out the outdoor seating, I ventured inside a cavernous restaurant, wandered around, finally asked a waiter in my broken English if you could buy takeaway and found the BBQ in a corner with a chef waiting to sell us one.

I say my broken English because I have discovered that when speaking to someone who has no English or very little, I suddenly can't structure full sentences. Of course that really helps them even more, as they try to interpret what this idiot is saying with disjointed words.

The sausages were fantastic. The best in the world? Regensberg will have something to say about that.

We returned for an afternoon on board the ship as we continued on toward Regensberg which we will visit tomorrow. It gave us some time to coordinate Skype calls to the family which being 8 hours ahead of our time. It also prepared us to receive the bad news that the lock workers had declared that they wound begin a strike from Tuesday to Friday. We would have to change the programme slightly and steam flat out all night and part of the next day to clear the last German lock and enter the Austrian stretch of the Danube. They would try to stick to the schedule by co-ordinating buses to chase us down the river, take us off to towns for the scheduled visit and then bus us to catch up with the ship. In other words, the ship would keep moving on. As Rik our tour captain said "Let's get the hell out of Germany"