I had the chance to spend the weekend in Nuremberg with a few of the folks from UGS I was working with through the week. The weather was absolutely gorgeous all through the weekend, with not a cloud in the sky, highs in the mid-80s and nice cool nights. After finishing up at the office around 6:30 we went back to the Hotel and walked over to the Volksfest, a local 2 week festival that was about a mile away from the hotel. To get there we had to walk through Nuremberg stadium, which was interesting to think off all that had happened there.
The festival was a lot of fun. We started in one biergarden and had some dinner (sausages of course) and some really good, fresh beer. There was a really spectacular 15 minute fireworks display at around 10 o’clock and then we set off to walk around the rest of the festival. We had some crepes and jaegermeister along the way (no not together) and ended up in a large tent at the other end of the fair grounds for the last hour of the festival (it closed up at midnight, which seemed odd to me, but in the end was probably a good thing). We met some nice Germans from a town close to the Czech border who shared a cigarette or two (yes we had a lot of that good, fresh German beer).
The nest day was a little bit of a slow start. We had breakfast around 10:30 and caught a cab into the old part of the city around 11. We saw one of the main churches (St. Sebastian’s…I think) which had been almost totally destroyed in the war. It was interesting to see how much of Nuremberg actually had been rebuilt and how they decided in some places to try to recreate what was there and in others had gone off in a completely new direction. We then walked up the hill and toured the castle. which was fairly unique in how it meandered around the hill it was perched on. After about an hour in the castle, we headed down the hill a bit and grabbed some lunch in an outdoor bierstube. A little more walking, browsing and shopping and then we caught a cab back to near our hotel and hiked over to the Soccer Stadium to see Nuremberg FCN take on Aachem Alemania.
We were about 5 minutes late and missed seeing the only goal scored (by Nuremberg, so chalk one up for the home team). The atmosphere was incredible. The fans in each endzone were singing rally songs almost the entire game. The opposing teams fans in the lower level were surrounded by a cage (for their protection I assume). The place was almost a sellout. Really a lot of fun. I think American sports fans have a bit to learn about cheering for your team.
Here’s a little video from the match:
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