Day 14

Day 14
Today is our last official day in Bavaria. We used it to go to Nurnberg. Nurnberg was one of the hardest hit cities of WWII. We got there about 10 this morning and walked around. The entire city was basically in ruins by the end of the war.
The first church we went in was very Gothic in the outside. On the inside, it was very modern. There was little to no Gothic or semblance of the previous church that stood there over 60 years ago. The second church we went in was uber Gothic on the outside and on the inside, you could see where old stone met new(ish) stone. This church was actually trying to keep in tradition with the old style, but you could tell that it was costing a pretty Euro to do so. Cliff, that asshat, wouldn’t drop anything into the donation boxes of any of the churches and I had no cash on me. *sigh* I’m married to a moron. He wouldn’t even donate a couple of Euros to help with the preservation of the churches around here.
Going in the churches and walking around Nurnberg is hard to describe. It’s much like old meets new. You see so many outlines of old buildings but the building next to an old building is a new building made entirely of glass. But to see the pictures of what Nurnberg looked like in 1945 after the war and what the Allies did to it is really heartbreaking. This city was nothing but a pile of rubble. The last church we went in had pictures with details in several languages about the pictures. They basically had an entire picture history of the reconstruction of the church from the ground up. It was pretty amazing. But going in one of the churches was really just bad. The old church had painted walls and columns. Again, thanks to WWII, only a small percentage of that original painted walls and columns were left. The churches didn’t even bother to really replace the stained glass windows either. I think they kept what they had and put in normal windows for the remainder of the windows. It’s so amazing to see something like Koln Cathedral and then go to a church in Nurnberg. To see the damaged churches and undamaged. The difference is amazing.
On top of it already being cold, it started to rain whilst we were rambling around Nurnberg today. After it stopped raining, it got even colder and the wind started blowing. Loverly. We walked to the castle, which is the highest point in the city. I’m not one for heights so Cliff got a couple of pictures for me. :-)
I’ve noticed that when we go on these trips, we go for completely different reasons. Cliff goes for the architecture and I go for the history. We’ve seen a lot of both in the two weeks that we’ve been in Germany or Deutschland. There’s a lot of history that I’ve learned by just being here and there’s a lot to see that you won’t see by staying home. We can’t replicate a lot of what’s here and we can’t get across some of the awesomeness of what’s here. Prime example: we can tell you that the Koln Cathedral is really freaking big, but unless you see it yourself, you don’t know *how* freaking big it really is. I can sit here and tell you that there’s a sense of overwhelming sense of something going through the city and through the churches, but until you’ve been there yourself, you won’t know. So, here’s my advice to anybody who reads this, if anybody reads this at all: travel. Go see the world. I don’t care if it’s going to Tokyo or the town next to where you live, get out of your groove and just go somewhere. There’s a whole wide world out there ready and waiting for you to explore it. Go. Enjoy. Don’t be one of those people who, at the age of 90, says “I wish I had travelled” or something to that effect. Enjoy life and go forth and experience the rest of the world. Trust me, the rest of the world ain’t like America. It’s a helluva lot different and you learn so much about you as an individual by going out there and seeing the rest of the world. On that note, I’m out of here. I need to go pack. We have to be out of the castle by 7:30 and return the car tomorrow and head to Berlin to meet up with the one and only Sabsi!
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Me.