We were exhausted last night, so I didn't blog. It is pouring rain today and cold, so we both decided to just chill at the hotel the rest of the day. Usually we don't let rain scare us away, but we are usually better prepared with better rain gear when we are in a National Park. Instead, we're across an ocean and needed to pack light. It's not so much the rain that bothered us, but it's only about 40 degrees here on top of it, so we were cold and wet after our tour this morning! Enough about the rain, let's get caught up on the blog again, starting with Nuremberg.
It's hard to find the right words for Nuremberg, but I will try my best. We didn't do the free tour through Viking that day. Instead, we paid for one of the excursions that was specifically about World War II in Nuremberg, and if we were lucky, we could go into courtroom 600 where the trials were, and we were lucky. This is a pretty heavy tour and the tour creates some conflicting thoughts. What I mean by that is the first half of the tour is all about Nazi propaganda. On the tour you are taken to the Zeppelin field and then to the Congress Hall. The Zeppelin field was huge and you actually see where Hitler stood during his rallies. You can even go stand there if you'd like (our tour didn't take us there though). It is illegal in Germany to give the Hitler salute, so don't do that. Congress Hall wasn't finished before the war ended and it's still huge. Technically I think it was supposed to hold more people than the Zeppelin field, but for some reason the field felt bigger to me - maybe because it was open air. Here's where there are conflicting thoughts. We all know Hitler was a terrible person who did terrible things. But his showmanship is, for lack of a better word, impressive (?). I feel awful writing that, but you have to see it to believe it to fully understand what I mean. I had such an icky feeling standing in the Zeppelin field where terrible moments of history happened, but at the same time, completely shocked by the size of it and just how many followers Hitler created.
The tour took us into the Documents Center within Congress Hall where you learn about the rise of Hitler all the way through concentration camps to the Nuremberg trials. We only had an hour in the museum, so we had to cut our time in each room short, but I could have easily spent 2 or 3 hours there listening to each of the English translations for everything in every room. The tour ended with seeing Courtroom 600. They do still hold court in that room and even though we were there on a Saturday, they do still have court on the weekends too. It wasn't guaranteed we'd be able to see it, but we did and for that I consider ourselves fortunate. The room itself seems a lot smaller than I was expecting, and our guide did say that there is a wall where there wasn't one during the trials in the back of the room. At least on this part of the tour, I didn't feel icky because we all know that in some way there was justice - those who took part in the crimes all had to pay for it by prison time or they were sentenced to death (two killed themselves before their sentences were carried out). In prior blogs, I've spoken about a National Park Moment - a feeling I get sometimes where the park feels huge or something on a grandiose scale. I felt like I had a National Park Moment in the court room. I was in the room where a significant part of history happened. And not just history for our country, but the world! If you are ever in Nuremberg, I highly recommend doing this tour if you can. We did it through Viking, so I'm not sure who else would offer it, but it's worth it.
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| Congress Hall from across the lake |
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| A very small portion of Zeppelin Field |
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| The second tier - the small part that juts out is where Hitler would stand |
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| Inside Congress Hall. Pictures don't do it justice with how big it is. Also, excuse the phantom hand in the picture - these pictures were taken while the bus drove us through. |
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| The four large windows are the courtroom |
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| Inside the courtroom. |
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| It rained all day in Nuremberg, but we had a nice double rainbow during our last meal on the boat! |
Now that brings me to Prague. On Sunday, we disembarked the boat and headed off on a nearly 4 hour bus ride to Prague. When we got to Prague, we were dropped off at our hotel and then we had time to ourselves until our paid tour through Viking - to see Prague by Night. That reminds me, we did the Prague extension Viking offers, so Viking is still our "host" while we are here for 3 days total. Our rooms weren't going to be ready until mid-afternoon, so we had a few hours to ourselves in the city. We initially thought we'd book it to the train station nearby to try to get to Kutna Hora. We made it to the train station, but we were completely overwhelmed by it. I don't know why we were so intimidated because Steve successfully got us through Salzburg, Vienna, and Budapest all by train, but we both were mentally exhausted trying to figure things out. Not to mention, we had to be back by a certain time for the night tour and we were cutting it close with a later train. We thought we'd try again today, but rain and cold kept us away. Oh well. After quitting the train station, we went to Old Town and saw the astronomical clock. We discovered that you can go up the clock tower for a nice view of the city so we did that.
My thoughts on Prague - I was pretty excited to go here because everyone was telling us how much they loved it here. It's a cool city, but super crowded. Much more crowded than Vienna and Steve and I didn't really feel safe in the mob of people who were in Old Town. I was reminded here why I hate crowds so much. We also had a very strange lady behind us almost the entire time we walked through Old Town. She was dancing super close behind us. I wouldn't mind the dancing part so much, but she wasn't listening to any music, she didn't have headphones, she didn't mind our personal space, and we're in a crowd. They say pick-pockets create distractions and we were worried this was one. Thankfully, we never found out because we pulled over to act like we were checking something on our phone and she kept walking. Prague also seems to be full of a younger crowd. I'm not sure if they are locals or visitors, but I don't recall seeing anyone older than us besides the dancing lady and anyone here through Viking. One thing I do love about Prague is that all the sidewalks are cobblestone and all sidewalks have a different cobblestone design!
We did the night tour through Viking last night which was really cool. We started by going up the Broadcast Tower which was built in the late 80's and meant to look like it was from the future. The babies were added later because the people in Prague hated the building so they thought that adding babies to it would make them like it more. Turns out it worked, because they tried to take the babies down at one point and there was an outrage! We ended the tour at the Strahov Monastery, which is situated on top of a hill overlooking the city. We took in the view and then the tour ends with a quick beer at the brewery in the monastery.
Today's tour included a walk around the Prague Palace and inside the cathedral. The tour would have continued to Old Town, but it was a walking tour at that point and we were already outside in the cold and rain for long enough. So we called it a day. We end vacation on another World War II heavy note tomorrow. We are going on a paid Viking Tour to Terezin. Terezin is a town, but also home to a concentration camp, which we will tour. Thankfully they don't send us home too depressed, because there is a brewery on the itinerary as well.
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| Clock tower |
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| Astronomical clock |
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| View from the clock tower - look at the cobblestone designs! |
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| Another view, looking down at an Easter market |
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| The Broadcast Tower - we were on the platform that is second from the top. |
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| Weird babies crawling on the tower. |
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| The hill straight ahead is the Monastery, where we went to next. |
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| Monastery |
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| Prague Skyline |
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| Prague Palace and the Cathedral |
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| Our beers |
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| More cobbles |
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| More cobbles |
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| The cathedral at Prague Palace |
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| St. Vitus Cathedral |
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| Inside the cathedral |
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| The tomb in the cathedral |
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| Changing of the guards at Prague Palace |
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| Gardens at Prague Palace |
