This is my third day of the trip but only my first day of no travelling. I had a mondo amount of beer while following the England v Italy game and did not wake up too early as a result.
Monday morning and most of the site is beginning to thin out. The Jehovah’s Witness conference at the stadium next door finished yesterday and they are all packing up to go home. Daisy is sat in the field on her own now, quite a contrast to yesterday when it was hard work even finding a space.
There’s nothing better than a walk to clear a hangover so I headed out to the EasyCredit Stadium and from there onto the Zeppelinfeld (Zeppelin Field). It’s so named because they used to land the Zeppelin balloons here in a field about a quarter of a mile square. It was later on used by the Nazis as their rally ground (Reichsparteitagsgelände) and was built up, surrounded by amphitheatre type seating and regularly spaced buildings which you can see above.
At the moment it’s not possible to get in. Large fences surround the perimeter, some are topped with barbed wire to they are keen to keep people out. There are a couple of gaps about 2m wide with a security man standing at each one to prevent “unwelcome visitors”.
Determined to get in, I went back to a previous street and managed to sneak round the back of a Volkswagen dealers and right inside the perimeter fencing. I walked up the overgrown steps onto the top of the arena but there wasn’t much of interest inside. You could see the main grandstand and lots of overgrown seating areas, also a cinder track in the middle amongst more undergrowth.
I didn’t stay for very long so as not to attract the attention of the security people and came back out the same way as I got in. Down the side there are evenly spaced buildings – one says “Hochtspannung” on the door which I know means High Voltage in German. Lots of power was put on at this venue, enough for a small city so as to provide for the massive light shows.
Another building has “Golden Drakes MC” written above the door. Â It’s obviously the home to a chapter of a motorcycle club. Â Finally, I got to the top of the Zeppelinfeld and saw the main grandstand which is where all the speeches would have been made from.
That was my morning stroll, I decided that lunch would be in the Altstadt (Old Town) area of Nuremberg and also that I’d walk the 3 miles there to get some exercise.
The Altstadt is a very picturesque and very old area. I know that 90% of it was destroyed in only 1 hour by Allied bombing, but the Germans rebuilt and restored 70% of it back to how it should have been. I am so glad they did, and didn’t turn it into another Barbican.
It’s now lunch o’clock and I’ve spotted a Bratwursthaus. Manju at work has been telling me that the Rostbratwurst und Kartoffelsalat (sausage and potato salad) is to die for. After spending ages looking at the menu in the window and practising how to order in German, the waitress came out and said “would you like an English menu?”
Further into the Altstadt is the market square selling mostly fruit and veg from what I could see. I noticed that about quite a lot of people were Turkish so there must be quite a number of them living in the area.
On the walk back I called into Netto for some provisions. They were doing 0.5 litre bottles of 5% lager for 0.29 Euros – that’s about 25 pence – surely it must be ein Scheiß? I took a bottle of more upmarket stuff “Turmbläser” with a Grolsch style flip-top bottle for 0.50 Euros. I’ll try this tonight if I can get it into my packed out fridge for a couple of hours.
Doing the final stretch back I was going to call in at the Documentation Centre, part of the Congress Hall pictured here, but decided not to as it was late in the day and I was carrying shopping. It’s a museum that documents the history of the rally grounds and how the Nazis took such a strong grip on Germany. From what I can gather, it needs a day to do it justice and it was nearly 4PM as I wandered past, so it’s for the next time I visit.
I think I’ll have an early night and try and head off at about 8.30 tomorrow, destination Prague.
Three weeks before the start of the season, or before a long trip, the Sooty Van goes for a little run out to a local campsite near the house. A bit pointless, I hear you say, however it does give me a chance to test the van is OK, that the fridge, heating, water pump work and so on. I work on the basis that it’s easier to fix those things at home rather than in the wilds of Europe. The brakes completely failing in Vienna last year was a nightmare!
