Day 9 (10th July) Nuremburg in Honeymoon

Today we spent in Nuremberg. Last night after Regensburg we left the Danube and went into the Main-Danube canal. La Professeure was very interested in knowing when we exactly start our stretch in the canal, so I pulled up the GPS and Google map to show her exactly the moment when we went into the fork.

This morning was fun; we get to "sleep in" because we wouldn't arrive until the afternoon, so we woke up at 9. Also, the previous night I was watching football too, and was very annoyed that the ship went into a tall lock just as extra time came to a close. The lock took 20 minutes to clear, so that meant I missed the penalty shoot-out - probably the only piece of excitement in the game - completely.

It is interesting how different travelling on a canal is compared to travelling in a river. The banks are much closer to the ship, and the ship is running very slow because the ships are limited in speed due to the shallowness of the canal - the canal is only 4 meters deep in the deepest part - so the boat was crawling along at a snail's pace. There were locks after locks - at this point we've passed by maybe 20 (?) and they are still a novelty for most people on the ship, and it's still an excitement to go through one of them. we noticed this morning that we starting going down locks. Apparently we'd passed the European watershed at night. There are a couple of stretches of the canal that is above ground, and it was weird to be on a ship that goes over a bridge with cars and cyclists going underneath. So it was very exciting morning.

We opted for a tour about World War II history in Nuremburg, which I think is appropriate. We have a very knowledgeable tour guide - his works in a society for restoration of Nazi history, and his job is to do research on Nazi germany and educate students about that period. So he is enthusiastic about the subject. We went to the Zepplin Field, the Documentation center (basically a Nazi museum, built on the half-completed Congress hall) and the Justice Plaza where we visited courtroom 600, where the Nuremburg trails were held. Every step of the way, the guide gave us a lot of background information, also about how the Germans are reacting to that period and how they just started owning up to it only starting from his generation. Apparently, our tour director told us, that when she was doing this tour in the 90s, the tour guides would categorically deny what happend there. It was unbelievable.

We enjoyed the tour. The museum part was a bit long; it was mostly just pictures and accompanying texts, which we could have just looked up from the internet. But I think it exists as a destination where school children can go and learn about their history. We were heartened that there were many class trips were there the same time we were.

So, that society is performing a terrific function. I wonder if there is a Japanese equivalent?

After the tour, we got dropped off at the old town in Nuremburg, which is yet another charming old town. However, this one has bigger street, are better laid out, and generally more modern, open feel to it. I wonder if that's because most of that town was actuallly a reconstruction (because the old town got bombed and 92% of it were destroyed) or because it was such a metropolis during the middle ages that their streets were actually wider. But I figured that, if we hadn't done the WWII tour, we would have seen just another town, and not gone beyond the old town center, and not seen the industrial part of Nuremberg, which is the real character of the city.

After we came back and had dinner - we sat with our Memphis couple, a pastor and her mom, and a couple from LA who has many over-achieveing children and grand children. It was a lot of fun talking with them. I said before that most people on this cruise are interesting, but we have met a few - very few - who are not particularly well versed in logical reasoning and we had to hide a few eye-rolls. But in general, the conversations are funny and enlightening. We are meeting more and more people on the cruise now and the names are starting to blend. I wish we'd exchanged facebook during the cruise so we can do homework and get better at associating names with faces.

After the dinner a troupe came on board the ship and performed a program they called "music of the Danube", which was actually not accurate. They performed arias from Mozart operas (Salzburg), Strauss waltzes (Vienna), numbers from Sounds of Music (Salzburg). And then they sang the Merry Widow waltz, and O Mio Babbino Caro, and Brindisi, which has nothing to do with the Danube. But whatever. They certainly hammed it up, and it was all in great fun. Just not the most musical performance I've seen.