Nuremberg

We went to Nuremberg (Nurnberg in German) this weekend on our three-month, out-of-the-Czech-Republic trip. We had originally considered Bratislava or Dresden, but chose Nuremberg when we found out it has Germany's largest Christmas market.
We arrived in Nuremberg on Friday afternoon and found our hotel right next to the train station, which meant we had some time to walk through Old Town before it got dark. The Old Town was mostly destroyed in World War II, and has been rebuilt in different ways, depending on the extent of the damage to the buildings. So some buildings were rebuilt with the original style, while others were reconstructed as more modern buildings, but it all fits together fairly nicely. One of the main attractions is St. Lawrence Church (not a cathedral because the city never had a bishop). It was built as a Catholic Church, although the city largely converted to Lutheranism shortly after its completion. Apparently this was an interesting factor of life for many years in the city; most of the population was Protestant, but it was still ruled by the Catholic Holy Roman Empire. We walked all the way through the Old Town and up to the castle, which sits on a hill overlooking the city centre.
Another main sight on the walk was the main market or square. It was built by Charles IV, who did most of his work in Prague. During our visit, and for most of December, it hosts the major part of the Christmas market.
The market consisted of dozens of stands selling crafts and food. We admired the crafts but concentrated on the food, as it is easier to pack (there was more room in my stomach than in my backpack). Nuremberg's culinary specialty is small sausages -called Nurnbergers - and many stalls were selling them three- or five to a bun. This formed the main course for dinner on Friday, and they were so good they also became lunch on Saturday. We also tried pancakes with apple sauce, bought several varieties of chocolate-covered fruit (apple, banana, strawberries, grapes) and a couple of mugs of cocoa to help ward off the cold. The cocoa came in nice souvenir mugs; you had to pay a deposit for the mugs. We returned one of the mugs for the money, but kept the other as a souvenir of the trip.
All in all, we found Nuremberg as an excellent place for a quick pre-Christmas weekend trip. There are more pictures here.
-Jason