Nürnburg (or Nuremburg)

Our original plan had been to head straight from Munich to Prague, maybe stopping in Plzen for lunch. But when we'd picked up the rental car there had been some concern about bringing it to the Czech Republic. It seems that the company we rented from (Enterprise) would allow this, as long as you bought some extra insurance, but you couldn't bring a German-made car with you, as the risk of theft was considered just too high. And so we had to trade it in at another Enterprise outlet in Eastern Germany. It seems that their administrative centres are separated by the former political separation of the country, and unfortunately the nearest Enterprise location in eastern Germany was in Jena. And so we decided to head back to Jena for a night.

On the way we stopped in Nuremburg, or Nürnburg as it's known in German, for lunch and to have a look around. The city was lovely, with much of the old city wall intact, though we read that most of it was rebuilt after WW II, using the same stones. Here are a bunch of pictures from there - I'm sorry if I'm a bit weak on comments, but I'm trying to get caught up with the blogging.
Here is Jeremi, our tourguide extraordinaire, who was leading us on a walking tour through historic Nuremburg.
Here I am, dangling Owen over the city wall. (The wall was like 2 m thick, he wasn't about to get over the edge that easily.) Below are some views from and within the walkway built into the wall.

There were many statues of famous Nürnburger around, including the craftsman who made the first pocket watch (I forget his name), and Albrecht Dürer, a remarkably skilled draftsman and artist of his time. Randomly, I remembered all sorts of things about his work from the slide shows my crazy old art teacher, Mr. Boiko, used to give us for art history. I guess I did learn something from those classes after all, against all odds. (He used to put the slide projector out of focus for any works depicting nudes, as he didn't think that was appropriate for high school kids to see.)

And on the way from Nürnburg to Jena, I got to witness an out-and-out poop explosion, courtesy of Owen. We stopped at a rest area on the side of the highway to change him and so that Chris and Jeremi could use the toilets, but we had no idea what we were in for. Karen and I witnessed the true magnitude of it after Chris and Jeremi had conveniently escaped to the washrooms, but they did come back in time to snap a picture of it, though the picture (thankfully) does not really depict the severity of it. Even Karen said it was about the worst she'd ever seen. It was actually pretty funny, but he needed to be completely stripped down and thoroughly washed and get all new clothes, and he started shivering and his gums were chattering, as it was not so warm out. So sad! But we got him clean and warm, and all was well again.

One cool thing that we saw by the side of the road was fields where hops are grown. The harvest had already passed, so all that was left was the frames from which they grow them. The picture's a bit misty, but you can see the rows of telephone pole-like posts, with lines between them. They then tie ropes down to the mounds in the ground where the hops are planted, and the vine climbs these ropes. In some places in Germany, and in a lot of places in the Czech Republic, I've seen hops growing "wild" by the side of the road. (The quotes are there because there isn't much really "wild" in Europe. I'm sure they were planted there by someone at some point in time...)