Nuremberg

                This past weekend was a three day weekend because of Pentecost on Sunday. Monday is called Whitsunday and it’s a national holiday. We decided that we wanted to leave early on Friday (around 4) in order to get the most out of our weekend. We also ended up renting a car since the bus ride to munich was 8 hours, while just driving there is only three hours. The only problem was that the car rental companies in Jena either had smart cars or luxury BMW’s. We needed a car for four people but didn’t want to pay a ton of money. We discovered that there were affordable cars over in Erfurt, 40 miles away.

 The only way we could get to Erfurt was through a ride share site since the train drivers are on strike (again). We used the website to find a nice geeky looking guy because we figured he would be the safest, his name was Jens. However, to leave Jena by 4 we would need to leave to Erfurt around 2:30. My advisor didn’t come into work on Friday because he was doing a statistics work shop at another university but he left me with 60 plates of seeds to germinate (with 60 seeds per plate, that’s 3,600 seeds!) In the two previous days it had taken us about 4 hour to get it done together. In order to finish by 2:30 I decided to go in early Friday morning. I woke up at 2:30 am the next morning and worked through the whole day in order to finish by 2:30 pm (this included a 2 hour lab meeting which I wasn’t too happy about but got a nice nap out of it). We met Jens at the nearest bus stop and he drove us to Erfurt on the autobahn. At one point we were going 180 kph (112 mph) in his tiny car and I thought we were going to die. However, we made it to Erfurt safely and were able to get the car, go back to jena and pick up the other two BYU students and head out on our way.

On the way to munich we stopped in Nuremberg and walked around the town. There’s a cool castle in Nuremberg that’s been around for about 1,000 years. It’s also where Albrecht Durer (a famous painter) is from. We spent way too much time at Nuremberg so we didn’t get to our hotel near munich until midnight (a common theme for the rest of the trip). 

Brats and sauerkraut in Nuremberg.

Entering Nuremberg

The view from the castle

The castle keep