Stanford Student Letters and Memoirs

Hi again. It's now 7 AM and I have a half hour before we leave for church to jot down some more impressions.

We worked our way across town yesterday morning, stopping at the St Lorenzkirche (St.Lawrence) and the Frauenkirche and the Marketplatz. Here in the Marketplatz is a beautiful golden tower, intricately decorated with statues and carved animals. It was built in about 1400 I think, intended to be the spire to the Frauenkirche. But it was too lovely (or too heavy) so they never put it up there, but left it in the Marketplatz. And it was almost the only thing for a couple of blocks around not flattened by the air raids (Nürnburg received only 3 raids, 20 minutes each, but the damage was fantastic. I hate to think what we did to Berlin if we hit them nearly everyday).

We ate lunch in the snow on a bench beside the wall of the old Kaiserburg (castle) next to the Hollenzollern castle which is the hostel now. We had a great view out over the city (limited in distance because it was snowing lightly). And just as we left to check in at the hostel, who should we meet but our friend from the train - it is a small world! After a quick hello to him, and checking in, we went on with our wandering. Stopped in a book store to buy prints of Albrecht Dürer sketches (very famous 16th cent. artist, who lived in Nürnburg, and is almost the city's patron saint) and some picture postcards, etc. Then we met Herr Mentler, our guide for the afternoon. He showed us first the "Hansel and Gretel Haus", about which Grimm is said to have written his tale (it looks just like in the tale too). Then we went to the city cemetery, about a block square and containing some 650,000 former residents.

He brushed snow off some of the grave stones to show us names

(Dürer the best known, also Hans Sachs, the Meistersinger, and Adam Kraft, another artist sculptor), and also little symbols for farmer, barber, iron maker, number of children, death by black plague, etc. Never thought a cemetery would be so interesting, but with his uidance it surely was.

We then wandered on through parks and over bridges to the Albrecht Dürer house and then left Herr Mentler and found a cheap restaurant in which to eat and talk over the long, full day.

More about today this evening I hope. Til then,

More Love, George