I am back! But before I get to that I have to go over the things that happened earlier today. As I said yesterday there were a couple things I wanted to do, one thing being a visit to Albrecht Dürer’s house. A famous painter and book image maker, which was very rare at the time, in the late 1400’s-early 1500’s. There house is almost 600 years old, and is where the world famous artist lived, worked and died. Albrecht Dürer is one of, if not Germany’s most famous painters, and is still well revered, and has arts in museums all around the world.

About a 60 second walk from Albrecht Dürer’s house at the foot of the famous Kaiserburg (Nürnberg’s hilltop Castle) is the “Historiche Felsengänge” Or Historic Rock Tunnels. It’s a long series of underground tunnels, on multiple levels, parts of which date back to the 1400’s, that were used to store “Wein” (wine, pronounced: vine) and “Bier” (beer, pronounced beer). There is also an ice room for storing large blocks of ice. The increible thing with these tunnels is they are cut entire from rocks, sandstone and other kinds, making the creation long, painful, and arduous. Apparently the government in the past used to require beer vendors to be able to store wine and beer in these cellars in order to avoid foreign beers moving in. Over the years, more tunnels were built and connected. And of course being underground tunnels they were then used as air raid shelters when the British Air Force came to drop thousands of bombs of love… destructive, burning love, and thousands were killed. Nuremberg was a major target being an important industrial center, and important cultural center for the Nazi Party. Funnily enough I stumbled on both the entrance to the tunnels and the door to the ticket office completely unwittingly. The stairs down is in the middle of a popular courtyard, mostly hidden right behind the large statue of Albrecht. I just happened to notice the small sign pointing the way. It also listed an address, and street, and I had no idea where that was, and moments later a short ways down the street I just looked over and happened to see another sign pointing to the ticket office. Convenient! The tour was only in German, but there was a nifty audio guide. The company that does the tours is Hausbrauerei Altstadthof, and is also a brewery, that makes a unique reddish beer though it’s more of a name than the actual color. You get a quick tour through the small factory at the end, finally followed by a beer tasting, which while not great, wasn’t the worst beer I’ve had. *cough* Guinness, *cough* But then again, that’s me saying that.

After that I walked around a random area called Kaspar Hause Platz, and Kaspar Hauser Street. Well, if he’s got a plaza and a street named after him, he must have been important! For the intrigued, click here for more information on the legends and exploits of Kaspar Hauser!

After that, I got on the next train possible for the greatest city ever… well, maybe you can decide if it is or isn’t, probably isn’t. Munich! It was a long painful walk to my hotel, but after that the first thing I did is go to the biggest celebration in the world! No other event in the world brings more people! It’s actually not a long walk from my hotel which is quite nice. Last time it would have been a 2-2.5 hour walk from my hotel. Here it’s about 20 minutes.

By now it was around 8pm, and still just as fun and lively as any other time. Literally the first thing I heard when I got close was a loud yodelling, though that could have just been a recording from a ride or something. I like to think it wasn’t. The first thing I saw was 3-4 guys standing around a guy half-laying on the ground, being held up partially by his friend, with about 3 security guards around him. Yup, that’s Oktoberfest… Awesome!

Images!