Saturday 7 September: Nuremberg

Todays we've enjoyed a delightful "sailing day".  Some information we were given by Gudren, our Cruise Director:

The Canal climbs 175 metres to the watershed at 406 metres, then descends 67 metres. 
Water is pumped into the Canal from the Danube.
Locks are located at various intervals to raise and lower the ships.
Each lock is 187 metres long and 12 metre wide.
200,000 tons of concrete were used for each lock.
350,000 tons of steel were used for each lock.
It cost 54 million Euros to build the canal.

Turn your head to the right!

The locks are owned by the Bavarian government and there are attempts to privatise the locks.  Therefore, the civil servants who are currently employed to manage the locks are going to strike as of Monday.  We should be out of the locks by Sunday, but we've got our fingers crossed that they don't decide to strike from Sunday instead of Monday. 

We're also keeping our fingers crossed that they don't decide to include the Rhine River as well as the Danube River.  As a result, the captain's going to try to get to Kitzingen on the Mein by 6 o'clock instead of 7 o'clock as insurance against the employees striking early.

A lock at Hilpoltstein

We disembarked the ship at Nuremberg for our tour.  We were bussed to the site where Hitler addressed the thousands in what is now referred to as the Zeppelin Field. It's mainly a huge grandstand which we unfortunately weren't able to climb due to lack of time and mobility of other members of our group. Albert Speer was an architect who did a lot of work for Hitler and this was one of his first works.  The swastika was blown from the top of the grandstand in 1945 and the zeppelin reference is from Ferdinand Graf von Zeppelin who landed his airship there in 1909.

Zeppelin Field Grandstand

From there we were bussed to the courthouse where the trials took place against those who perpetrated those dreadful crimes of WWII. 

Nuremberg Courtroom # 600

It was interesting to learn that the IMT wasn't convened to mete out punishment for the Holocaust alone - the tribunal was designed to document and redress crimes committed in the course of the most massive conflict the world has ever known.

 

In October 1945, the Nuremberg defendants were formally indicted on four counts: crimes against peace, war crimes, crimes against humanity, and conspiracy to commit those crimes.  It was quite chilling to be in the same place as those who were there in 1945.

We didn't feel like we quite got a true feel for Nuremberg as time was so limited. Next time!