Elise and I got up early on Saturday morning so Radek could take us to the metro station to catch our bus to Nürnberg. We exchanged hugs and lots of “thank you’s” and reminded Radek that he and his family are always welcome to stay with us when they come to Austin (which we’re hoping will be soon). And before we knew it, our luggage was loaded onto the bus and we were on our way headed west out of Prague.
Three hours of slowly cruising through the Czech and eastern German countryside and while being subjected to the two ladies behind us complain about hot it was and how yummy the cookies were, we finally arrived in Nürnberg. Our flight out from Frankfurt wasn’t until Sunday morning, so we decided to stay in Nürnberg for a few hours instead of catching our scheduled train to Frankfurt. We walked into the train station and rescheduled our connecting train to Frankfurt with Deutsche Bahn, rented a locker to store our luggage and headed out on foot.
We headed about as far north as time would allow us (we only had ~4 hours) and took a quick foot tour of the exterior of the Kaiserburg Castle, hauptmarkt and a hour tour of the toy museum (Spielzeugmuseum), which was probably my favorite part. We also stopped in at Das Bratwursthäusle for some Nürnbergers (delicious finger-sized bratwurst) with potatoes, sauerkraut, rolls, pretzels and white wine mustard. We also did some souvenir and gift shopping and bought a bag of huge German gingerbread cookies (which puts those that us Americans are used to to shame).
Four hours went by quickly and it was time for us to start heading back to the train station. We hopped on our train and again headed west toward Frankfurt. It was a slow-going train ride with lots of stops in between. Deutsche Bahn’s Intercity-Express (ICE) is so much nicer and faster than the commuter rail, which is what we took on the way into Nürnberg when we first arrived.
Tired and ready to just get some sleep, we found a hotel near the train station, settled in and repacked our luggage for our flight the next morning. I don’t think we got to bed until 1 a.m. and had to wake up at 6 a.m. to catch the train to the Frankfurt airport.
Four movies and 10 hours in the air and we were finally back in Texas. Customs was a breeze at DFW and we were soon in the car and headed back to Austin. We got home just in time to be greeted by Steve, Joanne and Maly, took our bags into the house and turned around to take Maly trick or treating in the neighborhood.
Overall it was a great trip. I wish it could have been a little longer so we could have spent more time in Germany, but that’s just our excuse to go back some day.
Photos from our last day of travel can be seen here.