Nürnberg

I actually went to this city twice, the weekend before going to Salzburg and again the day after :) The second time was supposed to be with the i-club but they cancelled it because they only had 9 people sign up. Since you can get a train ticket for you and four friends to go anywhere in Bavaria for only $5 each, we decided to go anyways. Honestly, if any more than 5 people went it would have been dreadful. There were so many people (the Nürnberg Christmas market is the most famous) that even with only five we kept losing each other in the aisles of the market. Right across the street from the train station is this tiny, walled-in block of workshops with a medieval type tower. We stopped in here to look around and try the famous "Nürnberger Rostbratwurst."

This was the street to the Christmas market. Straight madness.

It was this packed everywhere we went, but it was also really nice. No wind chill. And the aisles of the market were full of Lebkuchen and Glühwein and ornaments.

Explosion of Lebkuchen:

Glüwein:

They have essentially every flavor of glühwein imaginable, and "Eierpunsch" is eggnog, which I stayed far way from.

and explosion of ornaments:

They also had a children's section with rides and a men's choir singing in front (or behind?) this church.

Since I had been there before I was in charge of navigating us to the Christmas market, a.k.a. follow the giant throng of tourists, but with all the zig-zagging back and forth in the aisles I couldn't tell you the orientation of the market to the rest of the city.

Instead of getting glühwein from one of the several at the market, we opted to go in a nice, warm cafe and enjoy it there, while thawing out our fingers, and faces. While in the cafe we started playing a game on my friend's phone where you have to identify company logos, which I'm a little ashamed to say I was remarkably good at. Then we hurried back to the train station so we wouldn't have to take the three hour long train back to Munich, but we did have to stand the whole way :/ 

Our "hurrying" that week though was nothing compared to the almost full mile we had to run back to the train station the week before, and then sprint through the train station with two minutes to go, ending with us successfully hopping into the bike compartment :) at least we didn't run for days and THEN still miss the train. I might have cried. The week before we also walked up to the Nürnberg Castle (always on a hill) and got to look out over the city, which was a very nice view and also had a massive Christmas tree that looked like it came directly from the forest.

All in all, it was very Christmas-y and very cute. It was also cold and a little bit snowy at one point, the way I've never experienced Christmas before :)