{"id":2171,"date":"2013-12-10T08:30:19","date_gmt":"2013-12-10T13:30:19","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/?p=2171"},"modified":"2013-12-19T21:25:22","modified_gmt":"2013-12-20T02:25:22","slug":"nuremberg-leipzig-and-wittenberg-germany","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/2013\/12\/10\/nuremberg-leipzig-and-wittenberg-germany\/","title":{"rendered":"Nuremberg, Leipzig and Wittenberg, Germany"},"content":{"rendered":"

After our 4 days in\u00a0Munich<\/a>, we spent the next 3 days driving to\u00a0<\/span>Berlin<\/a>\u00a0with many stops on the way.\u00a0 This was perhaps the hardest part of the entire trip because at the time Sugarplum (5 months old) hated being in the car and we drove for hours listening to her high-pitched scream and most of the time couldn\u2019t do anything to soothe her.\u00a0 We took turns sitting with her but unfortunately my mom got the brunt of the baby duty so I could be up front to help hubby navigate.<\/span><\/p>\n

After departing\u00a0Munich<\/a>, our first stop was the Dachau Concentration Camp.\u00a0 I\u2019m sure it will seem strange to many people that we took our children (Honeybun was 2 \u00bd) to a concentration camp but I had visited before and knew it wasn\u2019t scary.\u00a0 Most of the buildings have been destroyed and those that remain are mostly empty though they have put in some pictures and written information.\u00a0 We have never tried to hide history or really any truth from our children, if they ask us a question we answer as truthfully as we can within the limits of their understanding.\u00a0 We had discussed death with Honeybun previously and I was amazed at how well she grasped the concept of everything. \u00a0 We did choose, however, to not take her in the crematorium and took turns viewing it so an adult could stay outside with the kids.<\/span><\/p>\n

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After Dachau we drove towards Nuremberg.\u00a0 On the way into the city we stopped at the Reichsparteitagsgel\u00e4nde which is the large rally grounds Hitler had designed (but were never finished).\u00a0 I have always been fascinated with this part of history so was really excited to go to the museum.\u00a0 It was a bit much for the girls who had already been holed up in the car for a few hours but we tried to relate it back to what they already knew about Hitler and World War II and we all got to enjoy the visit.<\/p>\n

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We then headed into Nuremberg and checked into our hotel.\u00a0 We stayed at the Burghotel, right in the Old City.\u00a0 We had to get 3 rooms as each room only sleeps 2 people so hubby took Honeybun and I took Sugarplum.\u00a0 The hotel had amazing views over the city and Castle was a short walk into the main square where the Christkindlmarkt is held.<\/p>\n

The Christkindlmarkt in Nuremberg is considered to be one of the best in Germany and we actually wandered through twice, once the night we arrived after checking into the hotel and again the next afternoon before leaving Nuremberg.\u00a0 The Christmas Markets are amazing with handmade crafts, mulled wine and traditional treats, music and tons of holiday spirit.\u00a0 The Nuremberg market was different than most of the others we visited in Germany because it is held in the old town whereas many others are held in newer areas by shopping centers and the like.\u00a0 In Nuremberg we alternated wandering through the market and warming up while browsing the shops lining the square.<\/p>\n

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The day we were in Nuremberg we visited the city\u2019s castle which sits high up on a hill and the hike up was an amusing challenge for all of us on the ice with me carrying Sugarplum in the sling and my mom who has trouble balancing and staying on her feet on flat, dry surfaces!\u00a0 When we finally made it up, the views were amazing. We did the full museum and tour including climbing up to the top of many of the towers and Honeybun really enjoyed this stop on our trip.<\/p>\n

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That afternoon (after wandering through the Christmas market again) we headed to Leipzig.\u00a0 We arrived in the evening again, checked into our hotel and headed out to the Christmas Market.\u00a0 The market in Leipzig was small and it was chilly so we also went to the Pramenaden which is the train station turned shopping center.\u00a0 Hubby and I got some Christmas shopping done, the girls were excited by the trains (it\u2019s still the city\u2019s main, working train station) and my dad was fascinated by the model train display.<\/p>\n

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I had originally put Leipzig on our itinerary to take my mom to the Bach Museum but no one was really that interested so the next morning we decided to go to the Runde Ecke museum which is in the former Stasi headquarters in Leipzig.\u00a0 The building has been largely untouched since it stopped being used in 1989.\u00a0 The museum was fascinating though a bit long for the girls since we did the audio tour (all the written signs were in German) so it took us longer to get through and though we shared our guides, the girls weren\u2019t interested in standing around as long as we needed to listen so I spent a lot of the visit discussing with Honeybun what we saw and what it all meant.<\/p>\n

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That afternoon we headed to our next stop in\u00a0Berlin<\/a>.\u00a0 We decided on the way to make an impromptu stop in Wittenberg to visit the Luterhaus where Martin Luther lived as an adult where a large portion of the protestant reformation took place.\u00a0 While I\u2019m not well educated on the reformation, the house\/museum was very interesting.\u00a0 I always love seeing how people lived in the past and seeing places where history happened.\u00a0 In addition to the rooms where Martin Luther lived and the chapel where he preached and prayed, there is also an excavated cellar which housed Luther\u2019s study, kitchen and toilet.\u00a0 We had a lot of fun exploring the ruins since no one else had ventured out into the cold and Honeybun could be a little louder and run a little.\u00a0 During this time, though, Honeybun had a strange fear of statues and I\u2019ll never forget stepping out of the elevator in the museum to a statue of Martin Luther that was the same height as Honeybun which caused fear and panic!<\/span><\/p>\n

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After our 4 days in\u00a0Munich, we spent the next 3 days driving to\u00a0Berlin\u00a0with many stops on the way.\u00a0 This was perhaps the hardest part of the entire trip because at the time Sugarplum (5 months old) hated being in the car and we drove for hours listening to her high-pitched scream and most of the […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-2171","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-tiny-travellers"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=2171"}],"version-history":[{"count":15,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":2449,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/2171\/revisions\/2449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=2171"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=2171"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.beyondmommying.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=2171"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}