Felix, Gisela, and myself went to Nürnberg riding on a historic train. The locomotive was a “German Crocodile”. These were build from 1940-1945 and 1954-1956, have 6 axles, are electrically powered and pretty heavy. Top speed is somewhere between 90-100 km/h. The cars were also somewhat prehistoric, and rattled and shook a lot.
In Nürnberg, we met my mother, and went on to visit the beer cellars. The cellars were carved into the ground over a period of 500 years starting in the 14th century with the last one constructed in 1870. Their purpose was to store beer which used to be consumed in large quantities. The average per capita consumption in Germany was 500 liters per year. This number includes children who were served beer starting from the age of 2 years. Today, the per capita consumption dwindled down to a mere 100 liters per year.
The beer used to be cooled by ice blocks that were cut out from the local rivers in winter, and brought down. Slowly melting they would last until summer. This limitation in cooling capacity allowed for beer brewing only in winter (as no ice could be produced). With the invention of the cooling machine in the late 19th century, store houses were build and the tunnels were of lesser interest.
The interest was renewed during WWII when the cellars were setup as air-raid shelters, and many tunnels were dug to connect the once separated cellars to a huge network. This gave additional exits in case burning houses collapsed on entrances or fire storm consuming the air did not allow to leave a particular part of the cellar network. Around 50000 people survived the hail storms of bombs in WWII in the cellars. After the war, they were shortly used to house beer again. That was given up in the 1950s. Today, they used for cultural events of the city of Nürnberg, such as readings of writers and poets.
After the visit, we had some ice cream next to Hauptmarket, before we catched a train back to Stuttgart.
