Nuremberg at 5 a.m.: an hour between buses

Saving money had created one more travel connection. On the way home from Brazil, I had flown to Frankfurt rather than Prague and continued by bus. That routing roughly halved the airfare for the Brazil trip, which was a persuasive argument for tolerating a less elegant journey. It also explains how I ended up changing buses in Nuremberg at around 5 a.m., with approximately one hour to spare.

Sitting at the bus station for an hour had very little appeal. The old town was close enough for a short walk, so I headed out instead. There were a few other strangers on the streets, but generally I had this part of Nuremberg almost to myself. The recorded weather for the walk was about 20.7°C, partly cloudy and dry.

The old fortifications appeared almost immediately. Frauentorturm, the large round tower at the southern edge of the old town, marked the entrance towards the historic centre. From there I continued along Königstraße, passing the medieval St. Klara church while most doors were still closed and the pavements were nearly empty.

An hour in the dark

Frauentorturm and St. Klara on the approach into the old town, with Nuremberg still largely asleep.

A few minutes farther on, the architecture became more concentrated around Lorenzer Platz. Nassauer Haus stood opposite St. Lorenz, its sandstone walls catching the early light. It is the only surviving Romanesque tower house of its kind in Nuremberg. The pair of sundials on the corner were an easy detail to miss from a distance, but considerably harder to ignore once I was standing below them.

Across the square, St. Lorenz dominated the view. The large medieval Gothic church is difficult to fit neatly into a wide photograph from close range, which is probably part of the point. At this hour there were no crowds around the west facade, only construction barriers and the first light behind the towers. Up close, the sculpted portal was almost a separate subject in itself.

I wandered one more nearby street before turning back towards the bus connection. Restaurants were shut, tables were empty, bicycles were parked, and an advertising column stood in the middle of the otherwise quiet street.

This was not a planned visit to Nuremberg, and one hour is obviously not enough to see the city properly. It was enough, however, to turn an inconvenient bus change into a compact walk through the old town. At five in the morning, with almost nobody around, central Nuremberg briefly felt almost private.