As the hour hand struck twelve, we were hoping to see cute little men dancing and drum beating to the music. Instead, there were seven Counts spinning, not dancing, around the Emperor. No music, only rings from the church bell. To soothe our disappointment, our tourist guide reminded us that we should keep in mind it was built hundreds of years ago, a time which the church was quite a great achievement. 
Before luch, we stopped at the square in front of Church Frauenkirche (Our Lady's Church). It is particularly well known for the West facade, where at noon every day a figure of Emperor Karl IV parades with his seven Counts. The little gold figure in the middle is Emperor Karl IV, the one we stood under the sun for ten minutes waiting for.
There were a lot of fruit stands as we got closer to the square. Although Taiwan is the fruit kingdom, we still wanted to see if the fruit would taste different. It must be the the same, and I bet it was because of our location that somehow made the grapes seem sweeter.
Nurmberg. Lots of great coffee shops along the sides of the streets. It would make the trip perfect if we could just slow down and order a cup of coffee and relax with the locals (or mainly the other tourists.) But you know how it was like to travel with the tourist group, always hurrying to one scenic spot to another. Anyway, we were not even at the scenic spot yet, still the local streets views were already stunning. Colorful buildings, flagged pavement and delicate-designed shop signs were so attracting to me, a country mouse in the city.
We spotted a line of taxi right after we stepped outside the train station in Nurmberg. Benz! As the matter of fact, it was quite impossible to find a taxi that was not Benz.
View from ICE. I love the red roofs and the forest. It looks exactly like the view in movies or fairy tales.
After landing at Frankfurt, we took the fastest train in Germany, Inter City Express (ICE), to Nurmberg and began our fascinating trip in Europe. Like our tourist guide said, the train trip was so smooth and cosy that we didn't feel the train was that fast at all. Not that I like to compare things in Taiwan with those abroad, but ICE did seem pretty high class with those wooden interior decoration and glass doors.
The first stop of our ten days trip to Czech and Austria was the airport (of course.) Our flight was eleven pm, so we slowly took our time to pack and make sure we got everything. Since it had been quite a long time since I last took a plane, the thirteen-hour flight was exciting. Besides taking a little nap, I finished watching almost every movie on the plane ( they have these little television on every seat now.) Those photos I took from inside the plane came out much better than I expected.
