> ## Content Index > Fetch the complete content index at: https://herr-klamm.ghost.io/llms.txt > Use this file to discover other available public pages before exploring further. # Overnight on the Floor of the Nuremberg Hauptbahnhof - URL: https://herr-klamm.ghost.io/overnight-on-the-floor-of-the-nuremberg-hauptbahnhof/ - Published: 2026-10-12T07:10:21.000Z - Updated: 2026-10-12T07:10:21.000Z - Author: Stephen Bender After meeting with my former students from the Sportgymnasium Leipzig – and the surreal time we had beholding a city transformed – it was evident that finding a centrally located place to stay on the holiday Tag der Einheit would be prohibitively expensive, if available at all. So, having misbehaved at the Cafe Mephisto in preparation and being the frugal person I am, I decided to take a dirt cheap overnight train down to Munich. Thing was it involved a 4 hour layover in the town of trials. I'd only visited Nuremberg once before and that was with my parents in 1986\. It was an edifying evening, after a fashion. I met Michael on the train and we got into it. He laughed at me smoking inside the little 3 x 3 meter box alloted to those unfortunates with problems enough to smoke, as the joke goes. I was photographing all the crass advertising which festoons every other free space in German public spaces too. I thought he was bedraggled enough, holding a half empty beer bottle, to bum a smoke. Instead we hit it off as kindred spirits. We talked about societal conditioning, the necessity of psychiatry to deform the unusual among us into more convenient go-getters. He dropped out of tech something like a decade ago, which is about my timeline too. Refuse to participate in the degenerate normalizing institutions. The train arrived and we grabbed a midnight beer. It was a bit of a zoo. Lots of young people traveling, many of more modest means and of darker hue. It was like any old late nite spot in San Francisco, with a little more prostitution and a few menacing glares from the local pimps, as we were outside but not in a consumer mode. We both agreed that bottles are weapons too, and I had my bic affixed between my ring and index finger, balled fist in my pocket, if anybody got any bright ideas. It came to nothing, in large measure because it was nothing. If this is 'dangerous' Germany, it was kind of a joke. It's a scared society, exactly so as with the Czechs. Everybody's in a tizzy about the foreigners, who do the Dreckarbeit, but I guess are supposed to vanish after work. Whatever, same shit, different continent, here. It's a nation-state full up with sub rosa xenophobes, near as I could suss out. It's a Western chauvenist society, even moreso than the United States. Kind of a lot more; it's pretty blatant. I think this is in part because Germans are difficult to befriend. Now once they know you and trust you, there are no more generous people on the planet, to that I've always been able to attest. But it takes a while and it can be disspiriting in the interim. It certainly has been, when I was a young man. Seems like many just don't know their fellow Turkish et al citizens. Hell, the Wessis would rather hang out with 'any other European nationality than the East Germans'. And these are the left-liberals, who are otherwise great people! It's really weird. Doesn't it take less effort to dealienate yourself and just chat? They have Wanderlust and an interest in other cultures and cuisines, but there is a Mauer im Kopf, which I guess is just a function of not having enough friends who aren't white. Seems like it's about that simple. I mean, people are people, if you give them a chance. I think it doesn't naturally occur to them to even try? It's difficult to understand the rule-bound, rigid self-imposed segregation coming from a country where everybody of every race chats one another up with ease. Too much ease, for my taste, but then I'm half German and people think I'm aloof and imperious, because ich will nicht immer angequatcht zu sein. It's also residual Tenderloin ghost face killah face. Homeless people would tell ME to cheer up. Nobody bugs you that way. I'm wearing orange jeans, that means I'm happy and have Great Fashion Sense. Well, I prefer it in Amiland, in the end, perhaps because of this easier, if dumber, way of communicating. So Michael and I exchanged information and have corresponded since. He was off to the airport. Got the impression he travels for a living, maybe? Has a farm, made his nest, and now flies when it occurs to him. It's a good feeling to be free of the typical irritating constraints. I needed something to eat, but the Burger King was the only obvious thing which was open overnight and I was looking to avoid that (ultimately knuckled under) and the vacant affect youngins', who came off pretty dumb. But that's probably just a prejudice, until you listen to the conversations, because they're loud, and you think, oh. Gross. Most people weren't talking anyway, they were showing off to strangers by pecking and staring into their little rectal rectangles. It wasn't that eventful. The cops roust you if you fall asleep on the marble floor. So you feign regret and sleep for another half hour. The one bit of amusement came when these I guess fellow overnight passengers that didn't appear to be prostitutes got into it. Screaming bloody murder at one another, while a large man presided chit chatting with the Bahnhofpolizei. These very pretty girls, who looked like they were in grade 10 or 11, were really carrying on and a crowd was gathering, while forming a semi-circle for the circus. I refrained from photographing anything, even though it would have served a purpose here. I figured they're having a crisis and it would be declasse to record it for posterity. The police brought out a muzzled German shepherd who leapt at them and menaced them, to no avail. No arrests. The cops wrapped with these obnoxious bitches. More restraint that I would have shown, for what it's worth. It went on for well over half an hour of deescalation, which I basically support and probably the coppers don't want the hassle of paperwork at the end of a shift. Can you imaging German bureacratic Polizei paperwork? The fuzz isn't interested in adding hours to a shit overnight shift was what I reckoned. I do not blame them. Eh, the Munich train came in shortly before 5am and I headed off to the Tegernsee thereafter. It was a bucolic and peaceful contrast to the urban mess. Himmler & Co. had a boring looking villas down there, which I didn't bother looking for. Upon reflection, it was the most tedious 4 1/2 hour stretch of the entire visit. Finally got around to the new release in some detail. It does not disappoint.