The latest Tatort, on March 1, was set in Nuremberg and Fürth. I think there have been several but I have only glimpsed a bit till now. I watched the whole of this one. It’s available on the Mediathek until the end of August 2020.

Die Nacht gehört Dir

The music was done very well – see link above for details, including Fratres by Arvo Pärt.

The bizarre thing to me was that we saw a bit of Fürth but Fürth wasn’t mentioned. The whole setup was seen as greater Nuremberg. The flat where the victim lived was in Hornschuchpromenade, the street where the original railway used to run, now with big trees all along it and magnificent buildings on both sides (the other side is Königswärtersstraße). The interior scenes were not shot there. There were a lot of scenes, too many perhaps, of people driving along the Fürther Straße from Nuremberg to Fürth and back. There was also a flat near Jakobinenstraße. The Hauptmarkt in Nuremberg, the castle and Plärrer were shown. Better weather than we have now.

Here’s a photo of my downstairs neighbours for many years, Dieter and Jutta Mund, who ran Elektro Götz in Fürth (they don’t actually live there) but have to close on March 31st, which means this Saturday will be their last trading day. I took the photo in October 2016 and I’m sorry I will not be able to visit them in their shop again.

The kind of shop where if you want a vacuum cleaner bag replacement you will be given full details of the function and price of several manufacturers.

No doubt buying online has meant that a shop of that kind can’t make ends meet nowadays. I am surprised they managed so long!

Many thanks to Ralph Stenzel for keeping me informed.

Elektro Götz in FürthWiki

Fürther Freiheit

Hans Beck, who invented the Playmobil figures, used to be my landlord in Fürth, so I must report: Martin Luther toy becomes fastest selling Playmobil figurine of all time

National Express to run Nuremberg’s overground urban trains

12-year contract is first time German national rail company Deutsche Bahn has lost a big S-Bahn franchise

People in the UK don’t usually believe that British companies take over property in Germany – the tabloids give them the idea that it only happens the other way round.

I note that although the Fürth Oberbürgermeister, Thomas Jung (the only mayor I know who you can wave to in the street and he waves back), has had trouble with Deutsche Bahn for years – they are trying to drive the Nuremberg-Fürth line in a new direction through farmland, and are not keen to pay for the upkeep of Fürth railway station – he seems less than happy for Britishers to take over a German railway.

Streit um neuen S-Bahn-Betreiber: “NX weiß, wo Vach liegt”

Er befürchte bei der Umstellung „über Monate größte Verwerfungen“, sagte Jung ins Mikrofon, und weiter: “Neue Gesellschafter aus England – keine Ahnung, ob die überhaupt wissen, wo ein Bahnhof Vach oder ein Bahnhof Großgründlach liegen.”

Jung seemed only slightly mollified to hear that Tobias Richter, the head of National Express’s German subsidiary, is a Franconian, trained at Vach, worked from Fürth Hauptbahnhof for four years and knows that there is no station at Großgründlach now.

The local railway in the Nuremberg-Fürth-Erlangen conurbation is a fairly new enterprise. It has always been a real pain for students and others to commute from Nuremberg or Fürth to Erlangen – sometimes in the past standing in corridor trains. However, I hope National Express does well. I have stopped coming home late at night on their c2c Fenchurch Street trains as they are full of slightly inebriated people travelling to Essex and eating beefburgers, chips and curries. The District Line does have its virtues.