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Weekend Wanderlust: How to travel the world without leaving Germany

The corona crisis means that the big wide world may have to wait this summer and be replaced with trips around Germany. But which places can still give you the feeling of being abroad?

Published: 15 May 2020 14:24 CEST
Updated: 5 June 2020 14:51 CEST
Weekend Wanderlust: How to travel the world without leaving Germany
Outstanding rock formations in Saxon Switzerland. Source: Sächsische Schweiz e.V./DPA
In the time of a pandemic, warnings and precautions mean that many holiday destinations remain unreachable for German residents for the time being.
 
 
You can, of course, still enjoy international cuisine at home or from restaurants while daydreaming about far-flung destinations. Or you can marvel at the exotic animals in the zoo and get the feeling of being in Australia with koalas in Duisburg, Dresden or Leipzig. 
 
But when it comes to having a deeper experience in different surroundings, an excursion within Germany could also help to transport you abroad. Here is a selection of places, which can offer that feeling of escapism:
 
Berlin: Although the capital is sometimes nicknamed “Athens on the Spree”, with its hipster hotspots, celebrity scene and wide expanse, it is more like Germany's answer to Los Angeles – Lake Müggelsee would be Venice Beach, Wannsee Malibu and Grunewald Beverly Hills.
 
 

Frankfurt: Continuing the theme of bringing the US to Germany, the skyline and stock exchange of Frankfurt in Hesse brings to mind another obvious comparison – Germany's New York. The Eiserne Steg (iron footbridge) as Brooklyn Bridge, the Main River as the East River – all of course on a slightly smaller scale than in North America.

Mainhattan – Frankfurt on the river Main is Germany's answer to NYC. Source: DPA

Hamburg: English-looking rows of houses, residents who love an understated style – and the Beatles started their careers here. No German metropolis is more British than Hamburg. The city of the Reeperbahn and the Elbphilharmonie could pass as the German London.

READ ALSO: Meet the Beatles superfan keeping the Fab Four alive in Hamburg

Bad Homburg: The casino at the gates of Frankfurt advertises itself as the “Mother of Monte Carlo” and with its high number of wealthy inhabitants, the nearby region of Taunus could be seen as Germany’s Monaco – just with a low mountain range instead of the Mediterranean.

Munich: The northernmost city in Italy likes to call itself Munich – and the city’s Odeonplatz looks very much like an Italian piazza. Monaco di Baviera (the Italian name for Munich) could therefore be a great domestic replacement for Florence, Rome, Rimini, Verona, Bologna, Turin, Trieste, Milan or Siena.

Harz: With their forests, high peaks and lakes, Germany's low mountain ranges are reminiscent of Scandinavia. A sense of being in Norway or Sweden is particularly strong in Harz. In the Hahnenklee-Bockswiese district of Goslar there is even a typically Norwegian stave church.

The Krämer Bridge in Erfut. Source: ZB

Erfurt and Dresden: The Krämer Bridge in Erfurt, Thuringia’s capital, is a bridge with buildings on both sides just like the Ponte Vecchio over the Arno in the Italian city of Florence. But it is actually Dresden which is nicknamed “the Florence on the Elbe”.

Wiesbaden and Cologne: Sophisticated architecture, historical buildings – Hesse's state capital of Wiesbaden is a bit like Germany's Paris. Or those craving the French capital may prefer to visit Cologne – its huge cathedral is reminiscent of Notre-Dame – and is even undamaged

READ ALSO: Weekend Wanderlust: Getting my feet wet in Wiesbaden

Görlitz: With its well-preserved buildings from different eras, this city on the Polish border has already been featured in many films, standing in for New York, Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Paris, and Heidelberg. “The Grand Budapest Hotel” was just one of the many films shot here.

Berchtesgaden: In Hitler’s time, this Alpine town served as a kind of second seat of government. Because the city is comparatively low – only around 600 meters high – the neighbouring Watzmann mountain with its height of 2700 meters, looks almost as powerful as the Matterhorn does next to the Swiss town of Zermatt.

The Watzmann mountain overlooks the alpine town of Berchtesgarten. Source: tmn

Potsdam: Amongst other attractions, this former Prussian residence city has a Dutch quarter and is otherwise known as the city of palaces and gardens, which are reminiscent of Versailles, Vienna, Saint Petersburg or even Italy.

Uckermark: With its hilly landscape, this area is sometimes called the Tuscany of the North. Just under an hour's drive north of Berlin, the Chancellor Angela Merkel also has a dacha (a Russian country house) in Hohenwalde, a municipality in Milmersdorf.

Switzerland: Saxon Switzerland, Franconian Switzerland, Märkische Switzerland, Elfringhauser Switzerland (NRW), Dithmarscher Switzerland (Schleswig-Holstein) – there are dozens of Swiss-place names throughout Germany, although not all of them live up to their name. Whatever. 

READ ALSO: Scenery as far as the eye can see in Saxon Switzerland

Chalk cliffs on the Island of Rügen in Mecklenburg-Western Pomerania. Source: dpa-Zentralbild

The sea: Thanks to the climate, Binz near the Baltic Sea will never replace Bali and Sylt is no substitute for Saint-Tropez. And Kiel, the capital of Schleswig-Holstein, is not much of a Barcelona either. The pretty islands and towns of the Baltic Sea and North Sea are beautiful in a different way to Mallorca, Ibiza, Sicily, Crete and Co.

World travel via place names: You don't have to fly thousands of kilometers to Brazil, because Germany has places with names from all over the world.

There are several Amerikas, a Jerusalem in Neuenkirchen (in Lüneburg Heide), Siberia in Elmshorn near Hamburg, Greenland in Sommerland near Itzehoe, California in Schönberg on the Bay of Kiel, Siberia in Elmshorn near Hamburg, in Emkendorf (and also Schleswig-Holstein) and in Mohrkirch, south of Flensburg, you can find Sweden and Norway. 

And the name Brazil not only denotes the country in South America, but also a beach on the Baltic Sea. 

If that's not enough, you can go on a world trip in Schleswig-Holstein, Germany's most northernmost state. There is a village there called Welt (world) – with just 200 inhabitants.

Travel to the end of the world and still be in Germany. Source: dpa

Translated by Sarah Magill

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DISCOVER GERMANY

Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

With thousands of years of history in Germany to explore, you’re never going to run out of museums to scratch the itch to learn about and fully experience the world of the past.

Published: 5 April 2024 10:46 CEST
Eight amazing German museums to explore this spring

Here are eight of our favourite museums across Germany’s 16 states for you to discover for yourself. 

Arche Nebra

Nebra, Saxony-Anhalt

One day, around 1600 BCE, local Bronze Age peoples buried one of their most precious objects – the Nebra Sky Disk, a copper, gold, and bronze disk that acted as a calendar to help them plant crops. This was a matter of life and death at the time. 

Over three thousand years later, in 1999, it was uncovered by black market treasure hunters, becoming Germany’s most significant archaeological find. 

While the Sky Disk itself is kept in the (really very good)  State Museum of Pre- and Early History in nearby Halle, the site of the discovery is marked by the Arche Nebra, a museum explaining prehistoric astronomy and the cultural practices of the people who made it. 

Kids will love the planetarium, explaining how the disk was used. 

Atomkeller Museum

Halgerloch, Baden-Württemberg

From the distant to the very recent past – in this case, the Nazi atomic weapons programme. Even as defeat loomed, Nazi scientists such as Werner Heisenberg were trying to develop a nuclear bomb. 

While this mainly took place in Berlin, an old beer cellar under the town of Halgerloch, south of Stuttgart, was commandeered as the site of a prototype fission reactor. 

A squad of American soldiers captured and dismantled the reactor as the war ended. Still, the site was later turned into a museum documenting German efforts to create a working reactor – one that they could use to develop a bomb.

It’s important to note that you don’t need to be a physicist to understand what they were trying to do here, as the explanatory materials describe the scientist’s efforts in a manner that is easy to understand. 

German National Museum

Nuremberg, Bavaria

Remember that scene at the end of ‘Raiders of the Lost Ark’, where an unnamed government official wheels the Ark of the Covenant into an anonymous government warehouse? This could possibly be the German equivalent – albeit far better presented. 

The German National Museum was created in 1852 as a repository for the cultural history of the German nation – even before the country’s founding. In the intervening 170 years, it’s grown to swallow an entire city block of Nuremberg, covering 60,000 years of history and hundreds of thousands of objects. 

If it relates to the history of Germany since prehistoric times, you’re likely to find it here.

Highlights include several original paintings and etchings by Albrecht Dürer, the mysterious Bronze Age ‘Gold Hats’, one of Europe’s most significant collections of costuming and musical instruments, and a vast display of weapons, armour and firearms. 

European Hansemuseum

Lübeck, Schleswig-Holstein

In the late Middle Ages, the political and economic centre of the world was focused on the North Sea and the Baltic German coasts. 

This was the domain of the Hanseatic League, one of the most powerful trading alliances in human history. Centuries before the Dutch and British East India Companies, they made in-roads to far-flung corners.

The European Hansemuseum in the former Hanseatic city of Lübeck tells the story of the league’s rise and eventual fall, its day-to-day operations, and its enduring legacy.

This museum is fascinating for adults and kids. It uses original artefacts and high-tech interactive elements to tell tales of maritime adventure. Younger visitors will also be enchanted by the museum’s augmented reality phone app that asks them to help solve mysteries. 

Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum

Augsburg, Germany

The Hanseatic League was not the only economic power in the late Middle Ages. The Fugger and Welser families of Augsburg may have been the richest in the world until the 20th century.

From humble beginnings, both families grew to become incredibly powerful moneylenders, funding many of the wars of the 16th century and the conquest of the New World.

The Fugger & Welser Adventure Museum not only explains the rise of both patrician families but also the practices that led to their inconceivable wealth—including, sadly, the start of the Transatlantic slave trade. 

The museum also documents the short-lived Welser colony in Venezuela, which, if it had survived, could have resulted in a very different world history.

This museum has many high tech displays, making it a very exciting experience for moguls of any age.

Teutoburg Forest Museum

Kalkriese, Lower Saxony

Every German child learns this story at some point: One day at the end of summer 9 AD, three legions of the Roman army marched into the Teutoburg forest… and never came out. 

Soldiers sent after the vanished legions discovered that they had been slaughtered to a man.

Arminius, a German who had been raised as a Roman commander, had betrayed the three legions to local Germanic tribes, who ambushed them while marching through the forest. 

Today, the probable site of the battle – we can’t entirely be sure – is marked by a museum called the Varusschlacht Museum (Literally ‘Varus Battle Museum’, named after the loyal Roman commander). 

The highlights here are the finds – made all the more eerie by the knowledge that they were looted and discarded from the legionaries in the hours following the ambush. 

German Romanticism Museum

Frankfurt, Hesse

The Romantic era of art, music and literature is one of Germany’s greatest cultural gifts to the world, encompassing the work of poets such as Goethe and Schiller, composers like Beethoven and artists in the vein of Caspar David Friedrich.

Established in 2021 next to the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe was born, the German Romanticism Museum is the world’s largest collection of objects related to the Romantic movement. 

In addition to artefacts from some of the greatest names in German romanticism, in 2024, you’ll find a major exhibition exploring Goethe’s controversial 1774 novel, ‘The Sorrows of Young Werther’, and another on the forest as depicted as dark and dramatic in the art of the period. 

Gutenberg Castle

Haßmersheim, Baden-Württemberg

Sometimes being a smaller castle is a good thing. The relatively small size and location of Guttenburg Castle, above the River Neckar near Heilbronn, protected it from war and damage over eight hundred years – it’s now the best preserved Staufer-era castle in the country.

While the castle is still occupied by the Barons of Gemmingen-Guttenberg, the castle now also contains a museum, that uses the remarkably well-preserved castle interiors to explore centuries of its history – and the individuals that passed through it.

After you’ve explored the museum—and the current exhibition that uses Lego to document life in the Middle Ages —it’s also possible to eat at the castle’s tavern and stay overnight!

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