What are some good places to visit in Germany?

Question

Thinking of vacation down the road, like next year.

Answer 1

The Black Forest, with all its fairy tales, cuckoo clocks, waterfalls...Rothenberg ob der Tauber and the Romance Road. Rothenberg is a Medieval town...the newest building is more than 500 years old. It is built on a promontory, is a walled town (except for the cliffs), is quaint, neat, all that good stuff. (Sorry, I ate a hamburger and french fries...) Their mayor, in order to save the town, drank a huge mug of beer straight down! This is reenacted throughout the year.
Ulm, in Bavaria (Bayern in Germany) has "der hocher hist" steeple church in the world (the highest). It is taller than the Washington monument. You get to climb the circular stairs to high in the steeple and look down...cars look like toys! My wife screamed! The blue Danube flows through between Ulm and Neu Ulm (army bases in Neu Ulm). In German, the Danube is the Donau. Near the banks of the Donau is the old bakery, made famous because the king ordered a dozen donuts, was shortchanged, and the baker was beheaded for his crookedness. Thus began the famous "baker's dozen"; the bakers after that gave the king 13 donuts instead of 12 to keep their heads!
All the schlosses (castles) of the "Mad King of Bavaria", including Neuschwanstein, the castle that Walt Disney used for the model of his Fantasyland castle. On the uphill side of Neuschwanstein is the Marienbrucke, or Queen Mary's bridge. Going up the trail you can get an excellent view of the Neuschanstein castle, the Hohenswangau castle (the original family castle of the Mad King's) and several lakes in the area with the alps in the back ground. The scenery is spectactular; the castles impressive; it is like a carnival atmosphere mixed with high culture! A candy store there was in a movie...
Der Zugspitze, close to those castles, the highest point in Germany. You can take a cable car up or the cogtrain. We went up by cable car, down by cogtrain. The ladies like to suntan up there! You can see lakes, the Alps, Austria, Switzerland from there. While you can ride almost to the top, if you want to go to the peak, you must climb on a trail (cables, etc., make it easy and protect we inexperienced climbers).
Munich (Munchen in German), home of more Medieval buildings, including the world-famous Clockenspiel (figures come out and dance to music...much like in a hugh cuckoo clock).
Actually, any of the towns/cities in Bayern, the Black Forest area are great to visit, with hanging flowers from the lightposts, chocolates that will make you yearn for them for the rest of your life, beer steins, Octoberfests, group hikes, boat tours on those rivers, train tour rides all over Germany (and Europe), bus tours to the various castles/Medieval towns, etc. They still have a lot of those signs that were designed when most people could not read...
My wife and I often wish we could go back there, even live there. It is so clean and neat and fun!

Answer 2

You might be interested in seeing some old gothic style cathedrals like the one in Ulm, Münster or in Cologne. Also not to be missed: the Rhine valley with its castles and the Loreley (around St. Goarshausen, Rüdesheim). Bavaria is beautiful, the mountains there, not only the higher, snowcapped ones, but also the green hills. Munich is a laidback city. Heidelberg draws lots of tourists, it's beautiful. Berlin, Germany's capital and only metropolis (with 3 million inhabitants). The North Sea coast (btw: Kiel is not situated at an ocean, the Baltic sea is a semi-enclosed sea, which doesn't mean that Rügen (an island) for example isn't nice. I wouldn't recommend it for bathing, though. Dresden also should be visited. (This may sound prejudiced towards Eastern Germans, but you should be a bit careful there at night, some of the people there you don't want to know that you're a foreigner).

I have lived in the vicinity of Frankfurt/Main for years, and honestly, I would recommend to leave it out if you don't have a lot of time, as it's not really worth visiting.

Also a lot of people here seem to confuse Germany with the Netherlands (where Amsterdam is situated). Contrary to there, it is illegal to smoke marihuana in Germany, which means you won't find any "smoke shops" (unless you look really hard for them...)

Answer 3

Where'll you hit the ground, that's basically the question. Germany has three large airports: Frankfurt, Munich, and Berlin. All of these three large cities have their fascinating and unique styles, and travelling through Germany probably will be astonishing, as almost every region is proud of themselves and people will speak a local dialect not even a native German from another region will necessarily understand.

In my opinion, you shouldn't miss Berlin, as it's Germany's capital, and the place where I lived and worked for seven years, and liked it. But, you see, that's the reason why I'm biased. Maybe some other folks will turn up here and tell you about other places that are even nicer. I won't contradict. Every region in Germany has its niceties and its oddities, and not even I, who lived here for a couple decades, didn't see them all. Just let yourself be taken by surprise.

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edit:
Alright, HamburgNETT: I didn't mention the north. I'm sure Hamburg, Kiel, Bremen, Lübeck, Rostock and all the other cities up there are NETT (nice), but, you know, I'm a southerner. Thanks for reminding me!

Answer 4

I went there summer 007, awesome month and a half...

Go see Berlin/Potsdam. DEFINATELY!!!! (so many palaces and churches/shopping metropolis' and so much history!)
-includes: Berlin wall/Checkpoint Charlie
-Sanssouci
-Charlottenburg
-Reichstag
-Berliner Dome
I can't even remember other important places there are so many!

Kiel: It's a city on the ocean with light houses and beaches. Which are very different than North American beaches! Really neat to see.

Hamburg: wasn't there much but it was interesting what I saw.

Frankfurt am Main: Kaiserstrasse (Kingstreet) was an amazingly long street from Frankfurt am Main trainstation situated in the heart of the city. There are street preformers, shops, internet cafes, oriental food, German food outlets, shopping stores galore... er... what else...

Obersdorf: You like climbing or hiking? Go climb the ALPS! Amazing if you enjoy hiking and the outdoors... There's a climbing school in a town called Obersdorf...

There's also famous castles like Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein (which Disneyland castle was modelled after)

And Saarland in Saarbruken is amazing. Parties galore in July (it's a holiday or something.)


Germany period is something you can't miss out on.

Answer 5

Actually Germanys biggest airports are Frankfurt, Munich, Duesseldorf and Hamburg - Hamburg is a great place to visit; few American tourists and it is Germany`s boomtown. Also try Stade (lovely), Lueneburg and Luebeck .....in the South Rottweil, Freiburg and Black Forrest are nice. Avoid Berlin.

Answer 6

Regensburg, Munich, Frankfurt, Parsberg, Nurnberg are nice places

Answer 7

I enjoyed Regensburg, Dresden, Munich, Nuremberg, Xantin, Berlin and Buedingen most on my trips there, but almost anywhere you go, there are interesting things to see.

Answer 8

Berlin Wall, im doing 8th grade History day projetc about berlin wall , theres memorials and everything!!

Answer 9

Only Daven mentioned it, you can't miss Dresden and the Saxon Switzerland, Dresden china was invented here and lots of other cool stuff. It's very historical and nice landscape.

http://www.dresden.de/index_en.php?PHPSESSID=5i4buve8onudfn7pkc8mjcd0f5
http://www.saechsische-schweiz.de/start/click.system?act=lang&lang=en&sid=D8tn7DI1tDTr2AjyD0Hq9MIDHK9PldLA

Answer 10

As long as you're in Germany, you can't miss Austria! Try Munich/Munchen, Innsbrook (my favorite!), Salsburg, Heidelberg, etc... just go to maps.google.com and look around Germany, it's pretty much all good. Anywhere near mountains!