Seeing Southern Germany: Baden-Wutenburg and Bavaria
I have written a bit about how to travel around Europe and given a bit of travel advice based on my experiences here i Europe, but I have not given much information about travel in a more local area. Also, my family was here, so I got to do a bit of traveling with them. They had a rental car, so I will not be able to give to much information on public transit for the locations I mentioned. Trains go to pretty much every town of more than a few hundred people, so getting to these locations is possible without a vehicle.
We traveled a bit on what the Germans called the “romantic road” (romantisches straße). The idea was invented by some travel agents in the 50s to promote tourism in German, and to try and change the image of German after WW2. The route does have a lot of cool spots however, but be warned all of then have a lot of tourists. So if hordes of selfie taking Chinese tourist, and groups of confused American retirees is not your jam, maybe think twice about these spots. I think they are completely worth it though. Most places you go in Europe during the summer will have a lot of tourists. The fact is Europe is the most an extremely popular tourist destination. And on top of that, Europeans travel quite a lot within the EU, as they have freedom of movement throughout 28 nations and a lot more vacation time than we do. If you just can't stand tourists, Konstanz is probably not going to be for you either. The Bodensee is very famous within German, and Konstanz is the prime tourist spot. But we are used to living in Flagstaff, which has nearly as many tourists. So if you can handle Flag, in terms of tourists, you can handle Konstanz.
One of the first places that we went was the Neuschwanstein castle. It is in an amazingly beautiful valley, and sits right at the base of the Alps. There is a reason that it is world famous, and Disney designed there castles in its image. Unfortunately, we did not get to go in and it rained pretty hard while we were there, but I would still highly recommend a visit. The university actually does an excursion there, so that is one way to get there. You can also take a train to the nearby town of Fussen, which is worth a visit all on its own. It has a nice altstadt and has nice views of the alps. The next place that we went was a town called Rothenburg ob der Tauber. The o.dTauber is important to put into a GPS, because there are 2 other Rothenberg. We found out the hard way. It is a very well preserved medieval town, city walls and all. It is one of the coolest places I have been in Germany, and really a must see if you get the chance. We were there during a renaissance fair type of festival, so that made it even more interesting. It happens every May, weather you want to catch that or miss it be aware of it. We also went to another town called Nördlingen, which is similar to Rothenburg in that it is well preserved and has a city wall. It is cool, but Rothenburg is actually a lot better in my opinion. One advantage it has is that it sits in a really beautiful landscape, which is great to do some wandering in.
Some other cool places to see in Southern German are Ulm and Stuttgart. Ulm is much smaller and has less to do, but a really cool cathedral. They claim that it is the tallest in Europe. Stuttgart is the capital of the state of Baden-Wurttemberg. A lot more modern that the other places I mentioned, so it is a good place to go to get a feel for modern Germany. It does also have some cool Castles, Cathedrals and a place. I went during the Spring Festival, frühlingsfest, which was a lot of fun. It was kind of like a mix of Oktoberfest and an American carnival. Beer halls and carnival rides in the same place always makes for a good time. It is also a good place to see Germans in traditional dress, as lederhosen and dirndl are still common things to wear to festivals. Not worn by the majority, probably at least 30-40% of the people were wearing traditional costumes. And, surprisingly, most wearing these were not drunk tourist, but actual locals!
A picture from inside Rotheburg.
An interactive art exhibit in Ulm, which apparently is the birthplace of Einstein.
Neuschanstein castle