Two, Much Germany

Did I mention that Germans love their cars? Sure, we in the US have a love affair with the automobile, but ours is different. Our cars are about freedom and power: hulking, intimidating vehicles that, if need be, you can live in on your rambling three week drive across the US. Engine blocks big enough to tinker with yourself without taking the whole thing apart – crucial for when you break down outside Bakersfield.

You can cross Germany comfortably in 10 hours. German cars are light & efficient. Germans love them for their technical refinement and precision. You can’t take these cars apart yourself – they have to fit together *just* so. If something goes wrong, you have to call Heinz, your mechanic, and get your wallet ready.

The German model is winning, if you haven’t noticed. American boys don’t tinker around on their cars anymore. Ask your kid what a carburetor is: used to be your average 10 year old could rebuild one. Now they think it’s a menu item at Taco Bell. Only old fogies still love their cars for what they stand for – Springsteen’s “I swear I found the key to the universe” line was written 45 years ago. Your grandchildren won’t even get a license, they’ll just ask their Apple car to get them somewhere. Or, they won’t even bother going. Who needs to visit the Grand Canyon, it’s available in VR? They’ll mark their freedom in how much wifi access they have.

Wait, this is still a travel blog, right? Back to our story. Germans love their cars, so it’s no wonder that they designate their major tourist sites as “Strassen” – roads. Germans want you to get into your car and drive (fine, you can do it by train, see previous post). It’s not a hub & spoke system like staying in London, or a circuit like the Irish Kerry Ring.  You’re supposed to go from point A to point B, and experience things along the way. It’s the travel version of a Bildungsroman.

Appropriately, the most famous German route is The Romantic Road. The translation suffers here: this isn’t romantic, like a week at a Sandals resort. The German is Die Romantische Strasse, and they’re thinking along the lines of literary romanticism. A brief refresher – this is literature that stresses the imagination and emotion. That’s what you wanted when you were squeezed into a coal-fueled factory for 16 hours a day, and that’s what Germans found in the half-timbered villages and walled towns along the DRS.

The DRS starts (or ends, depending on your PoV) at our old friend, Neuschwanstein, and runs to Würzburg maybe a couple hundred miles north. Though I prefer its slightly less touristy neighbor, Dinkelsbühl, the high point is considered Rothenburg ob der Tauber, about midway along the route.

I remember once visiting the frigate USS Constitution moored in Boston. The tour guide described the constant maintenance that was necessary on a vessel like that – he estimated the woodwork had all been swapped out four times over the life of the ship. I got to wondering – am I standing on the actual USS Constitution, or is this really just a replica? What does continuity mean anyway? When I visit Rothenburg, it looks like a medieval town, but surely in the last 500 years buildings have been gutted, facades rebuilt, whole blocks razed and recreated. I mean, it’s cute to stay in a 400 year old inn, but you wouldn’t want to do it unless it had undergone some renovation, right? So, what does it mean for a medieval town to be “authentic”? For that matter…I remember hearing as a kid that the atoms in our bodies are constantly changing out – that we swap out our entire bodies’ atoms every seven years or so. What does that really mean – am I still me? Am I a totally different creature from, say, 10 years ago?

Ahem. Sorry, but these are the sort of thoughts that are bound to pop into your head as you travel the melancholy Romantic Road, even in memory. Be prepared for having your kids look at you quizzically as you stare off into the distance.

Maybe you don’t want to consider the universe, and you place in it? Maybe you just want to have a few days of fun and relaxation. Good times, noodle salad.  If so, then consider the German Wine Road. Die Deutsche Weinstrasse runs parallel  to the Rhine (though not immediately next to it) in Germany’s western region, close to where the border with France takes a sharp left turn on the map. DDW is certainly a poorer version of, say, a drive through Champagne, and it’s much shorter than most other designated touring routes. Let’s face it, German wines are only in moderate regard. That doesn’t mean you can’t get some excellent ones, and the scenery is breathtaking: flowered villages set among leafy vineyards. The route is even better if you pair it to a drive along the Moselle River, which is close to the northern end of DDW. The Moselle is truly spectacular: it’s regularly featured in marketing materials, with good reason. Cochem is not to be missed, dominated by a picture book castle. Tip from my wife – sign up for the falconry display, your kids will get a kick out of seeing how these birds were used for hunting. The Cochem castle has this, and I’d bet many others do, too.

That’s what you really want, right? I mean, you can drag your kids to one Weinstube after another, but they’ll get bored while you get tipsy. Castles are fun for all ages, and luckily, Germany has a route for that too. Die Deutsche Burgenstrasse bisects north and south Germany, from Heidelberg all the way to the Czech border and into Prague.  The most lovely stretch is considered to run along the Neckar valley from Heidelberg to Heilbronn, but you would do well to choose to see then entire stretch as one vacation. You’ll get a lot of variation in the process – you’ll cover several German states along the way, not even counting the dip into the Czech Republic. And the scenery is marvelous.

If north-south is your preference, another option is the German Fairy Tale Road. Like Die Romantische Strasse, the translation of Die Maerchenstrasse is a bit off. This road takes you through the region of Germany that the Grimm Brothers mined for their fairy tale collection – it’s not necessarily dotted with actual fairy tale-like sights. Some towns play up their association – there’s a village that claims to be the origin for the Pied Piper tale, and so have adopted the rat as their town symbol, you see little rat footprints in the sidewalk meant guide you along the town. But I think of this road more as a curiosity for the philologist, or cultural historian: the towns along the route are actually functional, and hence less fairy-tale than the deliberately touristy roads on the romantic road.

The forests that gave birth to many of the fairy tales have largely been razed, too – you’ll find more farms than anything along the DMS. That’s OK, since we tend to associate tales like Hanzel & Gretel with Germany’s premier forest, the Schwarzwald. I won’t go into this one now, since that’s where I’ll be heading in a few weeks: you’ll get a full account soon. Just know that I consider it to be chock full of the fun activities for the whole family. As they say: Stay tuned.