Would You Like Some Sauerkraut With Your Lederhosen?!
Wir sind aus zum Land des Bieres und des Schnitzel! Hopefully that says “we are off to the land of beer and schnitzel.” If not, then I will have to file a complaint with babelfish. All of our flights, rentals and accommodations are booked and so we are go for launch.
With Prague and Dublin behind us, our next European adventure will bring us to my old stomping grounds, Germany, for a week. More specifically, we will be in the Schwarzwald (Black Forest) around Baden, Lahr & Freiburg, where I used to live for eight years of my childhood. We will arrive in Stuttgart where a BMW rental car will be waiting for us and, hopefully, Cindy will be able to keep her eyes upon as we travel on the Autobahn to Baden-Soellingen. I plan on checking out what the area around the old base is like now, as well as finding our old apartment. We then head to our gasthaus in the hills outside of Freiburg which will be our base camp for the next 3 nights as we explore the Schwarzwald. Also, Cindy has some friends that will be in Lahr for a wedding and so we will be meeting up with them for at least one day, and maybe an evening or two depending on the wedding schedule.
After the Schwarzwald we are heading into Bavaria next to see some mountains and Neuschwanstein Castle, the inspiration for the Disney castle. We plan on taking the mountain route to get there, weather depending, which could prove to be another adventurous driving experience for Cindy. After just a night in the Bavarian Alps, we head on up to Munich for a couple of nights, stopping at the Dachau concentration camp on the way into the city. We then park the car for 2 days (although not cheaply!) and I imagine we will walk the town during the day in order to earn our beers in the evening. Munich complete, as much as we can in 3 days & 2 nights, we head to our final stop, Esslingen am Neckar, a small, medieval town just outside of Stuttgart. We wanted somewhere close to the airport for our flight the next day but didn’t want to stay in Stuttgart itself. This little place seems to fit the bill perfectly.
With just a week-long trip, we certainly won’t see all of Germany, but we are going to have a great little trip in the southern part of the country. The next trip will have to be in the north probably, such as Berlin, Cologne & Hamburg, all places that would be new for me. Other than this German trip and the Spanish Honeymoon in October, I don’t think there will be much travel in the near future. That being said, friends of ours are planning on renting a villa in Tuscany for 2 weeks in Sept 2010 and I highly doubt we will be passing that opportunity up!
Tags: Germany, Schwarzwald, Travel
