About the Authors

Ever since packing his bag and leaving North Carolina, Christopher N. Anderson (chapters 6, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11, 12, 13, 15) has accumulated over thirteen years of traveling and writing experience. From crossing Siberia and sailing the Caribbean, to teaching English in Russia, Brazil, Switzerland, Austria and France, his diverse experiences have provided excellent fodder for his writing, featured in publications such as the Vienna Review, Frommer’s and Yanks Abroad. In addition to his traveling exploits, he has earned a Master’s in International Relations and speaks fluent French and German along with conversational Italian, Portuguese, Spanish, and Russian. More recently, he covered and reported live from the FIFA World Cup in South Africa.

Half-Swiss, half-American, Caroline Sieg’s (chapters 2, 4, 5, 14, 16, 17, 18, 19) relationship with Germany began with childhood trips to Munich to visit her Polish-German aunt. Later, she visited Berlin for the first time in 1989—two weeks after the Berlin Wall fell—and obtained her own piece of the wall. Later, she lived in Berlin and explored the often-overlooked northern part of the country. These days, she hangs her hat in London, but visits Germany as often as possible to indulge in Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee and cake), sniff out the best currywurst and explore the latest gallery opening.

Frommer’s Star Ratings, Icons & Abbreviations

Every hotel, restaurant, and attraction listing in this guide has been ranked for quality, value, service, amenities, and special features using a star-rating system. In country, state, and regional guides, we also rate towns and regions to help you narrow down your choices and budget your time accordingly. Hotels and restaurants are rated on a scale of zero (recommended) to three stars (exceptional). Attractions, shopping, nightlife, towns, and regions are rated according to the following scale: zero stars (recommended), one star (highly recommended), two stars (very highly recommended), and three stars (must-see).

In addition to the star-rating system, we also use seven feature icons that point you to the great deals, in-the-know advice, and unique experiences that separate travelers from tourists. Throughout the book, look for:

special finds—those places only insiders know about

fun facts—details that make travelers more informed and their trips more fun

kids—best bets for kids, and advice for the whole family

special moments—those experiences that memories are made of

overrated—places or experiences not worth your time or money

insider tips—great ways to save time and money

great values—where to get the best deals

The following abbreviations are used for credit cards:

AE American Express

DISC Discover

V Visa

DC Diners Club

MC MasterCard

Saxony & Thuringia

Traveling in regions of the former East Germany is a fulfilling experience. Once difficult to visit, famous cities have been beautifully revived and are inviting and less touristy than some of the picturesque towns in southern Germany. Notable examples include Dresden, destroyed during World War II and poignantly restored, at least in part; Leipzig, where Johann Sebastian Bach spent most of his musical life as cantor (choirmaster) of St. Thomas Church; Meissen, famous for exquisite porcelain; and Weimar, glowing from its recent designation as a European City of Culture. In addition, unspoiled scenery and medieval towns such as Quedlinburg invite you to wander off the beaten track.

Since reunification, many visitors have come from around the world to explore the political landscape and to honor the memory of the intellectual giants who once made eastern Germany their home—Goethe, Luther, Bach, Schiller, and Brecht, among others. Hotels are being built, tourist facilities are being developed, and getting around eastern Germany is easier than ever. Some 1,600km (1,000 miles) of autobahns and about 11,000km (7,000 miles) of secondary highways cut across the region.

But travelers should be aware that the economy is weaker than in western Germany, and eastern Germany is still a region in transition. The best guess is that it will take 10 to 15 more years before eastern Germany’s infrastructure is comparable to western Germany’s. The upside of this is that you’ll find some of Germany’s most unspoiled countryside and untouched villages, where rural traditions that have disappeared from most of western Europe still linger. Outside Dresden or Leipzig, you can still see many old towns that have not succumbed to the Americanization you can find in most of western Germany. Drenched in history and medieval legend, the towns of Weimar and Wittenberg, home to Goethe and Martin Luther, give you a view of Germany that has been swept away in the more modern parts of the country. A visit can provide you with unforgettable new experiences and stories to tell your grandchildren.

Weimar ★★

Saxony & Thuringia

Weimar

260km (162 miles) SW of Berlin, 22km (14 miles) E of Erfurt

Weimar, a beautiful 1,000-year-old town on the edge of the Thuringian Forest, is an important destination for those interested in German history and culture. Unlike many cities in the former East Germany, Weimar retains much of its old flavor: Many of its important historical monuments were spared bombing in World War II. Its atmospheric, narrow, winding streets, lined with houses with high-pitched gabled roofs, seem left over from the Middle Ages. A 19th-century writer called Weimar “one of the most walkable towns of Europe,” and it still fits into that category.

Weimar’s history as a cultural center is centuries old. Famed Renaissance painter Lucas Cranach the Elder worked here in the 16th century. From 1708 to 1717, Bach was court organist. In 1775, the great Goethe came to reside at the court of “Dowager Duchess” Anna Amalia and her son, Karl August II, and he attracted such notables as Herder and Schiller. Later in the 19th century, Franz Liszt was musical director of the National Theater; under his auspices, Wagner’s Lohengrin had its first performance. It was also in Weimar that the German national assembly met in February 1919, in the aftermath of World War I, to draw up the constitution for what was to be called the Weimar Republic.

Essentials

Getting There

By Train Weimar Hauptbahnhof is on the major Deutsche Bundesbahn rail lines, which link Erfurt and Leipzig with Dresden. There are frequent daily connections in both directions. Trains from Berlin travel via Leipzig. For rail information and schedules, call 01805/996633 or visit www.bahn.de.

By Bus Regional buses to all parts of the city and the surrounding area are run by Verkehrsgesellschaft Weimar ( 03643/24200).

By Car Access is via the E40 Autobahn east and west.

Visitor Information

Head for Tourist-Information Weimar, Am Markt 10 ( 03643/7450;www.weimar.de). The office is open Monday to Friday 9:30am to 6pm, Saturday and Sunday 9:30am to 2pm.

Exploring Weimar

Weimar enjoys a scenic location on the Ilm River, set against the backdrop of the Ettersberg and Vogtland hills. The city has many popular sights, but perhaps the best thing to do here is simply wander about on foot. A walk at night through the old streets that once felt the footsteps of Goethe, Bach, Wagner, and Schiller is particularly rewarding.

The town’s main square, the Marktplatz, or market square, retains the old flavor of the city. Instead of breakfast at your hotel, visit one of the bakeries near the square and create your own breakfast, as many locals do. The daily produce market still takes place on the Marktplatz (7am–4pm). The painter Lucas Cranach the Elder lived here during his last year, from 1552 to 1553. Today, you can view the Lucas Cranach the Elder House from the outside, richly decorated and bearing a coat of arms of the Cranach family. A modern gallery is inside the house but is open only Thursday and Friday from noon to 8pm, Saturday 11am to 3pm.

For a midday break from sightseeing, we suggest a visit to Park an der Ilm (also known as Goethe Park) flanking the river. Goethe himself landscaped this park. It sports numerous 18th-century pavilions and is the best place in Weimar for a picnic.

If you’ve had a little too much Schiller and Goethe, flee the inner city and escape to Bauhaus Universität on Marienstrasse, just across the footpath in front of the Bauhaus building. Here you can meet Weimar students, nearly all of whom speak English.

In the evening, head for one of the smoky beer halls near Herderplatz, keeping in mind that Nietzsche, who spent the last 3 years of his life here, discovered them long before you.

Bauhaus-Museum MUSEUM In 1919, Walter Gropius founded his Staatliche Bauhaus here, so it’s only fitting that a museum has been established in Weimar as a testament to the elegance of modernism that was launched in the city. The Bauhaus architectural school of design was noted especially for its program that synthesized technology, craftsmanship, and design aesthetics. It was to sweep the world. From the Bauhaus school rose such towering artists as Klee, Kandinsky, and Feininger. The golden era of Bauhaus is re-created in arts and crafts, graphics, paintings, and representative works of some of the outstanding painters or teachers of the era. A school once flourished here, in the center of town, until 1925.

At Theaterplatz, across from the Deutsches Nationaltheater. 03643/545401. www.klassik-stiftung.de. Admission 4.50€ adults, 3.50€ students, free for children 5 and under. Daily 10am–6pm. Bus: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, or 7.

Goethe Gartenhaus ★★ HISTORIC HOUSE In a park on the Ilm River stands a plain cottage with a high-pitched roof. Goethe selected this house as his first residence when he came to Weimar. Even after he moved to other quarters, he still came here in summer to find peace and tranquillity. He described the park around him as “infinitely beautiful,” and so it remains today.

Im Park an der Ilm. 03643/545375. www.klassik-stiftung.de. Admission 4.50€ adults, 3.50€ students, free for children 5 and under. Apr–Oct daily 10am–6pm; Nov–Mar daily 10am–4pm. Bus: 1, 10, or 12.

Goethe Nationalmuseum ★★★ HISTORIC HOUSE Weimar’s principal attraction is the house where Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (1749–1832) lived from 1782 to 1832. It’s a typical example of a baroque German nobleman’s house. There are 14 exhibition rooms, some pretty much as Goethe and his wife, Christiane Vulpius, left them. The library contains more than 5,000 volumes. The writer’s mineral collection is here also, as well as much original art. Although Goethe’s reputation rests today on his writing, he had wide-ranging interests, including an interest in science (he was an early advocate of the belief in the common origin of all animal life). He died in Weimar on March 22, 1832.

Am Frauenplan 1. 03643/545347. www.klassik-stiftung.de. Admission 8.50€ adults, 7€ students, free for children 5 and under. Apr–Sept Tues–Sun 9am–6pm; Oct–Mar Tues–Sun 9am–4pm. Bus: 1, 2, 5, 6, or 8.

Kunstsammlungen zu Weimar MUSEUM This structure was begun under the guidance of Goethe in 1789 and completed in 1803. The previous castle burned down in 1774; only a tower survived. In one of the wings is a series of galleries dedicated not only to Schiller and Goethe, but also to two other famous names associated with Weimar: Johann Gottfried Herder (1744–1803), the German critic and philosopher who was a pioneer of the Sturm und Drang (“Storm and Stress”) literary movement, and Christoph Martin Wieland (1733–1813), the poet and critic who wrote the satirical romance The Republic of Fools. The museum has a shop, which is open April to October Tuesday to Sunday 9am to 6pm.

The ground floor displays works by Lucas Cranach the Elder. On some of the upper floors, you can see exhibits from Walter Gropius’s Bauhaus school, which started in Weimar. The primary aim of this movement was to unify arts and crafts within the context of architecture. Its appeal came from the changing sensibilities of the Industrial Age, as well as from the need for inexpensive construction techniques in an era of rising costs and exploding demand for housing. Followers around the globe may have been impressed, but not the good people of Weimar. They “tolerated” Gropius’s school until 1925, and then bombarded it in the press until it finally moved to Dessau. There it stayed until the Nazis closed it in 1933, claiming it was a center of “Communist intellectualism.”

Burgplatz 4. 03643/545401. www.klassik-stiftung.de. Admission 6€ adults, 5€ students. Apr–Oct Tues–Sun 10am–6pm; Nov–Mar Tues–Sun 10am–4pm. Bus: 1.

Liszt-Haus HISTORIC HOUSE Franz Liszt (1811–86), the Hungarian composer and pianist, spent the last period of his life here. You’ll find several mementos, both personal and musical, from the composer’s life, including letters exchanged between Liszt and his son-in-law, as well as the piano at which he played and taught his pupils. The house was once the home of the royal gardeners of Weimar.

Marienstrasse 17. 03643/545388. www.klassik-stiftung.de. Admission 4€ adults, 3€ students, 1€ children 6–18, free for children 5 and under. Apr–Oct Wed–Mon 10am–6pm. Closed Nov–Mar. Bus: 1, 4, or 6.

Neues Museum Weimar MUSEUM This is eastern Germany’s first museum devoted to modern art, an artistic field frowned upon by the former Communist regime with its more traditional tastes. The exhibitions are frequently changed or alternated, so you never know what you’ll be viewing at any given time. The restored building was constructed in 1869 but radically overhauled to accommodate its new role. The museum was opened to coincide with the naming of Weimar as cultural capital of Europe in 1999. Its permanent exhibition includes works of American minimal and conceptual art, as well as pieces by Italian painters and expressive works of the new “wild painters” of Germany, as they are called. In addition, such major artists as Anselm Kiefer and Keith Haring are represented extensively.

Weimarplatz 5 (directly north of center, on the square adjoining Rathenauplatz). 03643/545401. www.klassik-stiftung.de. Admission 3.50€ adults, 2.50€ students, free for children 5 and under. Apr–Oct Tues–Sun 11am–6pm; Nov–Mar Tues–Sun 11am–4pm. From the heart of town, Goetheplatz, walk north for 10 min.

Schillerhaus ★★ HISTORIC HOUSE After his friend Goethe, Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805) is the greatest name in German literature. He lived here with his family from 1802 to 1805 and wrote his last works here, including Wilhelm Tell. The attic rooms have been furnished as they were in Schiller’s day.

Schillerstrasse 9. 03643/545350. www.klassik-stiftung.de. Admission 5€ adults, 4€ students and children 6–18, free for children 5 and under. Apr–Oct Wed–Mon 9am–6pm; Nov–Mar Wed–Mon 9am–4pm. Bus: 1, 2, 3, 5, 6, 7, or 8.

Schloss Belvedere HISTORIC BUILDING The baroque Schloss Belvedere was a favorite retreat of Anna Amalia and the “enlightened” Weimar set. It has an orangery, along with the open-air theater and an English-style park. Inside the château are displays of dainty rococo art and a collection of historical coaches.

Belvederer Allee. 03643/545931. www.klassik-stiftung.de. Admission 4€ adults, 3€ seniors and students, free for children 5 and under. Apr–Oct Tues–Sun 10am–6pm. Closed Nov–Mar. Bus: 12. From Weimar, follow the Belvedereschlossallee south for 3km (2 miles).

Schlossmuseum MUSEUM This is a special art museum often overlooked by the hurried visitor but appreciated by art lovers who care to seek out its special treasures. Its collection of European art ranges from the Reformation period to the 20th century. The museum sprawls across three floors, with main works on the first floor, including paintings by Lucas Cranach. On the second floor is an exhibition of more German works, paintings done in the age of Goethe, and various pieces of Romantic art. There is an exceptional collection of religious icons from the 19th and 20th centuries. In the graphic collection are exhibitions of the works of the great masters such as da Vinci, Dürer, and Rembrandt.

Burgplatz 4. 03643/545960. www.klassik-stiftung.de. Admission 6€ adults, 5€ students and seniors, free for children 5 and under. Apr–Oct Tues–Sun 10am–6pm; Nov–Mar Tues–Sun 10am–4pm. Bus: 1, 5, 6, 8, or 10. From Markt, the market square in the town center, head east along Am Markt for 5 min.

Wittumspalais HISTORIC BUILDING If you follow Rittergasse to the end, you will come upon the 1767 Wittumspalais. This was once the residence of Dowager Duchess Anna Amalia, who presided over the German Enlightenment, which brought a stark rationalism to literature and the arts. The old ducal dower house is devoted to mementos of the movement.

Am Palais 3. 03643/545401.www.klassik-stiftung.de. Admission 5€ adults, 4€ students and seniors, free for children 5 and under. Apr–Oct Tues–Sun 10am–6pm; Nov–Mar Tues–Sun 10am–4pm. Bus: 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, or 6.

State-of-the-Art China: Meissen Porcelain

by George McDonald

In 2010, Meissen celebrated its 300th anniversary as a center for the manufacture of quality porcelain. Since 1710, the Elbe River town has been the home of Meissen porcelain, and you can visit the factory where it’s produced to witness a demonstration of the traditional art of making and hand-painting so-called “Dresden” china. Meissen is just 24km (15 miles) downriver from Dresden, and the name of the larger city, which was the capital of Saxony’s royal house, has attached itself indelibly to Meissen’s pride and joy. The early makers of this “white gold” were virtually held prisoner here because the princes who ruled both Dresden and Meissen carefully guarded the secret to its production.

Meissen porcelain got its start when the Saxon ruler Augustus the Strong, a patron of the arts and a fanatical porcelain collector (he owned almost 15,000 pieces) commissioned the alchemist Johann Friedrich Böttger to transmute gold from base metals. That project went nowhere, naturally, but with the aid of scientist Ehrenfried Walther von Tschirnhaus, Böttger successfully produced Chinese-style porcelain instead. That was enough to keep Augustus happy, since expensive Chinese porcelain had long bedazzled Europe, and until Böttger and von Tschirnhaus got to work, had resisted the best efforts of European craftsmen to re-create it.

The new homegrown china was made inside Meissen’s medieval Albrechtsburg castle until 1865, when production shifted to the current site overlooking the town. Most of the iconic tableware patterns sold today, such as the Swan and the cobalt-enhanced Blue Onion patterns, have been in production since the 1700s at the Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Meissen (Meissen State Porcelain Manufactory). Meissen porcelain is for sale in specialized stores and by mail order, but it is far more interesting to go to the workshop in the town to see how it is made. Little has changed over the centuries, and all the ornate painting, decoration, and other effects are still done by hand. This makes Meissen porcelain pricey, but each piece is a unique product, made by craftsmen. The delicacy of the brush stroke, the richness of color, or the sheen of the glazes make the items produced by the firm so highly prized.

Art and Technique Despite its fragile nature—which in the wrong hands can easily turn out to be tragic—Meissen porcelain is technically a “hard” or “hard-paste” porcelain, made from the feldspar (ore-free) clay kaolin, also known as china clay, that’s mined at a quarry in Mehren, 5km (3 miles) west of Meissen. The ingredients are mixed in a proprietary recipe and fired in a kiln at around 1,200°C (2,192°F) to produce the famous translucent white china.

Form and Content Among the products that have emerged from the Meissen workshop are dinner services and other tableware, human and animal figurines, clocks, candlesticks, snuffboxes, and classic Chinese and Japanese scenes and motifs. Art Nouveau and Art Deco works were produced between the late 19th and early 20th centuries. Some of the most exquisite antique pieces depict classical Greek and Roman myths and legends.

Red Porcelain Production of Meissen porcelain was one of Communist East Germany’s few profitable industries, so the Staatliche Porzellan-Manufaktur Meissen was of great importance to the country’s economy. At that time, the factory was owned by “the People,” though few East German people outside of the Party elite could afford such a luxury. Purchasers from the capitalist West snapped up the china, causing demand to outstrip supply. Ownership of the factory reverted to the state of Saxony after Germany’s reunification in 1990.

Real or Fake? To be tolerably sure that you’re looking at a real piece of Meissen porcelain (though it’s not an absolute guarantee), look on the bottom for the distinctive cobalt-blue crossed-swords logo, derived from Augustus the Strong’s coat of arms, and an official hallmark granted in 1724.

A Porcelain Feast In addition to viewing Meissen porcelain in the workshop’s own museum—and in the factory store, of course—you can take in the world’s largest single collection in nearby Dresden’s Zwinger Palace. It counts 8,000 pieces. There’s even a full-size glockenspiel of Meissen porcelain bells in the palace’s gate tower.

Bull Market Delicate antique Meissen porcelain is considered a solid investment, a fact that gives a whole new meaning to the old saw about a bull in a china shop.

More Sights

In the cemetery south of the town center lies the controversial Denkmal der März Gefallenen, a monument to the revolutionaries whose merciless and needless slaughter in 1919 (by government forces) so affected the ultraliberal Gropius and his Bauhaus followers. But most interesting today is the Goethe-Schiller Mausoleum, once the family vault of the Weimar dynasty, where Goethe and Schiller, friends in life, lie side by side in death. It was built in 1825 through 1826 in accordance with plans drawn up by Coudray, who consulted Goethe on the design and construction. Schiller was entombed here in 1827 and Goethe in 1832, both in oak coffins. Admission is free. Visiting hours are March to October Wednesday to Monday 9am to 1pm and 2 to 5pm, and November to February Wednesday to Monday 10am to 1pm and 2 to 4pm. A Russian-style chapel is on the south side of the mausoleum. It was built in 1859 for Maria Pavlovna, daughter-in-law of Duke Carl August.

Buchenwald Concentration Camp & Memorial Site The Buchenwald bus (no. 6) from Weimar’s Hauptbahnhof goes 6km (4 miles) northwest of Weimar to Gedenkstätte Buchenwald ( 03643/4300;www.buchenwald.de). An estimated 250,000 Jews, Slavs, Gypsies, homosexuals, political opponents, prisoners of war, Jehovah’s Witnesses, social misfits, criminals, and others were confined here from 1937 until the camp’s liberation by the U.S. Army in 1945. Officially, Buchenwald was a work camp, so far fewer people were killed here than at other concentration camps.

Nonetheless, 56,000 people died here; many, many thousands of others were sent on from here to other death camps; and a quarter of a million people, from more than 30 nations, suffered unspeakable pain as prisoners here. Furthermore, atrocities practiced in Buchenwald have made its very name synonymous with human perversity. Medical experiments on prisoners were common here, and prisoners, ironically, did not get nearly the amount of care and protection that animals in the SS men’s zoo received. This is also the concentration camp from which famed author and Nobel Peace Prize winner Elie Wiesel was liberated. (For more about his experiences at Buchenwald, read his best-selling book, Night.)

Buchenwald’s sad history continued when Soviet occupation forces used the site as an internment camp from 1945 to 1950, where more than 7,000 people died and were buried in mass graves.

Today, Buchenwald is a haunting sight. Only fragments of the camp have been preserved, as much of it has vanished by deliberate destruction and through the wear and tear of many years. The clock in the gate building reflects the time of the liberation by the U.S. Army in 1945. The gate has JEDEM DAS SEINE (“To Each His Own”) inscribed upon it: It is one of the only Nazi concentration camps with a gate that was not inscribed with ARBEIT MACHT FREI (“Work Will Make You Free”). All but a few buildings have been replaced with eerie black rocks filling in the foundations (which you can still see) of old barracks and more. The storehouse (as well as some other buildings) still exists in its original form, and the museum inside reflects both the Soviet and the Nazi past of the camp.

A well-planned and -executed monument/memorial lies about 1km (2⁄3 mile) from the remnants of the camp itself, with its own parking lot. The monument has several facets (sculpture, bell tower, and so on) built over the graves of more than 3,000 Buchenwald victims.

You can visit Buchenwald April to October Tuesday to Sunday 10am to 6pm, and November to March Tuesday to Sunday 10am to 4pm. Last admission is 30 minutes before closing. Admission is free.

Where to Eat

Hotel Elephant ★★ GERMAN/INTERNATIONAL There are two restaurants in this hotel. The more formal, Anna Amalia, is modern, sky-lit, and airy, with spacious tables, a garden terrace, and good service. Its German and international dishes are the very best in the city. The chefs have unerring senses of flavor and proportion as well as fertile imaginations. They use only the best ingredients available at the local markets. Filet stroganoff, pork medallions, and Sauerbraten are among the menu items. Goethe, Schiller, Bach, Liszt, and Wagner all wined and dined here.

You can reach the historic Elephantenkeller (Elephant Cellar) by a flight of stone steps at a separate entrance. It’s decorated in a rustic style, with square travertine columns. The best dishes at this informal restaurant are the traditional Thuringian platters. An autumn specialty is Zwiebelmarkt salads, made from onions from the famous October onion market, a tradition dating from 1653.

Am Markt 19. 03643/8020. Reservations recommended. Main courses 25€–33€. AE, DC, MC, V. Anna Amalia summer daily 11am–3pm, Tues–Sat 7:30–11pm; winter Sat–Sun 11am–3pm, Tues–Sat 7:30–11pm. Elephantenkeller Mon–Tues noon–3pm; daily 6pm–midnight. Closed July–Aug 25. Bus: 1 or 12.

Ratskeller THURINGIAN A flight of stairs leads into a pair of dining rooms. The first is vaulted and white, the second more modern, paneled, and with a prominent bar. Everything is correct and proper. Some typical local specialties include neck of pork marinated in beer and served with puréed potatoes or a medallion of beef, and a pork filet with a sauce made from forest mushrooms. These dishes aren’t dazzling, but they’re very satisfying. The venison, when in season, is excellent, and the wild boar and duck in red-wine sauce is reason enough for a meal here.

Markt 10. 03643/850573. www.ratskeller-weimar.de. Reservations recommended. Main courses 9€–17€; fixed-price menus 15€–25€. AE, MC, V. Daily noon–midnight. Bus: 7 or 71.

Shakespeares INTERNATIONAL Set in the town’s center, a few steps from the Rathaus (Town Hall), this restaurant offers well-prepared food, a bar area, angular modern decor, and big windows that overlook a garden strewn with tables for warm-weather dining. Menu items are well prepared and flavorful, and include salads, soups, risottos, fresh shellfish, and several kinds of grilled fish, some of them served with a Riesling sauce. Main courses may feature savory ragouts of chicken, lamb, or veal; noodles in cream sauce studded with ham and cheese; veal cutlets; and Wiener Schnitzel. In addition to the street-level dining room, a small-scale auditorium (Kulturstadt Neurotika) is in the restaurant’s cellar. Most of what’s presented inside is scheduled for Friday and Saturday nights, with an occasional Sunday-afternoon jazz concert. Entrance to most concerts and plays costs around 15€ per person.

Windischenstrasse 4–6. 03643/901285.www.weimar-shakespeares.de. Reservations recommended. Main courses 6.90€–24€. No credit cards. Daily 11am–midnight.

The Thuringian Forest: Germany’s green Heart

“There is indeed no forest on all the earth as beautiful as the Thuringian,” wrote the Danish novelist Martin Anderson Nexö. Hikers and nature lovers have long extolled the scenic beauties of this region, which has often been called “the green heart of Germany.” The Thuringer Wald ★★ was the former stamping ground of such philosophers and artists as Goethe, Schiller, Martin Luther, Ludwig Bechstein, and Bach.

The mountains within the forest, though not nearly as tall as the German Alps, are geological highlights. The highest peaks, around 985m (3,230 ft.), are composed of gneiss, porphyry, and granite; the foothills are made of softer strata of sandstone and sedimentary limestone.

The scenic, 150km (100-mile), northwest-to-southeast ramble known as the Thuringian High Road was one of the most popular destinations anywhere for East German schoolchildren and campers before reunification. You can take a lowland driving version by following Route 88 between Eisenach and Ilmenau, a city that Goethe loved.

Just as attractive as the region’s scenic beauty are the dozens of unspoiled, charming medieval villages that pepper the landscape. Dornburg has a series of three palaces, perched high above the Saale River. Altenburg, directly south of Leipzig, is the home of a hilltop castle. Finally, Arnstadt, founded in 704, is the oldest town in the Thuringian Forest. It lies just beyond Erfurt. Today, the town’s medieval walkways and buildings are being restored to their former glory.

Shopping

A visit to Weimar’s antiques stores offers a chance to buy porcelain, silver, crystal, and furniture that survived the devastation of World War II. An attractive source for mostly 18th- and 19th-century German antiques, with everything from farmhouse rustic to the kind of high-style pieces you might have expected at Friedrich the Great’s Sanssouci, can be found at Thiersch Antiquitäten, Bräuhausgasse 15 ( 03643/402540).

Nightlife & Entertainment

A good national theater, live music venues, and dance clubs provide a variety of choices for evening entertainment. The city’s bars and outdoor cafes are good places to drink and talk. Just walk down Schillerstrasse or along the Theaterplatz. All of the bars and cafes in this area carry free copies of Schlagseite and Boulevard, local entertainment papers. Takt is another good resource; you can save 3€ by picking it up in the tourist office (see “Visitor Information,” earlier in this chapter), the only place it’s free.

Weimar’s main performance venue is the Deutsches Nationaltheater, Theaterplatz 2A ( 03643/755334;www.nationaltheater-weimar.de), where Franz Liszt and Richard Strauss once conducted. Call the box office or the tourist office for information about schedules. Tickets cost 8€ to 55€.

C-Keller Galerie, Markt 21 ( 03643/510521;www.c-keller.de), combines an art gallery with a cafe that serves beer, wine, tea, and light meals. It’s a popular place to unwind. The gallery has works for sale by local, national, and European artists. The cafe is open daily noon to 1:30am. The most popular and animated dance club in Weimar isn’t exactly cutting edge—it’s more like Hannover than Hamburg or Berlin. But if you’re interested in a medley of disco favorites from the ’70s and ’80s, head for Bistro Corona, Goetheplatz 5 ( 03643/801756). This is both a bar and a restaurant, open Monday to Friday 8:30am to 11pm, Saturday 10am to 2am, and Sunday 10am to 9pm. The best nights for music and dancing are Friday and Saturday when a 5€ cover is imposed.

Where to Stay

Amalienhof Hotel Though not as roomy and comfortable as the Russicher Hof, Elephant, or Leonardo, this hotel is more affordable. Originally built in 1826 as a private villa, it was enlarged in the early 1990s, with a modern annex just across the street. Reception and breakfast facilities are in the older of the two buildings; if you’re assigned a room in the annex, you’ll be given a key to the annex’s front door. Rooms in the annex are modern in decor and styling; rooms in the hotel’s original core are Biedermeier. The hotel has a convenient location, directly south of Goethe National Museum, within an easy walk of the town’s historic core and major attractions. The breakfast buffet, the only meal served here, is generous.

Amalienstrasse 2, 99423 Weimar. www.amalienhof-weimar.de. 03643/5490. Fax 03643/549110. 32 units. 78€–105€ double; 95€–135€ suite. Rates include buffet breakfast. AE, MC, V. Free parking. Bus: 1. In room: A/C, TV, hair dryer.

Grand Hotel Russischer Hof ★ The Russischer Hof was built in 1805 by Russian aristocrats for their visits to the Weimar court. Such luminaries as Turgenev, Tolstoy, Schumann, and Liszt have passed through its doors. It sports a dark-green-and-white facade and opens onto an important square in the center of town. Inside, the pastel-colored public areas are elegant and intimate. The small to midsize rooms are in a somewhat lackluster modern annex behind the hotel, each with decor loosely based on 18th-century French motifs. Even if you’re not a guest, consider a visit to its restaurant, Anastasia, serving an excellent Thuringian cuisine with some Austrian specialties.

Goetheplatz 2, 99423 Weimar. www.russischerhof.com. 03643/7740. Fax 03643/774840. 126 units. 95€–302€ double; 215€–555€ suite. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 14€. Bus: 1 or 7. Amenities: Restaurant; bar; babysitting; concierge; exercise room; room service; sauna. In room: A/C, TV/DVD, hair dryer, minibar, Wi-Fi (12€ per hour).

Hotel Elephant ★★ The Elephant is Weimar’s most famous hotel, although it’s actually not quite as comfortable or well accessorized as the Leonardo Hotel. Many celebrities have stayed here, including Tolstoy and Bach; the most notorious guest was Adolf Hitler. The Elephant became best known in Germany through Thomas Mann’s novel Lotte in Weimar (published in English as The Beloved Returns). The elegant facade of this building (ca. 1696) is set off by a beautifully weathered terra-cotta roof, a series of elongated bay windows stretching from the second to the third floors, and, best of all, a frontage onto the old marketplace, which contains a dried-up fountain dedicated to Neptune. An Art Deco decor and bold color schemes make the rooms dramatically appealing.

Markt 19, 99423 Weimar. www.starwoodhotels.com. 03643/8020. Fax 03643/802610. 99 units. 109€–245€ double; 211€–295€ junior suite; 235€–555€ suite. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 13€. Bus: 5 or 7. Amenities: 2 restaurants; bar; babysitting; room service. In room: TV/DVD, CD player, hair dryer, minibar, Wi-Fi (19€ per 24 hr.).

Kay’s Loungehotel Weimar This affordable hotel in the center of town near the railway station dates from 1897 but has been completely renovated in modern style. The small rooms are clean and simply but adequately furnished, each with a compact shower-only bathroom. The focal point of the public areas is a glassed-in winter garden. The hotel is known for its gutbürgerlich (home-style) cookery, which one reader described as “just like my Saxon mother used to cook.”

Brennerstrasse 42, 99423 Weimar. www.hotel-thueringen-weimar.de. 03643/74022. Fax 03643/74022300. 36 units. 77€–90€ double. Rates include buffet breakfast. AE, MC, V. Parking 5€. Bus: 1 or 7. Amenities: Restaurant; room service. In room: TV, no phone.

Leonardo Hotel ★★ Ironically, credit for the excellence of this hotel’s construction and the lavishness of its materials goes to the former East German government, which designed and built it shortly before reunification. The hotel stands beside Goethe Park, a swath of greenery with posh residences and embassies left over from the Weimar Republic. The lobby is dramatic, with sun-flooded skylights and glass walls. Rooms are small but comfortable. The midsize to spacious bathrooms are the best in town.

Belvederer Allee 25, 99425 Weimar. www.leonardo-hotels.com. 03643/7220. Fax 03643/7222111. 294 units. 59€–155€ double; 245€–645€ suite. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 12€. Bus: 1. Amenities: Restaurant; 3 bars; babysitting; exercise room; indoor heated pool; room service; sauna. In room: A/C, TV, hair dryer, minibar, Wi-Fi (15€ per day).

Side Trips from Weimar

Erfurt ★

The small city of Erfurt, on the Gera River and first mentioned in 742, is one of the most visited cities of eastern Germany because it still exudes the spirit of a medieval market town. Erfurt is filled with historic houses, bridges, winding cobblestone alleys, and church spires reaching toward the skyline, as well as decorative and colorful Renaissance and baroque facades. The city emerged from World War II relatively unscathed and remains one of the best places to see what yesterday’s Germany looked like. Nearly everything of interest is concentrated in the Altstadt (Old Town) area. It’s well worth your time to take 2 or 3 hours to walk around this city of “flowers and towers.”

Why flowers? Erfurt is a center of the German horticultural trade. It’s also Europe’s largest vegetable seed producer. One of Europe’s biggest horticultural shows, the Internationale Gartenbau Ausstellung (International Horticulture Exhibition), is held here in the Cyriaksburg Park every year from the end of March to September.

Essentials You can reach Erfurt after a 24km (15-mile) train ride from the Weimar Hauptbahnhof; there are frequent connections. For rail information and schedules, call 01805/996633 or visit www.bahn.de. Access by car is via the E40 Autobahn and State Hwy. 4. The Erfurt Tourist-Information center is at Bendiktsplatz 1 ( 0361/66400;www.erfurt.de). From April to December, it’s open Monday to Friday 10am to 7pm, Saturday 10am to 6pm, and Sunday 10am to 4pm; January to March, it’s open Monday to Saturday 10am to 6pm and Sunday 10am to 4pm.

Exploring Erfurt

Well-preserved patrician mansions built in both Gothic and Renaissance styles are the town’s dominant feature. Many of the narrow streets are lined with old half-timbered houses. One of Erfurt’s curiosities is the Krämerbrücke (Shopkeepers’ Bridge;www.kraemerbruecke.de), which has spanned the Gera since the 14th century. It has houses on both sides, nearly three dozen in all, and is filled with bookstalls, cafes, and antiques shops. You’ll certainly want to spend some time here browsing.

The ecclesiastical center is the Domberg, where two Catholic churches stand side by side, their 15th-century walls almost closing in on each other. The Dom (Cathedral; 0361/6461265;www.mariendom-erfurt.de), on Domplatz, was begun in the 12th century and later rebuilt in the 14th century in the Gothic style. Its stained-glass windows above the choir date from 1370 to 1420 and are unusual in Germany because they depict scenes of everyday life. The interior of the cathedral is richly baroque, but it also has some notable works from 1160: a Romanesque altar of the Virgin and the statue-candelabrum known as “the Wolfram.” Note also the 13th-century tombstone of the count of Gleichen and his two wives. One local legend says that the second woman wasn’t his wife at all, but a Saracen beauty from the Holy Land who, under mysterious circumstances, saved his life. The Dom is open May to October Monday to Friday 9 to 11:30am and 12:30 to 5pm, Saturday 9 to 11:30am and 12:30 to 4:30pm, and Sunday 2 to 4pm; November to April, hours are Monday to Saturday 10 to 11:30am and 12:30 to 4pm, and, in addition to Sunday Masses (usually conducted at 9 and 11am), it’s open to tourists on Sunday from 2 to 4:30pm.

Its neighbor is the Gothic Church of St. Severi ( 0361/576960), a “hall-type” church with five naves. Don’t miss seeing its extraordinary font, a masterpiece of intricately carved sandstone, rising practically to the roof. You may also look for a notable sarcophagus of the saint (ca. 1365) in the southernmost aisle. St. Severi is linked to the Dom by a 70-step open staircase. It’s open May to October Monday to Friday 9am to 12:30pm and 1:30 to 5pm, and November to April Monday to Friday 10am to 12:30pm and 1:30 to 4pm. It’s closed January and during most of February.

The most beautiful churches are the Romanesque Peterskirche, dating from the 12th and 14th centuries, and the 13th-century Predigerkirche, of the Order of Mendicant Friars. There are also three early medieval churches: Agidienkirche, Michaeliskirche, and Allerheiligengeistkirche. The tourist office (see above) will give you a map pinpointing all these. Most can be reached on foot.

Where to Eat

Alboth’s Restaurant im Kaisersaal ★★ INTERNATIONAL Set within part of a sprawling and stately looking building in the heart of the city, this restaurant is the most formal and most gastronomically ambitious in town. Much of its decor evokes the lavish aesthetic of the late 18th century, with plush upholsteries and tones of cream, champagne, and gold. Come here for artfully prepared dishes, each richly neuen (new, or nouvelle) in their presentation, each reflecting seasonal variations as interpreted by Claus Alboth, chef and namesake. Perhaps the best way to handle the gastronomy here involves ordering one of the set-price meals, one of which focuses on Thuringian regional dishes with updated, modern twists (ravioli stuffed with blood sausage and liverwurst, for example). Expect a changing array of dishes, the best examples of which include lamb stew in red wine with farmer’s cheese, lobster, and champagne soup; roasted wild goat with port-wine sauce; sweetbreads in puff pastry; goose liver with asparagus-flavored cream sauce; and a chocolate charlotte with raspberries and apricots.

Futterstrasse 15–16. 0361/5688207.www.alboths.de. Reservations recommended. Main courses 27€; fixed-price menus 30€–90€. AE, MC, V. Tues–Sat 6:30–9:30pm. Closed 3 weeks in midsummer, 3 weeks in Jan.

Where to Stay

Mercure Erfurt Altstadt Erfurt’s most up-to-date hotel, in the heart of town, is also its best. It was built as a sophisticated enlargement of a Gasthaus (inn) from the 1300s. The medieval part—meticulously conserved and restored—faces onto a side street, the Futterstrasse. Otherwise, the hotel is modern, restrained, and tasteful. Most rooms correspond to middle-to-upscale chain-hotel standards. An additional 13 rooms retain the wood paneling and architectural quirks of their original medieval construction.

One of the town’s best restaurants, Zum Rebstock, is in the old wing of the hotel. The restaurant was part of the original structure and has since been painstakingly restored. It serves German and international dishes.

Meienbergstrasse 26–27, 99084 Erfurt. www.accorhotels.com. 0361/59490. Fax 0361/5949100. 141 units. 76€–160€ double; 200€ suite. Rates include continental breakfast. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 12€. Amenities: Restaurant; bar; babysitting; room service; sauna. In room: TV, hair dryer, minibar, Wi-Fi (19€ per day).

Radisson Blu Hotel This is one of the town’s better addresses. It hasn’t fully escaped its East German Cold War boxy architectural quality, but the Radisson group has poured in tons of money to upgrade it and has given it a lot more than a face-lift. Its modern rooms are comfortable but a bit cramped. Bathrooms are very compact, containing tub/shower combinations and inadequate shelf space. The location is halfway between the station and the town center. The on-site restaurant serves first-rate Thuringian meals as well as some international dishes. The restaurant’s lounge and bar is a popular rendezvous point.

Juri-Gagarin-Ring 127, 99084 Erfurt. www.radisson.com. 0361/55100. Fax 0361/5510210. 284 units. 79€–159€ double; 168€–210€ suite. Rates include buffet breakfast. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 14€. Amenities: Restaurant; bar; exercise room; room service; sauna. In room: A/C, TV, hair dryer, minibar.

Eisenach ★

This town lies on the northwestern slopes of the Thuringian Forest, at the confluence of the Nesse and Horsel rivers, 50km (30 miles) west of Erfurt. Eisenach, once a center of the East German auto industry, is not particularly charming, but it does have one of the region’s finest castles and a few sights associated with Luther and Bach, who were both born here. Half-timbered houses ring its ancient market square.

Essentials Many trains from Erfurt (see above) arrive every day. For rail information and schedules, call 01805/996633 or visit www.bahn.de. Access by car is via the A4 Autobahn east and west. For tourist information, contact Eisenach-Information, Markt 9 ( 03691/79230), open Monday to Friday 10am to 6pm, and Saturday 10am to 4pm. Here you can pick up a map with the locations of all the tourist sites.

Exploring Eisenach

Eisenach is best known as the site of Schloss Wartburg ★, Wartburg Foundation at the Wartburg ( 03691/2500;www.wartburg-eisenach.de; bus: 3, 10, or 13), reached only after a rigorous climb up a 180m (590-ft.) hill. Hitler called Wartburg Castle “the most German of German castles” and engaged in a battle with local authorities to take down its cross and replace it with a swastika. This ancient castle belonged to the landgraves of Thuringia and once hosted the medieval Minnesinger poets, immortalized by Wagner in Tannhäuser. This was also where Martin Luther hid upon his return from the Diet of Worms in 1521, so he could complete his translation of the Bible—he is said to have “fought the Devil with ink” at Wartburg. The castle has now been turned into a regional museum. Admission to the palace, the museum, and the room within the castle where Luther lived and worked is 8€ for adults and 5€ for students and children ages 6 to 18. Admission is free for children 5 and under. It’s open March to October daily 8:30am to 8pm, November to February daily 9am to 5pm. The last ticket is sold 1 hour prior to closing.

Eisenach is the birthplace of Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750). Bachhaus, Am Frauenplan 21 ( 03691/79340;www.bachhaus.de; bus: 3, 7, 11, or 13), contains many mementos of the Bach family, along with a collection of musical instruments. Admission costs 6.50€ for adults, 3.50€ for students and children 6 to 18. Children 5 and under enter free. It’s open daily 10am to 6pm.

If you’re a die-hard Luther fan, you can also visit the Lutherhaus, Lutherplatz 8 ( 03691/29830;www.lutherhaus-eisenach.de; bus: 1 or 5). Martin Luther stayed here as a schoolboy; today, it contains a series of exhibitions illustrating his life. Admission is 3.50€ for adults, 3€ for seniors, and 2€ for students and children 6 to 18. Children 5 and under enter free. It’s open daily 10am to 5pm.

Where to Eat & Stay

Hotel Kaiserhof ★ Much of the elegance of the late 1800s is still evoked here in the lobby and especially in the dining room. Both are stellar examples of the stately looking German Landhaus architecture. Rooms are generally spacious and tastefully renovated, each with comfortable furnishings and midsize bathroom.

Wartburgallee 2, 99817 Eisenach. www.kaiserhof-eisenach.de. 03691/88890. Fax 03691/203653. 64 units. 112€–131€ double. Rates include buffet breakfast. AE, DC, MC, V. Free parking. Bus: 3. Amenities: 2 restaurants; bar; room service; sauna. In room: A/C, TV, hair dryer, minibar.

Leipzig ★

Leipzig

164km (102 miles) SW of Berlin, 111km (69 miles) NW of Dresden, 126km (78 miles) NE of Erfurt

If you have limited time and have to choose between Dresden and Leipzig, make it Dresden. But if you can work Leipzig into your itinerary, you’ll be richly rewarded. More than any other city in former East Germany (except Berlin, of course), Leipzig brings you into the Germany of today. This once-dreary city has taken on a new life and vitality; a visit here can be absolutely invigorating. Glassy skyscrapers and glitzy nightlife add a cosmopolitan flavor you don’t encounter in much of the rest of the region. The approximately 20,000 students who study in the area (as Nietzsche, Goethe, and Leibniz once did) help add a spark. One resident put it this way: “Our grunge and metal bands are just as good as those of Berlin, and our cafes just as supercool.”

Leipzig is also famous for more traditional music. Johann Sebastian Bach is closely associated with Leipzig, Mozart and Mendelssohn performed here, and Wagner was born here in 1813.

Because of its strategic value as a rail center, both the RAF and the U.S. Air Force bombed the city heavily in World War II, but it’s been rebuilt, more or less successfully. It still has some narrow streets and houses from the 16th and 17th centuries, as well as some Jugendstil (Art Nouveau) flair. And Leipzig is again a major rail terminus. From its Hauptbahnhof—the largest in Europe, with 26 platforms—lines radiate to the chief German cities and the rest of the Continent.

Essentials

Getting There

By Plane The Leipzig-Halle International Airport lies 11km (7 miles) northwest of the city center. About 50 airlines link Leipzig with major German cities, such as Munich and Frankfurt, and also some continental destinations. For airport information, call 0341/2241155 (www.leipzig-halle-airport.de). A train called the Airport Express runs from the airport to the Hauptbahnhof every 30 minutes from 5am to midnight. The fare costs 7€ for adults and 5€ for children. Taxis are also available, meeting all arriving planes, but the 25- to 30-minute ride to the city center will cost around 30€ each way for up to four passengers.

By Train The Leipzig Hauptbahnhof, Willy-Brandt-Platz, lies on the major Deutsche Bundesbahn rail line, with frequent connections to German cities. Seventeen trains arrive daily from Berlin (trip time: 1 hr., 40 min., to 2 hr., 50 min.); 23 trains from Dresden (1 hr., 35 min., to 2 hr.); and 15 trains from Frankfurt (3–4 hr.). For information and schedules, call 01805/996633 or visit www.bahn.de. The Hauptbahnhof has recently been restored and contains many cafes, shops, and restaurants; it’s one of the most happening places in Leipzig.

By Bus Long-distance bus service to such cities as Berlin is provided by Leipziger Verkehrsbetriebe. Buses depart from the east side of the main rail station. For information and schedules, call 0341/19449.

By Car Access is via the Halle-Dresden Autobahn east and west or the E51 Autobahn north and south.

Visitor Information

Contact the Tourist-Information office at Richard Wagner Strasse 1 ( 0341/7104265;www.leipzig.de), Monday to Friday 9:30am to 6pm, Saturday and Sunday 9am to 3pm. The office can supply a map pinpointing the major sights. This place becomes a beehive of activity at the time of the annual trade fairs.

Special Events Upon arrival, be sure to drop in at the tourist office and see if any festivals are taking place. For a week every year, in October, for example, during the Leipziger Jazztages, the churches, student clubs, and opera house fill with jazz music.

Getting Around

A public transit system of trams, light railways, and buses provides frequent service to all parts of the city. An S-Bahn (light railway) serves the suburbs, arriving and leaving from the Hauptbahnhof in the center of Leipzig.

Exploring Leipzig

For the latest information on what’s happening in Leipzig, you can check out the website www.rundgang-kunst.de, which publishes a list of special exhibitions on view at the time of your visit. The magazine Kreuzer (www.kreuzer-leipzig.de) has detailed listings of cultural events, galleries, and restaurant data.

Goethe, who was a student in Leipzig, called the city klein Paris (miniature Paris). We wouldn’t go quite that far, but Leipzig definitely has its charms. One of the best things to do is explore the handsomely restored Art Nouveau Arkaden (arcades) that thread through the historic city center core. Mädler Mall is Leipzig’s finest arcade. This is the site of the famous Auerbachs Keller, the setting for one of the scenes of Goethe’s Faust. A bronze group of characters from Faust, sculpted in 1913, beckons you down a stone staircase into the cellar restaurant.

A gateway leads to Nasch Markt, which occupies the space behind the Altes Rathaus. Walk around the front of the Altes Rathaus to find yourself within Am Markt, the city’s best-known square, at the edge of which stands the Königshaus. Originally built in the late 1700s on the site of an even older building, the Königshaus at one time functioned as the city’s official guesthouse for VIPs; it housed both Napoleon and Richard Wagner during their sojourns here.

Neues Rathaus on Burgplatz was erected on the site of the old Pleissenburg, the citadel where Martin Luther held a momentous disputation in 1519. The best place in Leipzig for people-watching is on Petersstrasse, below Markt.

The Top Attractions

Altes Rathaus ★ HISTORIC BUILDING The 16th-century town hall stands on the 12th-century Renaissance Markt. Allied bombs rained down on the building, but it has been carefully restored. Inside, you’ll find the Stadtgeschichtliches Museum (Museum of City History), chronicling the city’s cultural and political history.

Markt 1. 0341/9651320. www.stadtgeschichtliches-museum-leipzig.de. Admission 4€ adults, 3€ students and children 6–18, free for children 5 and under. Tues–Sun 10am–6pm. Tram: 4 or 6.

Bach-Museum HISTORIC HOUSE The reconstructed Bose House stands in the shadow of the Thomaskirche. It was once the home of the Bach family and now contains the largest Bach archives in Germany, as well as many mementos of the composer.

Thomaskirchhof 14. 0341/9137200. www.bach-leipzig.de. Admission 6€ adults, 4€ students, free for children 16 and under. Tues–Sun 10am–6pm. Tram: 9.

Grassimuseum ★ MUSEUM This museum is a three-in-one delight in an Art Deco building updated by the celebrated British architect David Chipperfield. Three distinctive museums are found under one roof.

If for no other reason, we’d go for the Museum für Völkerkunde (Ethnological Museum) to see its stunning exhibitions of the antique art of Southeast Asia. From Oceania to Australia, from Indonesia to Europe and the Americas, the exhibits cover all continents, along with Russian displays and artifacts from the Arctic Ocean. In the Musikinstrumentenmuseum (Musical Instruments Museum) you can see one of the largest collections of musical instruments in the world, including the oldest known clavichord, built in 1543 in Italy. Most of the instruments, including lutes, flutes, and spinets, date from the Renaissance era. Recorded sounds from the instruments can be heard as you look them over. Finally, the Museum für Kunsthandwerk (Arts and Crafts Museum) is rich in the treasures of eastern Germany, not only exquisite porcelain (among the world’s finest) but tapestries, handicrafts, and even examples of the famous Bauhaus design.

Johannisplatz 5–11. 0341/21420.www.grassimuseum.de. Museum für Völkerkunde 4€; Musikinstrumentenmuseum 4€; Museum für Kunsthandwerk 4€. Museum für Völkerkunde Tues–Fri 10am–6pm, Sat–Sun 10am–5pm; Musikinstrumentenmuseum Tues–Sun 10am–6pm; Museum für Kunsthandwerk Tues and Thurs–Sun 10am–6pm, Wed 10am–8pm.

Museum der Bildenden Künste ★★ MUSEUM The 2,700 paintings and sculptures in this museum include works by Dürer, Rubens, Rembrandt, Rodin, and van Eyck. The museum, designed like a glass cube, is one of eastern Germany’s most impressive art collections. On exhibit is art ranging from the medieval period in Germany up to contemporary art from the United States. The most important art is the work of Lucas Cranach the Elder, including 16th-century portraits. Tintoretto weighs in with his Resurrection of Lazarus, and there are many paintings from the German schools of the 19th and 20th centuries. The impressive pieces of sculpture are by such older masters as Rodin and Berthel Thorvaldsen, the most famous sculptor to come out of Denmark.

Katharinenstrasse 10. 0341/216990. www.mdbk.de. Admission 5€ adults, 3.50€ students and children 4–14, free for children 3 and under. Tues and Thurs–Sun 10am–6pm; Wed noon–8pm.

Museum in der Runden Ecke MUSEUM This museum could hardly have been imagined during the Cold War. The building was the headquarters of the dreaded Stasi, the East German Ministry for State Security. Exhibits detail how Stasi operated within East Germany through various methods, most interesting of which show the tools of espionage, such as hidden cameras and letter-opening (and resealing) machines. Other exhibits show the extent of the massive spying, with entire floors devoted to handwriting samples from Leipzig’s citizens and extensive personal files on various members of the population. One exhibition, called “The Power and Banality of the East German Secret Police,” documents the meticulous and paranoid methods by which the police monitored every exchange of information in the country. They constantly seized private letters and listened in on phone conversations—at times monitoring up to 2,000 calls at once. The exhibition also traces the steps local people took to throw off the Communist regime and end Stasi terror. On the nights of December 4 and December 5, 1989, local citizens seized the building. Leipzig is called Heldenstadt, or “city of heroes,” for its role in toppling the government of East Germany.

Dittrichring 24 (north of Thomaskirche). 0341/9612443. www.runde-ecke-leipzig.de. Free admission. Daily 10am–6pm. Tram: 1, 2, 4, 6, 15, 17, 21, or 24 to Goerderlerring or Thomaskirche.

Schillerhaus HISTORIC HOUSE In this small farmhouse in Gohlis, a suburb about 20 minutes from the center of Leipzig, Friedrich von Schiller (1759–1805) wrote his “Ode to Joy” in 1785. Beethoven incorporated the poem into the great final movement of his Ninth Symphony.

Menckestrasse 42, Gohlis. 0341/5662170. www.stadtgeschichtliches-museum-leipzig.de. Admission 3€ adults, 2€ students, free for children 16 and under. Apr–Oct Tues–Sun 10am–5pm; Nov–Mar Wed–Sun 10am–4pm. Tram: 4 to Menckestrasse.

Thomaskirche ★ CHURCH Leipzig’s most famous resident, Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), was cantor here from 1723 until his death. He spent his most creative years as choirmaster at this church and is buried just in front of the altar. Both Mozart and Mendelssohn performed in the Thomaskirche as well, and Wagner was christened here in 1813. The church was built on the site of a 13th-century monastery and was heavily restored after World War II. Its high-pitched roof dates from 1496. When not touring, the city’s Thomanerchor (St. Thomas Boy’s Choir) presents concerts every Sunday morning and Friday evening.

Thomaskirchhof 18 (just off Marktplatz). 0341/9602855. www.thomaskirche.org. Free admission. Daily 9am–6pm. Tram: 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, or 13.

Singing Through the Centuries: The St. Thomas boys’ choir

In recent times while the Vienna Boys’ Choir enjoyed worldwide fame, Leipzig’s Thomanerchor (St. Thomas Choir) languished in obscurity in the eastern zone. Now all that is changing. Any musical expert can tell you that the Leipzig choir has plenty of talent, and as it tours more widely in Europe, its fame will no doubt grow.

The choir has been here since the 13th century. The boys sang on every occasion in the Middle Ages—city celebrations, the installation of bishops, and even executions. Today, the setting for this venerable musical force is Thomaskirche. Choirboys still follow an almost medieval regime within a distinctive subculture that’s a world unto itself. Each newcomer is assigned a “mentor” from among the trusted older members of the choir, and all members are required to eat, sleep, study, and rehearse according to a semimonastic regimen. The most famous member was none other than Johann Sebastian Bach. He wrote his great cantatas for this choir and was cantor (choirmaster) for 27 years.

Zoologischer Garten Leipzig ZOO This zoo breeds animals to help conserve endangered species. It was founded in 1878, and it is internationally known for breeding carnivores. The biggest aquarium in eastern Germany outside Berlin is also here.

Pfaffendorfer-Strasse 29. 0341/5933385.www.zoo-leipzig.de. Admission 13€ adults, 11€ students, 9€ children 4–14, 34€ family ticket, free for children 3 and under. Nov–Mar daily 9am–5pm; Apr and Oct daily 9am–6pm; May–Sept daily 9am–7pm. Tram: 12.

More Sights & Activities

The German Museum of Books and Scripts, the Deutsche Bücherei, Deutscher Platz 1 ( 0341/22710;www.d-nb.de; tram: 21), is the central archive of German literature. You can visit it free from Monday to Friday 8am to 10pm, and Saturday 9am to 6pm, but only with an advance phone call. The archive was established in 1912 to showcase the fine art of German printing and bookbinding. It’s said to possess every item of German literature ever published. It also has a copy of Iskra, the Bolshevik newspaper that Lenin came here to print secretly in 1900.

Contrary to popular belief, Thomaskirche isn’t the oldest church in Leipzig. That distinction belongs to Nikolaikirche, on Nikolaistrasse, erected in 1165. Many works by Bach, including the St. John Passion, were first performed here.

If the weather is fair, head for the Universität Leipzig Turm, near Nikolaikirche. This metal-and-glass tower overlooks street performers who take over on summer weekends. It’s the greatest free show in Leipzig. (Well, not exactly free—the performers will pass the hat at the end of their acts.) Just beware of the skateboard warriors, who make walking about a bit perilous. Universität Leipzig, founded in 1409, has contributed greatly to the cultural growth of the city. The East German government rechristened it Karl Marx University, but the old name was restored in 1990. Augustusplatz is the ideal center to rub elbows with the thousands of students who study here.

To escape the fumes and noise of the city, head for such “green lungs” as Johannapark, on Karl-Tauchnitz-Strasse, or one of the wildly overgrown cemeteries by the Völkerschlachdenkmal. On hot days, the fountains in Sachsenplatz are popular for splashing about.

Europe’s Second-Oldest Coffeehouse

Ever since 1696, Coffe Baum, Kleine Fleischergasse 4 ( 0341/9610060;www.coffe-baum.de), has entertained the artistic luminaries of Leipzig, including Wagner, Schumann, and Liszt. Reportedly, even the Emperor Napoleon dropped in for a “cuppa.” Still going strong after all these years, the cafe dispenses its traditional Kaffe und Kuchen (coffee and cake). Many patrons come just for the desserts, including a buttermilk strawberry mousse on mango foam with frozen apricots in chocolate. You can also order full meals here, with main dishes costing 20€ to 23€.Typical dishes include shoulder of suckling pig with savoy cabbage and potato dumplings or braised leg of lamb in a mint and garlic sauce. Upstairs is a museum with displays of the history of Saxon coffee. Hours are daily 10am to 7pm.

Where to Eat

Expensive

Auerbachs Keller ★ SAXON/INTERNATIONAL This is the famous restaurant and tavern where Goethe staged the debate between Faust and Mephistopheles in his play Faust. The cellar dates from 1530 and has a series of 16th-century murals representing the Faust legend. The chefs prepare mainly regional Saxon dishes, along with some international selections. Some of the most tempting offerings are filet of veal, beef, or saddle of lamb, prepared with special sauces and served with seasonal vegetables. The menu changes every 2 months. You can also order from a fine selection of wines and beers. Guests have a choice of the stately looking Historic Rooms (dinner only) or the sprawling, Germanic-looking Big Room, with a different menu and paneling and high ceiling to evoke an upscale beer tavern. Between 11:30am and 6pm Monday to Saturday, visitors can see the Historic Rooms for a charge of 1€.

Mädlerpassage (off the market square, close to the Altes Rathaus), Grimmaischestrasse 2–4. 0341/216100. www.auerbachs-keller-leipzig.de. Reservations recommended. Historic Rooms main courses 27€–31€, fixed-price menus 34€–40€; Big Room main courses 11€–23€, fixed price menu 20€–37€. AE, MC, V. Historic Rooms Mon–Sat 6pm–midnight. Big Room daily 11:30am–midnight. Tram: 4 or 6.

Stadtpfeiffer ★★★ FRENCH/CONTINENTAL The most prestigious and best-recommended restaurant in Leipzig occupies a glass-ringed dining room that seems to pour golden light out into the angular, concrete-and-glass urban landscape it occupies. As such, it’s a welcome spot of warmth and humanity in an otherwise anonymous-looking landscape. Inside, you’ll find impeccably detailed service rituals and a sublime cuisine, almost a defiant contrast to a restaurant scene that until now wasn’t anywhere near as sophisticated, urban, and international as what you’ll find here. Depending on the day of your visit, a delightful meal here might include mussels in puff pastry; lightly smoked freshwater fish with bacon; pan-fried shrimp with fennel; various preparations of lobster; fresh fish, perhaps prepared with olives and demi-glace; and desserts that might feature a gratin of figs with almond-flavored ice cream.

In the Gewandhaus, Augustusplatz 8. 0341/2178920.www.stadtpfeiffer.de. Reservations required. Main courses 20€–36€; fixed-price menus 88€–108€. AE, MC, V. Tues–Sat 6pm–midnight. Closed July–Aug.

Moderate

Kaiser Maximillian ★★ MEDITERRANEAN You may have some of your best meals in Leipzig here, especially if you like Italian and French-inspired dishes from the Mediterranean. In a sophisticated setting with modern appointments, this restaurant, with its black-leather seats and hip waitstaff, is found in the center of Leipzig in the Urban Department Store between Neumarkt Strasse and Universität Strasse.

Businesspeople in the area drop in for a quick lunch, but in the evening the ambience is more mellow and ideal for long, lingering meals over wine, especially if you order from the fixed-price gourmet menus. The candles glow as you feast on the offerings of the expert chefs who have a talent for sauces and for creating harmonious flavor combinations. Fish is a specialty, appearing as pikeperch with a calf’s-head sauce or haddock with a purée of nettles. Anglerfish is a tasty treat with cheeks of beef. You may not want to dine in such an experimental fashion, settling for more familiar meat dishes such as a loin of pork with asparagus and new potatoes, or else saddle of lamb with bell peppers and a creamy polenta. The dessert chef wins our heart with his fresh rhubarb ragout with homemade vanilla ice cream.

Neumarkt 9–19. 0341/35533333.www.kaiser-maximilian.de. Reservations required. Main courses 19€–25€. AE, DC, MC, V. Mon–Sat noon–3pm and 6pm–midnight.

Inexpensive

Apels Garten GERMAN/SAXON Its name commemorates the site of a 400-year-old garden, no longer in existence. Today, you’ll find a modern mid-1980s building with a conservatively decorated street-level restaurant known for its home-style German food. Specialties include Leipzig-style onion soup or wild-duck soup with homemade noodles, roast goose with potatoes and vegetables, grilled Wurst with potatoes and red cabbage, and Sauerbraten with onions and red cabbage. The cuisine is more robust than refined; it’s very filling.

Kolonnadenstrasse 2. 0341/9607777. www.apels-garten.de. Reservations recommended. Main courses 10€–20€; set menu 16€–30€. AE, MC, V. Mon–Sat 11am–11pm; Sun 11am–3:30pm. Tram: 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, or 13.

Thüringer Hof SAXON/THURINGIAN Martin Luther used to dine here—that’s how old this mellow place is. It’s been serving hearty regional fare since 1454. Goethe used to drop in, as did the composer Robert Schumann. By 1865 it became known as the Thüringer Hof and had 1,200 seats, making it one of the most famous restaurants of Germany, as fabled as the Hofbräuhaus in Munich. The restaurant had to be rebuilt after World War II, and the Luther Hall section was completely duplicated. Showing wear and tear in the 1990s, it was rebuilt once again. The tradition of good food is still maintained, with some of the recipes sounding as if they are the same that Luther himself ate. We’re talking Thuringian potato soup with sausage slices or pickled beef with raisin sauce and Thuringian dumplings. Purple cabbage comes with many dishes. Among the courses we’d recommend are spicy pork goulash with cream mushrooms or rare filets of lamb in a garlic sauce with potato croquettes. Hearty eaters will go for the grill platter for two—breast of chicken, venison steak, pork medallions, and home-fried potatoes.

Burgstrasse 19. 0341/9944999.www.thueringer-hof.de. Reservations recommended. Main courses 7.60€–17€. AE, DC, MC, V. Daily 11am–midnight.

Zill’s Tunnel SAXON This is one of the city’s most atmospheric restaurants, serving tasty and reasonably priced food, including massive quantities of regionally brewed beer, to hungry diners and drinkers. The restaurant is not a real tunnel, though its barrel-ceilinged ground floor tavern suggests that. The location is at the marketplace opposite the old city hall. Today’s restaurant is the end result of a once-popular eatery established here in 1841. You can also dine upstairs in the more formal wine restaurant, with its open fireplace and antiques. In addition to international vintages, there are some good-value Meissen wines. The menu is in German and very traditional, including such longtime favorites as pork Schnitzel with potatoes or Norwegian filet of salmon, even tender beef tournedos in a pepper sauce. Desserts are rich, wholesome, and prepared fresh daily, as are the homemade soups for appetizers.

Barfussgasschen 9. 0341/9602078.www.zillstunnel.de. Reservations recommended upstairs. Main courses 10€–15€; fixed-price menus 14€–35€. AE, DC, MC, V. Daily 11:30am–midnight.

Shopping

Leipzig has emerged as the art-buying capital of the former East Germany. Galleries hold rich inventories of paintings and sculpture by artists whose works were once unknown to western consumers. Galerie für Zeitgenössische Kunst, Karl-Tauchnitz-Strasse 11 ( 0341/140810;www.gfzk-online.de), is a privately owned art gallery that displays international art, showing about 14 exhibitions a year. It charges 5€ for adults, 3€ for students and children 10 to 18 (free for those 9 and under).

If you’re looking for examples of the antique furniture and art objects that many Leipzigers have dragged down from their attics since reunification, head for any of the dozen or so antiques dealers conducting business within the town’s core. Neumarkt Passage has several antiquarian bookshops. With more than 150 outlets, including restaurants and cafes, the Hauptbahnhof, Willy-Brandt-Platz, is a shopper’s delight, one of the best shopping experiences not just in Leipzig, but in this entire part of Germany.

German Men of Ideas: Martin Luther (1483–1546)

“I am more afraid of my own heart than of the pope and all his cardinals. I have within me the great pope, Self.”

Field of Study: Priest, theologian, firebrand.

Revolutionary Insight: His 95 Theses questioned the culture of church indulgences (donating money to guarantee salvation). It evolved into a critique of Catholic corruption and a rejection of papal infallibility, sparking the Protestant Reformation. Luther’s views spread quickly, thanks to the recent invention of the printing press.

Controversy Quotient (0 to 5): (5+) Excommunicated by Pope Leo X and declared heretic/ outlaw by Holy Roman Emperor Charles V in 1521; ordained as a monk in 1507, but married in 1525; late in life spouted virulent, violent anti-Semitic views.

Little Known Fact: Met his wife, Katherina von Bora, while abetting her escape from a Cistercian convent; smuggled her (and other nuns) out in a wagon filled with herring barrels.

Nightlife & Entertainment

Leipzig’s active nightlife offers something for everyone. The area around the Markt is full of bars, cafes, and other entertainment options; it’s a good place to kick off your search for a nightspot.

The Performing Arts The Leipziger Oper is one of Germany’s most acclaimed opera companies. Its home is the Neues Opernhaus (it’s sometimes referred to simply as Oper Leipzig), Augustusplatz 12 ( 0341/1261275;www.oper-unplugged.de; tram: 4, 7, 8, 10, or 11), opposite Das Gewandhaus (see below). Part of its space is devoted to the Kellertheater ( 0341/1261275;www.oper-leipzig.de), a small-scale theater that presents small-ensemble, progressive performances of all types. The box office for both the main opera house and the Kellertheater is open Monday to Friday 10am to 8pm, and Saturday 10am to 4pm. Tickets to the theater are 10€ to 32€ for adults, with students getting up to one-third off, depending on the performance. Call the box office, or ask at the tourist office, for information. Tickets to the opera cost 10€ to 60€.

The home of the famous Gewandhaus Orchestra ★ is a modern concert hall built in 1981, Das Gewandhaus ( 0341/1270280;www.gewandhaus.de; tram: 4, 7, or 15), which faces the Neues Opernhaus across Augustusplatz. Founded in 1781, the orchestra saw some of its greatest days under the baton of Felix Mendelssohn, who died in Leipzig in 1847. Other notable conductors have included Wilhelm Furtwängler, Bruno Walter, and Kurt Masur. Concerts, ballets, organ recitals, and other events are staged here. Tickets usually range from 5€ to 60€.

The main venue for theater in Leipzig is the Schauspielhaus, Bosestrasse 1 ( 0341/1268168;www.schauspiel-leipzig.de; tram: 1, 2, 4, 6, 15, 17, 21, or 24), home to several arts companies that jointly stage an eclectic mix of theatrical and musical productions. Tickets cost 7€ to 27€ for adults, half-price for students. The box office is open weekdays noon to 7pm, Saturday 10am to 1pm, and 1 hour before showtime.

Dance Clubs Leipzigers like to dance, and the downtown area offers several animated nocturnal venues. Appealing to a youngish crowd is Nachtcafé, Petersstrasse 39–41 ( 0341/2114000;www.nachtcafe.com). Open only on Monday and Wednesday nights from 9pm to around 3am and Saturday nights from 10pm to around 4am, it plays soul, house, funk, blues, and whatever’s hip and contemporary in London and L.A., with music provided by a crew of DJs who are well known locally. Entrance is 5€, except for women under 24, who invariably talk their way in free. Attracting a young, raffish crowd is Spizz, Marktplatz 9 ( 0341/9608043;www.spizz.info). Cramped, crowded, sweaty, hot, and usually convivial, they play jazz, reggae, pop, and disco music from the ’80s and ’90s. Entrance costs 10€ per person. It’s open only Friday and Saturday nights from 11pm to around 5am.

Live Music Built against the old city wall, Moritzbastei, Universitätsstrasse 9 ( 0341/702590;www.moritzbastei.de; tram: 4, 6, 15, or 20), is a jaunty-looking, all-in-one entertainment complex that houses at least two stages for the presentation of concerts and cabarets, a labyrinthine pub with lots of different areas for drinking, carousing, and dancing, and a cafe. It’s popular with students. Depending on the night of the week and the time you show up, you’ll find either live bands or DJs playing Afropop, heavy metal, and rock mixed with contemporary dance music. Some aspect of this complex opens daily from 10am, but the nighttime energy gets wound up only Wednesday to Saturday from 8pm to 5am, when it charges a cover that ranges from 4.50€ to 21€. Sometimes, in midsummer, films (foreign and German language) are shown in an open-air terrace in a kind of “be-in” communal venue that will remind you of your college years.

For more blues, jazz, and the occasional presentation of German-language satire and cabaret, head to Pfeffermühle, Gottschedstrasse 1 ( 0341/9603253; tram: 4, 6, 8, 10, 11, or 13), on Monday night, when the bands start up at 10pm. Other nights, people gather to drink and talk. The courtyard here is very popular during warm weather.

Gay Bars & Clubs The friendly, ultracool bar RosaLinde, Langestrasse 11 ( 0341/8796982;www.rosalinde.de), is the central focus of gay nightlife in Leipzig. It’s open Sunday to Thursday as a bar from 5 to 11pm; Friday and Saturday it functions as a cafe, bar, and dance club from 5pm to 3am, with music beginning around 9pm. Come here for a drink and the chance to mingle with conventional, not particularly fetishistic gay men (and to a lesser degree, lesbians) in their 20s and 30s.

Variety Recommended only for visitors who really understand fluent, and highly ironic, German-language nuances, Schaubühne Lindenfels, Karl-Heine-Strasse 50 ( 0341/484620;www.schaubuehne.com; tram: 1, 2, 4, 6, 15, 17, 21, or 24), offers alternative theater and cinema in a laid-back cafe/bar complex and is open daily 10am to 2am. Admission to movies, which are shown almost nightly, costs between 5€ and 8€ per person. Admission to theater productions costs from 7.50€ to 20€ per person. Depending on the seasonal lineup, they’re presented Thursday to Saturday and sometimes Sunday.

German Men of Ideas: Gottfried Liebnitz (1646–1716)

“Even in the games of children there are things to interest the greatest mathematician.”

Field of Study: Philosopher, lawyer, diplomat, self-taught mathematician.

Revolutionary Insight: First published theory of infinitesimal calculus in 1684; notebooks indicate his first equations employed in 1675, just 3 years after first taking up the study of math. Inspired by the classic Chinese text I Ching, invented the binary numerical system, now the basis of all modern computer programming.

Controversy Quotient (0to 5): (2) Dogged by (still unresolved) controversy over whether he plagiarized calculus theory after seeing Isaac Newton’s unpublished writings on a 1676 visit to London.

Little Known Fact: In 1891, Hermann Bahlsen introduced a butter cookie named Liebniz-Keks, in honor of the philosopher. It remains the company’s most popular product.

—Kelly Regan

Where to Stay

Expensive

Hotel Fürstenhof ★★★ This hotel, located in the former residence of a Leipzig banker, is the best in Leipzig, a government-rated five-star hotel. Its interior has been redecorated to reflect the building’s original, almost-forgotten neoclassical theme. A corps of English and Swedish designers has outfitted the rooms in a modern interpretation of neoclassical style. The rejuvenated bathrooms are the best in town. The ballroom (the Serpentinensaal) and a monumental staircase date from the 19th century.

Tröndlinring 8, 04105 Leipzig. www.starwoodhotels.com. 0341/1400. Fax 0341/1403700. 92 units. 109€–330€ double; 240€–640€ junior suite. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 19€. Tram: 15. Amenities: 2 restaurants; 2 bars; babysitting; concierge; exercise room; indoor heated pool; room service; spa. In room: A/C, TV, hair dryer, minibar, Wi-Fi (19€ per day).

Victor’s Residenz ★ This Best Western hotel near the Hauptbahnhof is a successful reconstruction of a 19th-century building that survived World War II bombings. Today it’s been completely restored and turned into an oasis of comfort in the very heart of Leipzig. The bedrooms are midsize to spacious and the latest word in modernity, and the suites in particular are among the most comfortable and best appointed in town. We have found the staff particularly helpful. The on-site restaurant is more like a brasserie in Paris, the chefs specializing in Mediterranean cuisine. When the summer sun shines, a patio opens up. The atmosphere is definitely not stuffy, the manager telling us, “We believe in our guests having a good time.”

Georgiring 13, 04103 Leipzig. www.victors.de. 0341/68660. Fax 0341/6866899. 101 units. 125€–252€ double; 195€–292€ suite. Rates include buffet breakfast. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 13€. Amenities: Restaurant; bar; babysitting; concierge; room service. In room: A/C, TV, fridge, hair dryer, minibar, Wi-Fi (free).

Westin Leipzig ★★ Rising 27 floors, this is one of the tallest landmarks in Leipzig and one of eastern Germany’s leading hotels. In this luxe category, we prefer the greater charm and comfort of the Fürstenhof (see above), although the Westin is fine in every way. Close to the railway station, it is the largest hotel in Leipzig, a businessperson’s favorite, and also a popular venue for conventions. Don’t expect lots of atmosphere or personal service. All the guest rooms, ranging from small to spacious, are renovated. The hotel offers more diverse dining and drinking options than its competitors, everything from a Bierstube with Saxon cookery to a teppanyaki grill with sushi and sashimi.

Gerberstrasse 15 (5 min. from Altes Rathaus), 04105 Leipzig. www.westin.com/leipzig. 800/327-0200 in the U.S. and Canada, or 0341/9880. Fax 0341/9881229. 447 units. 89€–295€ double; 269€–500€ suite. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 19€. Tram: 4 or 6. Amenities: 3 restaurants; 3 bars; concierge; exercise room; indoor heated pool; room service; spa. In room: TV, hair dryer, minibar, Wi-Fi (20€ per day).

Moderate

Seaside Park Hotel Leipzig Less than a kilometer (about 1⁄2 mile) from the city center, this is the latest reincarnation of a hotel that opened in 1913 near the central rail depot. Back then it was hailed as the grandest first-class hotel in the city, though today the competition is too keen for it to retain that title. Government protected as a historical monument, the hotel lies behind a facade of soundproof windows. It caters mainly to business travelers but also welcomes vacationers to its well-furnished, midsize to spacious guest rooms, decorated in an Art Deco style with well-equipped bathrooms, mostly with tub/shower combinations. Fine dining characterizes the two restaurants here. Our favorite part of the hotel is a reconstruction of the famous Orient Express dining room.

Richard-Wagner Strasse 7, 04109 Leipzig. www.parkhotelleipzig.de. 0341/98520. Fax 0341/9852750. 288 units. 105€–155€ double; from 175€ suite. Rates include buffet breakfast. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 13€. Amenities: 2 restaurants; bar; exercise room; Jacuzzi; room service; sauna. In room: A/C, TV, hair dryer, kitchenette (in some), minibar, Wi-Fi (20€ per hour).

Inexpensive

Galerie Hotel Leipziger Behind a baroque facade, this offbeat choice offers funky but comfortable rooms. It appeals to artists and students as well as a group of patrons who in the past would have been called “bohemians.” Each small to midsize bedroom is furnished in a rather minimalist style. The saving grace is that Leipzig artists contributed paintings or sculpture to make each bedroom unique—hence, the name of the hotel. There is also an on-site art gallery.

Hedwigstrasse 1–3, 04315 Leipzig. www.leipziger-hof.de. 0341/69740. Fax 0341/6974150. 73 units. 87€–155€ double; 165€ junior suite. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 7€. Tram: 1, 3, or 8. Amenities: Spa. In room: TV, hair dryer, minibar, Wi-Fi (free).

Hotel Adagio This is a restored and greatly refurbished 1882 building in a tranquil location between the Neues Gewandhaus and the Grassimuseum. Each midsize guest room is individually furnished with such themes as the Roaring 1920s. The bathrooms that come with the 1920s guest rooms contain the largest tubs in the city. The hotel staff gives a special welcome to families traveling with children.

Seeburgstrasse 96, Leipzig 04103. www.hotel-adagio.de. 0341/216690. Fax 0341/9603078. 32 units. 85€–90€ double; 140€–160€ suite. Rates include buffet breakfast. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 8€. Amenities: Bar; room service. In room: TV, hair dryer.

Markgraf Stay here for its affordable price—not any luxurious living. What you get are small yet comfortable rooms. Platform beds with thin mattresses prevail, and there are many blond-wood furnishings. In its modest category, this is one of the best deals in town, all modern and sleek. Maintenance and service rate high points. The hotel lies just a short walk or tram ride south of the city center.

Körnerstrasse 36, 04107 Leipzig. www.markgraf-leipzig.de. 0341/303030. Fax 0341/3030399. 54 units. 65€–185€ double; 100€–235€ suite. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 10€. Tram: 10 or 11 from the Hauptbahnhof. Amenities: Exercise room; room service; sauna. In room: TV, fax (in some), minibar, Wi-Fi (free).

Side Trips from Leipzig

Lutherstadt Wittenberg

This is the city associated with Martin Luther (1483–1546), leader of the German Reformation, and it attracts pilgrims from all over the world. Wittenberg’s other famous son was humanist Philipp Melanchthon (1497–1560), a Protestant reformer and scholar, and a friend of Luther’s and later of Calvin’s. Luther and Melanchthon are honored with statues in front of the Rathaus. Wittenberg is a handsome enough city, but a stop here isn’t a must unless you’re particularly interested in Luther.

Essentials Wittenberg lies about 70km (43 miles) northeast of Leipzig and 100km (60 miles) southwest of Berlin. Access by car is via the A9 Autobahn north and south, Route 187 east, and Hwy. 2 north and south. The Wittenberg Bahnhof is on the major Deutsche Bundesbahn rail line (Halle-Berlin), with frequent connections. It’s an hour by train from Leipzig. For travel information, contact Wittenberg-Information, Schlossplatz 2 ( 03491/498610;www.wittenberg.de). November to February, it’s open Monday to Friday from 10am to 4pm, Saturday from 10am to 2pm, and Sunday from 11am to 3pm. March to October, it’s open Monday to Friday from 9am to 6pm, Saturday from 10am to 3pm, and Sunday from 11am to 4pm. In January and February, it’s closed on weekends.

Exploring Wittenberg

Both Luther and Melanchthon are buried in the Schlosskirche, Friedrichstrasse 1A ( 03491/402585;www.schlosskirche-wittenberg.de), which dates from the 15th century but was rebuilt in the 19th. It was on the Schlosskirche doors that Luther nailed his “Ninety-Five Theses” in 1517. The bronze doors were added in 1858 and bear the Latin text of the theses. The church is open November to April, Monday to Saturday 10am to 4pm and Sunday 11:30am to 4pm; May to October, it’s open Monday to Saturday 10am to 6pm and Sunday 11:30am to 6pm. Services are held Sunday at 10am and Wednesday at noon. There’s a 30-minute organ concert every Tuesday at 2:30pm. Admission to the church and to its concerts is free; a brief audio guided tour, conducted in either German or English, costs 3€. For further information contact the tourist office at 03491/498610.

Part of an Augustinian monastery in which Luther lived has been turned into the Lutherhalle Wittenberg, Collegienstrasse 54 ( 03491/42030;www.martinluther.de). The parish church here, where Luther preached, dates from the 14th century. An oak tree marks the spot outside the Elster gate where Luther publicly burned his papal bull (edict) of excommunication in 1520. Hours are November to March Tuesday to Sunday 10am to 5pm, April to October daily 9am to 6pm. Admission costs 5€ for adults, 3€ for students and children ages 7 to 18, free for children 6 and under.

You can also visit the Stadtkirche, the “Mother Church of the Reformation,” Judenstrasse 35 ( 03491/403201), where Luther did the majority of his preaching. Sections date from the 13th century, making it the oldest structure in Wittenberg. The altar is by Lucas Cranach the Elder, who was once Bürgermeister of Wittenberg and a friend to Luther. It’s open November to April Monday to Saturday 10am to 4pm and Sunday 11:30am to 4pm; hours for May to October are Monday to Saturday 9am to 5pm and Sunday 11:30am to 5pm. Admission is free.

Where to Eat & Stay

Grüne Tanne ★ In the city of Martin Luther, only a traditional, atmospheric hotel will do for some visitors. On the outskirts of town, this is a former knight’s manor with a history going back 4 centuries. The estate is a warm, inviting, and cozy country manor, with a tradition of welcoming guests since 1871. The hotel maintains a shuttle between the train station and the inn. The guest rooms are midsize and comfortably and tastefully furnished, and the suites are spacious and beautifully maintained. The on-site restaurant, which serves traditional German food, is worth a visit even if you’re a nonguest. In the summer, dining overflows onto the terrace, and the entire place assumes a festive atmosphere.

Am Teich 1, 06896 Wittenberg. www.gruenetanne.de. 03491/6290. Fax 03491/629250. 40 units. 59€–79€ double; 89€–109€ suite. Rates include buffet breakfast. AE, DC, MC, V. Free parking. Amenities: Restaurant; children’s playground. In room: TV, hair dryer.

Quedlinburg ★

In 1994, UNESCO cited Quedlinburg as “an extraordinary example of a medieval European city” and added it to its list of World Heritage Sites.

Quedlinburg, which survived World War II intact, is nestled at the foot of a rock pinnacle and crowned by a castle and an abbey church. Its origins go back to a Saxon settlement in the early 10th century. Here you’ll see the church of St. Servatius, an architectural masterpiece, as well as a well-preserved castle and cobbled lanes with half-timbered houses dating from the 16th and 17th centuries. In fact, Quedlinburg has more than 1,600 half-timbered buildings, more than any other town in the country.

Essentials There are three trains a day from Leipzig (travel time: 3 hr.). Call 01805/996633 or visit www.bahn.de for information and schedules. Access by car is along B6. For tourist information, contact Quedlinburg-Information, Markt 2 ( 03946/905624;www.quedlinburg-info.de), open April to September Monday to Friday 9am to 7pm, Saturday and Sunday 10am to 3pm; and October to March Monday to Friday 9:30am to 6pm, and Saturday 10am to 2pm.

Exploring Quedlinburg

Begin your tour in the Altstadt (Old Town), site of the Markt (Marketplace). The Rathaus (Town Hall), in the Renaissance style of the 1600s, was originally built in 1310. The statue (ca. 1420) on the left of the facade is of Roland, Charlemagne’s knight. The buildings on the other three sides of the Markt are from the 1600s and 1700s. Branching off the square are small cobblestone lanes right out of the Middle Ages. The area around Breitstrasse has several colorful alleyways.

Take the ramp up to the castle to the broad terrace that offers a panoramic view of the medieval town. Here, on the site of the original 9th-century church, stands Quedlinburg’s major attraction, the Stiftskirche St. Servatius ★★, Schlossberg 1 ( 03946/709900;www.domschatzquedlinburg.de), an architectural masterpiece of the Romanesque era. The church was started in 1070 but wasn’t consecrated until 1129. Craftsmen from northern Italy created the friezes and capitals above the central nave. Three aisles with diagonal rib vaulting divide the crypt beneath the chancel. The aisles are adorned with frescoes depicting scenes from the Bible.

The church is filled with treasures, including a Domschatz (treasury) with manuscripts dating from the 10th century. In 1990, a number of ecclesiastical artifacts that had disappeared after the war turned up in Texas, when the heirs of a U.S. Army officer tried to sell them. The purloined treasures have been returned and are now on permanent display. The church is open May to October Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 6pm, Sunday noon to 6pm; and November to April Tuesday to Saturday 10am to 4pm and Sunday noon to 5pm. Admission is 5€ for adults, 4€ for students and children ages 6 to 18. It’s free for children 5 and under.

Burgberg Schloss, Schlossberg 1 ( 03946/2730), was once part of an abbey. A Saxon stronghold in the 10th century, the castle was expanded from the late 16th to the mid–17th century. The complex includes the Schlossmuseum, with 16th- and 17th-century Italian and Flemish paintings, as well as exhibits on the town’s history. You can also visit the Princes’ Hall from the mid-1700s and the throne room. The castle is open April to October daily 10am to 6pm, and November to March Saturday to Thursday 10am to 4pm. Admission is 4€ for adults, 3€ for children ages 6 to 18, and free for children 5 and under.

Where to Eat

Brauhaus Lüdde GERMAN The best place for a good regional meal and the best beer around is this restored old brewery. The Lüdde brewery was once known throughout the Harz Mountains, but shut down in 1966. After reunification, one of the Lüdde relatives took it over and converted the rotting buildings into a good hotel, brewery, and restaurant. The beer comes in four varieties, the most famous being Pubarschknall, a brown beer. In summer a beer garden flourishes between the main house and the old horse stables. Menus change seasonally but expect good, hearty cooking consisting of regional fare.

Blasiistrasse 14. 03946/705206. Reservations not required. Main courses 8€–20€. MC, V. Mon–Sat 11am–midnight; Sun 11am–10pm.

Ratskeller GERMAN This longtime favorite is within walking distance of the railway station. Wine buffs should order the rare Saxon wine. The food is hearty and regional. Many of the meat and game specialties are served with wine Sauerkraut and dumplings. In season, venison is likely to be on the menu.

Markt 1 (in the Rathaus). 03946/2768. Reservations recommended. Main courses 10€–19€. No credit cards. Daily 11am–10pm. Closed Jan.

Where to Stay

Hotel Zum Brauhaus This is the most atmospheric place to stay in town; it’s attached to an old brewery that had been allowed to slumber for decades. In a restored half-timbered house, the hotel offers attractively furnished bedrooms, ranging in size from small to medium. Many of the wooden timbers have been exposed, giving it an old-fashioned look. In spite of its antique look, everything is modern inside.

Carl-Ritter-Strasse 1, 06484 Quedlinburg. www.hotel-brauhaus-luedde.de. 03946/901481. Fax 03496/901483. 51 units. 80€–89€ double. Rates include continental breakfast. MC, V. Free parking. Amenities: Restaurant; bar. In room: TV.

Ringhotel Schlossmühle ★★ Set in the medieval center, this government-rated four-star hotel has emerged as the finest in Quedlinburg. It combines a historic core with a modern addition. Ancient traditions and a modern ambience are perfectly wed here, creating a special atmosphere. Guest rooms are midsize to spacious and are completely up-to-date, each one tastefully furnished and comfortably decorated, with midsize bathrooms. On-site are two restaurants, offering a variety of regional and international dishes, the best in Quedlinburg. The hotel is better accessorized than its nearest competition, Romantik Hotel am Brühl (see below).

Kaiser-Otto-Strasse 28, 06484 Quedlinburg. www.schlossmuehle.de. 03946/7870. Fax 03946/787419. 77 units. 96€–138€ double; 138€–170€ suite. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 10€. Amenities: Restaurant; bar; Jacuzzi; sauna. In room: TV, hair dryer, minibar, Wi-Fi (free).

Romantik Hotel am Brühl ★★ Romantic and tranquil, and set behind a richly historic brick and half-timbered facade, this hotel is run by the Schmidt family. Guest rooms come in a variety of shapes and sizes, as do the bathrooms. All rooms are well furnished with first-rate mattresses and fine linens; some open onto castle views. Virtually all major attractions are within walking distance.

Billungstrasse 11, 06484 Quedlinburg. www.hotelambruehl.de. 03946/96180. Fax 03946/9618246. 46 units. 113€–150€ double; 155€–195€ suite. Rates include buffet breakfast. AE, DC, V. Free parking. Amenities: Restaurant; room service; sauna. In room: TV, hair dryer, minibar, Wi-Fi (free).

Zur Goldenen Sonne This hotel, which dates from 1671, is a good traditional choice. It stands near the Mathildenbrunne, a landmark fountain. The building’s timber-frame construction is typical of this part of Germany. The small rooms are cozily furnished in rustic style, and each is equipped with a small, shower-only bathroom. In summer, the garden is popular with locals and visitors.

Steinweg 11 (5-min. walk from the railway station), 06484 Quedlinburg. www.hotelzurgoldenensonne.de. 03946/96250. Fax 03946/962530. 27 units. 69€–92€ double. Rates include buffet breakfast. AE, MC, V. Free parking. Amenities: Restaurant; bar. In room: TV, minibar.

Dresden ★★★

Dresden

198km (123 miles) S of Berlin, 111km (69 miles) SE of Leipzig

Dresden, once known as “Florence on the Elbe,” was celebrated throughout Europe for its architecture and art treasures. Then came the night of February 13, 1945, when Allied bombers rained down phosphorus and high-explosive bombs on the city. By morning, the Dresden of legend was but a memory. (When Brits heard the news that British pilots had bombed Dresden, many viewed it as Churchill’s revenge for the mass aerial bombardment of the old city of Coventry earlier in the war.) No one knows for sure how many died, but the number is certainly in the tens of thousands, and perhaps more. If you’re interested in the subject, you might want to read Kurt Vonnegut’s novel Slaughterhouse Five.

Today, Dresden is undergoing a rapid and dramatic restoration, and it is once again a major sightseeing destination. Dresden boasts beautiful churches and palaces, as well as many world-class museums, among the finest in all of Germany.

In 2006, Dresden celebrated its 800th anniversary.

Essentials

Getting There

By Plane The Dresden-Klotsche airport lies 10km (6 miles) north of the city center. The airport is served by Lufthansa and most international carriers, with regularly scheduled flights from 11 German cities and other major European cities. For flight information, call 0351/8813360 or visit www.dresden-airport.de. A rail line that’s linked to Dresden’s S-Bahn network stretches from the airport to the city’s main station, requiring 20 minutes’ transit each way, and a one-way fare of 1.90€. A taxi from the airport to the center of Dresden costs about 25€.

By Train Dresden has two main rail stations, the Hauptbahnhof, on Wiener Platz, and the Dresden-Neustadt, at Schlesischer Park. Tram no. 3 connects the two. The city is served by the Deutsche Bundesbahn rail line, with frequent connections to major and regional cities. From Berlin, 15 trains arrive daily (trip time: 2–2 1/2 hr.); 12 trains pull in from Frankfurt (trip time: 5 hr.). For rail information and schedules, call 01805/996633 or visit www.bahn.de.

By Car Access is via the E50 Autobahn from the west or the E4 Autobahn from the north (Rostock, Berlin) or south.

Visitor Information

The Dresden Tourist Information Office is in the Kulturpalast on Wilsdrufferstrasse ( 0351/50160160;www.dresden.de). Open April to December Monday to Friday 10am to 7pm, Saturday 10am to 6pm, and Sunday 10am to 3pm. Off-season hours are Monday to Friday 10am to 6pm, Saturday 10am to 4pm, and Sunday 10am to 2pm.

Getting Around

By Public Transportation If you plan to see more than the historic core of Dresden, you can use the bus and tram lines. A ride of four stops or fewer costs 1.90€, or you can purchase a 24-hour pass for 5€. Maps and tickets are sold at automated dispensers outside the main rail station. Most major lines operate every hour, though service is curtailed between midnight and 5am. Dresden’s S-Bahn reaches the suburbs.

Dresden for Less

The Dresden City-Card, which costs 21€ and is good for 48 hours, is a great deal for short-term visitors. The card gives you unlimited access to all public trams, buses, and ferries, plus free access to 12 of the city’s best museums. There are also reductions on charges for certain sightseeing tours and some cultural events. The tourist office sells the card, and it’s also available at the front desks of most hotels.

By Funicular Dresden has two funiculars. The busier and more accessible of the two is the Standseilbahn, which links the suburb of Loschwitz to a hillside residential area, Weisser Hirsch. More remote, with less frequent runs, is the Schwebebahn, which links Loschwitz with Oberloschwitz on Saturday and Sunday only, carrying passengers to the viewing site at Loschwitzhöhe, which gives you an excellent view of the city. This funicular was the first of its kind in the world, built from 1898 to 1900. Fares on either funicular cost 3.70€ each way. For operating hours and more details, contact the transportation office at 0351/8571011.

By Ferry Five ferries service Dresden, each operated by the same authorities that maintain the city’s network of trams and buses. One is a vehicular ferry across the River Elbe between Dresden-Kleinzschachwitz and the Pillnitz Castle. To reach its departure point, take tram no. 1 from Postplatz. For more information, call 0351/8571011.

Bus Tours

Responding to the flood of visitors coming to see the city’s historic core, Stadtrundfahrt Dresden, Königstrasse 6 ( 0351/8995650;www.stadtrundfahrt.com), has organized a flotilla of red-and-white buses that feature—via prerecorded descriptions and headsets—running commentary in eight languages. April to October daily from 9:30am to 5pm, buses depart at 30-minute intervals for circular tours of the city that incorporate overviews of all the major monuments. From November to March daily service is from 10am to 3pm. Visitors can hop on or off the bus at any of 22 points along the way, and they can even postpone some of the stops until the following day. Each tour begins at the Theaterplatz, adjacent to the Augustusbrücke. Additional stopovers include the Zwinger, the Grünes Gewölbe, the Frauenkirche, and many of the parks, gardens, and architectural highlights of the city. The price is 22€ per adult, with no discounts for students; children 13 and under are free when accompanied by an adult.

Exploring Dresden

Frauenkirche (Church of Our Lady) ★★, at Neumarkt ( 0351/65606100;www.frauenkirche-dresden.org; tram no. 4 or 8), was built between 1726 and 1743 and once was known throughout Europe for its 93m (305-ft.) dome. On the night of February 13, 1945, it was bombed by Allied planes, and during the Cold War it remained the most evocative ruins in Dresden. The East German government deliberately let the blackened hulk stay as it was as a reminder of the horrors of modern warfare. Today the church has been rebuilt and was reconsecrated for the 800th anniversary of the founding of Dresden on October 30, 2005. The original pieces from the pile of rubble left over from 1945 were used, along with other materials. This is one of the most important Protestant churches in Germany, with its famous dome restored. In 2002, the duke of Kent came to Dresden to hand over a new dome cross, with a dimension of 8m (26 ft.), a symbol of reconciliation between Great Britain and Germany. The German chancellor, Gerhard Schröder, participated in the ceremony, the transfer taking place 55 years after the destruction of Dresden by Allied bombers. Admission is free, and hours are daily from 10am to noon and 1 to 6pm.

Residenzschloss, the former Dresden Royal Palace, stands at Schlossplatz ( 0351/49142000;www.skd-dresden.de; tram no. 2, 4, or 8), behind its Renaissance facade. Construction began in 1709, and Napoleon once stood here. It was destroyed by British bombers in 1945 and continues to be restored on an ongoing basis. Its Hausmannsturm (Hausmann Tower; Apr–Oct Wed–Mon 10am–6pm; 3€) can be climbed for a panoramic vista over Dresden and the Elbe, but the chief attraction here is the Grünes Gewölbe (Green Vaults) ★★★, a dazzling collection of 16th- to 18th-century treasures: rococo chests, ivory carvings, jewelry, intricately designed mirrors, and priceless porcelain. Many pieces were created by the craftspeople of local guilds; others were acquired from the far corners of the earth. It’s open from mid-March to mid-November and accessible via timed entry (Wed–Mon 10am–6pm; 10€; buy tickets from entrance or online).

The restored Katholische Hofkirche (Catholic Court Church) ★★, Schlossplatz ( 0351/4844712; tram no. 4 or 8), is the largest church in Saxony. It was built by the son of August the Strong, Friedrich August II, who ruled from 1733 to 1763. The church’s facade has 38 biblical and historical figures in the high baroque style. Inside, you can see the crypt with the tombs of 49 rulers of Saxony and a box allegedly containing the heart of August the Strong. On the main floor you can see a beautiful stone pulpit by the royal sculptor Balthasar Permoser (1651–1732), one of the leading sculptors of his time in Saxony. There’s also an 18th-century church organ. Admission is free. This church, also known as the Cathedral of St. Trinitas, is open Monday to Friday 8:30am to 6pm, Saturday 10am to 4pm, and Sunday 1:30 to 4pm. Guided tours, conducted in German only and priced at 4€ per person, are conducted Monday to Thursday at 2pm and Saturday at 1 and 2pm.

Kreuzkirche (Church of the Cross) ★ ( 0351/4393920; tram no. 4 or 8) stands at the Altmarkt, or old market square. This church is the home of the Kreuzchor, the famous boys’ choir of Dresden. Free concerts are conducted every Saturday at 5pm, unless the choir is traveling. The church’s architecture is a combination of baroque and Art Nouveau. The present building is from the late 18th century, although a church stood here as early as the 13th century. You can also see the reconstructed Rathaus (Town Hall) and the 18th-century Landhaus at the Altmarkt. Very little of either is open to viewing and the Rathaus tower is also closed. However, you can appreciate their facades.

Of Dresden’s many parks and gardens, the best and most popular is the Grosser Garten, to the southeast of the Altstadt. This park, which was mapped out in 1676, contains a zoo and a botanical garden. In the center is a minor Lustschloss (pleasure palace) built in 1670 that’s most appealing when viewed from the outside; just don’t plan a casual visit during the occasional midsummer concerts conducted there (you’ll spend most of your time fighting your way through the crowd rather than admiring the palace). For more information, contact the tourist office.

The Major Museums

Albertinum ★★★ MUSEUM This imposing imperial structure, which recently underwent extensive renovations, houses one of Germany’s great galleries. It’s named for the Saxon King Albert, who, between 1884 and 1887, converted this former royal arsenal into a home for a vast collection of art and precious jewelry.

On the upper two floors is the Galerie Neue Meister ★★★, a collection of 19th- and 20th-century art and sculpture, from Corot to Otto Dix. The desolate and haunting landscapes of Caspar David Friedrich, the German Romantic artist, are especially nice. Impressionists and post-Impressionists are well represented, including Gauguin, Degas, Manet, Monet, Corinth, Liebermann, Klimt, and van Gogh. Antifascist artists, whose works were either destroyed or banned in the Nazi era, are also on display. In the sculpture collection, the works of more than 5 millennia are presented, ranging from the ancient cultures of the Mediterranean and the Near East to virtually all epochs of European artistic developments, dating from the early Middle Ages.

Brühl Terrace. 0351/49142000. www.skd-dresden.de. Admission 8€ adults, free for children 15 and under. Daily 10am–6pm. Closed 2 weeks in Jan. Tram: 1, 3, 5, 7, or 8 to Rathenau Platz.

Zwinger ★★★ MUSEUM August the Strong, elector of Saxony (also king of Poland), built this baroque masterpiece, modeled after Versailles, in 1719. Here he staged tournaments and kept dozens of concubines. His physique was called Herculean, his temperament Rabelaisian, but he also had a great love for the arts. Today, this artfully symmetrical complex of buildings holds a collection of museums. The damage caused by the British air raid in 1945 was so devastating that some locals feared the Zwinger would remain a ruin forever. However, it’s been restored and it’s back in business, welcoming new generations of art lovers.

M. D. Pöppelmann (1662–1736) initially conceived the Zwinger as the forecourt of the castle. In the center of the large quadrangle are formal gardens, fountains, and promenades, forming a deep curving bay enclosed by pavilions. Notable are the Wallpavilion in the center of the semicircular arched gallery in the west end and the Nymphenbad (Bath of Nymphs) ★★ with its graceful fountains and mythological figures by Balthasar Permoser, who helped Pöppelmann in the construction of the Zwinger. On the northeast side is a Renaissance-style building, added in 1846 by Gottfried Semper (1803–79). Semper’s two-story pavilions are linked by one-story galleries. The architectural critic Sir Nikolaus Pevsner once wrote: “What exultation in these rocking curves, and yet what grace! It is joyful but never vulgar; vigorous, boisterous perhaps, but never crude.”

The most important museum in the complex is the Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister (Old Masters Picture Gallery) ★★★, which has its entrance at Theaterplatz 1. This gallery, one of the best on the Continent, has as its showpiece Raphael’s Sistine Madonna. You’ll also find Giorgione’s Sleeping Venus, Antonello da Messina’s The Martyrdom of St. Sebastian, Titian’s Tribute Money, and many famous works by Veronese, Tintoretto, Correggio, and Annibale Carracci. You’ll also see Flemish, Dutch, and German paintings by Van Dyck, Vermeer, Dürer, and Rembrandt, among others. The Rubens collection includes his spectacular Neptune, full of rearing horses, and an exquisite St. Jerome. Admission is 10€ adults, free for children 15 and under.

Rüstkammer (Armory) displays a vast collection of weaponry from the 15th to the 18th century, including halberds, shields, cannons, and suits of armor for both men and horses. The Porzellansammlung (Porcelain Collection) displays the finery produced by the porcelain factories of Dresden during the 350 years since their founding. Admission is 6€ adults, free for children 15 and under.

Theaterplatz 1. 0351/49142000.www.skd-dresden.de. Admission 12€ for adults, 7.50€ students, free for children 16 and under. All 4 Zwinger sites: Tues–Sun 10am–6pm. Tram: 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 11, 12, or 14. Bus: 82 or 94 to Postplatz.

A Cruise on the Elbe

You can take a cruise on the historic Elbe River from central moorings below the Brühl Terrace. Sächsischer Dampfschiffahrt ( 0351/866090;www.saechsische-dampfschiffahrt.de) offers a 4 1/2-hour cruise along the Elbe from Dresden to Rathen, a German village at the border of the Czech Republic. These trips take you through some of the finest river scenery in eastern Germany, including an area known as “Swiss Saxony,” one of Germany’s most popular natural wonders. It’s a land of table-shaped outcrops, isolated pillars, deep gorges, and sheer sandstone cliffs. The upper reaches of the Elbe flow in wide curves through these fantastically shaped rock formations. Between March and early November, boat departures occur daily, at 9am. Because each leg of this waterborne journey requires 4 1/2 hours, you’ll have to block out an entire day for this experience if you opt for round-trip transport by boat. Alternatively, you can opt for one-way transit by boat, with a return back to Dresden from Rathen by train, a 40-minute ride. Trains depart at 30-minute intervals throughout the day between Rathen and Dresden. Boat passage, each way, costs 21€; rail transport, each way, costs 10€. While you’re cruising, look for the Blaues Wunder (Blue Wonder), one of Dresden’s most celebrated bridges, completed in 1893 and never destroyed during the wartime bombings. It is a beautiful expression of the bridge-building genius that flourished here at the turn of the 20th century.

Where to Eat

Expensive

Lesage ★★ GERMAN/INTERNATIONAL One of the city’s best restaurants is oddly positioned in the “Transparent Factory of Volkswagen,” a stunning glass structure where you can witness new models of cars being assembled by workers in white lab jackets. The elegant restaurant itself is tucked away near the entrance. Begin with such delights as apple curry soup with baked spring chicken or lobster soup with angler fish and mango cream. You might follow with filet of pork under a tortilla crust served with paprika potatoes and guacamole. Another specialty is sautéed Barbary duckling breast with red figs and a shallot confit. If you wish, you can drive off in a new Phaeton.

Lennestrasse 1. 0351/4204250.www.lesage.de. Reservations required. Main courses 14€–26€. AE, DC, MC, V. Mon noon–2:30pm; Tues–Sat noon–3pm and 6–10pm; Sun 11am–3pm.

Rossini ★ ITALIAN Rossini offers Italian cuisine in a stylish setting, one floor above the lobby of the Dresden Hilton. Menu items might include chicken-liver pâté in Marsala wine; a buffet of Sicilian antipasti, carpaccio of swordfish marinated in Marsala vinaigrette, Parma ham with coarse bread, and a tapenade of olives; Sicilian-style fish soup; or grilled lamb with anchovy sauce. Dessert may be cassata made with ricotta cheese and candied fruit, or a granita (sorbet) of oranges and lemons floating on white wine.

In the Dresden Hilton, An der Frauenkirche 5. 0351/86420. Reservations recommended. Main courses 18€–27€. AE, DC, MC, V. Daily 6–11pm. Tram: 4 or 8.

Moderate

Alte Meister ★ CONTINENTAL Established in 2001, this is the first restaurant directly within the Zwinger that anyone can remember for a very long time. Although it has its own entrance (on Theaterplatz directly opposite the entrance to the Opera House), it’s close to its namesake, the Zwinger’s Alte Meister collections. Within a high-ceilinged and stately room that evokes the imperial grandeur of Renaissance Saxony, you’ll enjoy well-flavored and traditional food items with touches of elegance. The best examples include cream of carrot soup, studded with chunks of braised rabbit liver; soft goat cheese with toast and a ragout of tomatoes; grilled prawns served with chicory salad; and carpaccio of pressed veal with a tomato-and-mushroom salad. Main courses include filet of sea bass served with a curried version of coconut-laced vegetables; breast of free-range chicken with a sauté of Gorgonzola-flavored spinach; and a combination platter that contains, on the same plate, roasted saddle of rabbit and a braised filet of lamb.

Theaterplatz 1A–B. 0351/4810426. www.altemeister.net. Reservations recommended. Main courses 11€–15€. AE, MC, V. Daily 10pm–1am. Bus: 91.

Brauhaus am Waldschlösschen GERMAN This is a replica of the old-fashioned beer halls and beer gardens that played such an important role in Dresden’s past. Around 250 diners and drinkers can cram into a series of dining rooms, and another 800 can be accommodated within the sprawling garden (Apr–Oct). Expect heaping platters of such favorites as marinated saddle of pork steak with roasted onions; Saxon sour beef with raisin sauce, red cabbage, and potato dumplings; sautéed fish with parsley and onions; soups; Schnitzels, Wursts; and roasts. Live music, usually from a jazzy pianist, is presented Monday to Saturday 8pm to midnight. Beer (Waldschlösschen) is brewed on the premises and comes in several degrees of darkness.

Am Brauhaus 8B (in the Neustadt district, 5km/3 miles northeast of the city center). 0351/6523900. www.waldschloesschen.de. Reservations required. Main courses 8€–16€. AE, DC, MC, V. Daily 11am–1am. Tram: 11. Bus: 91.

Italienisches Dörfchen ITALIAN/INTERNATIONAL Italienisches Dörfchen is a stately looking neoclassical building that was erected in 1911 on the site of the cluster of cottages (“the Italian Village”) that once housed the mostly Italian crews of laborers building the nearby monuments of the Saxon kings. Today, it contains a quartet of restaurants, each with a different theme. The best way to decide which to patronize is to wander through the formal premises of the building and inspect them. Choices include the Biersaal, whose painted ceiling evokes the 18th century; the neoclassical Weinzimmer, a formal, rather uncomfortable and fussy-looking room outfitted in red; and the Bellotto, an upscale Italian eatery on the top floor. There’s also the Kurfürstenzimmer, an area that serves both Saxon and international food. Supplementing the four dining options is Café, a graceful-looking antique room with windows that overlook the river. Prices in all four of the restaurants are about the same, but if you’re interested just in coffee, tea, a drink, and/or pastries, you’d be best advised to head directly for the cafe.

Theaterplatz 2. 0351/498160.www.italienisches-doerfchen.de. Reservations not necessary. Main courses 10€–18€. AE, DC, MC, V. Daily 10am–midnight. Tram: 4 or 8.

Inexpensive

Ayers Rock ★ AUSTRALIAN The success of this likable restaurant is proof of the growing sophistication of Dresden. It was named and modeled after the geological oddity in central Australia that deeply impressed the owner during a holiday there. Lighthearted and breezy, the place serves almost 300 kinds of cocktails, as well as some brands of German and Aussie beer on tap. Menu items are inspired by what’s cooking “down under” and include a savory version of lamb with green bean stew, grilled veal shank, fresh asparagus with strips of chicken breast, and roebuck steak with mushrooms and glass noodles. After 8:30pm, the bar area gets crowded with the young at heart and singles.

Münzgasse 8. 0351/4901188. www.ayersrock-dresden.de. Reservations not necessary. Main courses 10€–20€. AE, DC, MC, V. Daily noon–2am. Tram: 1, 2, or 4.

Brauhaus Watzke GERMAN One of Dresden’s most famous and atmospheric beer halls lies 6.5km (4 miles) west of the city center, on a site overlooking the Elbe. Established in 1898, it confirms that while governments in Germany may rise and fall, beer halls will remain intact. If the weather is clement, you can opt for a seat within the sprawling garden, where hardworking waitresses carry impossibly heavy loads of beer mugs and heaping platters to the long tables. Inside, the venue is appropriately woodsy looking and gemütlich (cozy). Anything you drink here (including beers of the month) will have been brewed on the premises, with modern equipment that was installed in 1996. Regardless of which kind of beer you pick, a half-liter costs 2.70€. It’s never bottled in individual containers, only in kegs, and it’s almost never available anywhere except here and within a limited handful of other restaurants nearby. Menu items are appropriately hearty and include Meltzer Schnitzel, a filet of veal dredged in malt and fried, or Watzke Bierfleische, a ragout of beef stewed in dark aromatic beer. Salads, soups, and fish dishes are just as tasty.

Kötzschenbroder Strasse 1. 0351/852920. www.watzke.de. Reservations not necessary. Main courses 8.50€–15€. AE, MC, V. Daily 11am–midnight. Tram: 4 or 13.

Café Schinkelwache CONTINENTAL Designed like a miniature Ionic-style temple, this is one of Dresden’s architectural gems. Noted architect Karl Friedrich Schinkel built this sandstone structure in 1832 to house soldiers and guards. In 1995, it was rebuilt and reconfigured into the cafe you see today. Its interior is cozier and on a smaller scale than you’d imagine from a look at its stately facade. During clement weather, tables and parasols spill onto the terrace surrounding the building. Menu selections include pastries, meal-size salads, soups, cold platters, toasts, and at least two full-fledged dishes of the day. Wine, beer, and coffee are the preferred drinks.

Theaterplatz 2. 0351/4903909. Reservations recommended. Pastries 3€–5€; platters 11€–18€. AE, MC, V. Daily 10am–midnight. Tram: 8 or 11.

Sophienkeller im Taschenbergpalais ★ GERMAN The food here approximates the hearty medieval feasts you might have expected in the Royal Saxon Court, albeit in a more sanitary form. Your happiness in these deep but bustling cellars depends on where you happen to sit. Four distinct areas are available, but the ones that are the most authentically historic are the Grosses and Kleines Zunfi Gewölbe, where flickering candles, set beneath vaulted ceilings, provide most of the illumination. Waitresses in traditional dirndls haul steaming platters of crispy suckling pig from the spit with wine-flavored cabbage, a juicy chicken filet with fresh spinach and hearty Gorgonzola cheese, or venison goulash with dumplings. Tantalizing regional appetizers include a Saxon potato soup with fried slices of Bockwurst sausage or a smoky fish soup with fresh chervil and shrimp. It’s a bit theme-ish, especially in its emphasis on 18th-century costumes, and at least part of its energy is devoted to the care and feeding of large tour groups, but the food is hearty and flavorful and the ambience can be very romantic.

Taschenberg 3. 0351/497260.www.sophienkeller-dresden.de. Reservations recommended. Main courses 8€–15€. AE, DC, MC, V. Daily 11am–1am. Tram: 4 or 11.

Shopping

Perhaps because of Dresden’s destruction in the final days of World War II, there’s an emphasis here on collecting the high-quality antiques that remain. You’ll find many antiques dealers in the city. Most of the inventory has been culled from homes and estate sales in the relatively unscathed surrounding hamlets. The most interesting shops in Dresden, and many of the most glamorous ones, line either side of the Königstrasse. Here, look for a roster of handcrafted goods and gift items.

And don’t overlook the city’s role as a purveyor of modern painting and sculpture. The best of the art galleries is Galerie am Blauen Wunder, Pillnitzer Landstrasse 2 ( 0351/2684020).

Weihnachtsland am Zwinger, Kleine Brüdergasse 5 ( 0351/8621230;www.weihnachtsland-dresden.com), is the best-stocked and most interesting gift shop in Dresden, with a year-round emphasis on Christmas, New Year’s, and Easter ornaments that are handmade in the nearby Erzgebirge region. Look for pieces of delicate Plauener Spitze lace that are designed to hang on hooks affixed by suction cups to the glass of your windows—it’s easy to transport, and some pieces can be acquired for less than 6€. There are also elaborately detailed Easter eggs, carved wooden figurines in the shapes of either soldiers or angels, and framed still lifes and landscapes made from assemblages of dried flowers.

Other shops line Prager Strasse with its department stores, Altmarkt, and Wilsdruffer Strasse. Tony shops and boutiques are found along Hauptstrasse.

Count yourself lucky if you’re in Dresden for the celebrated Weihnachtsmarkt ★★, the oldest Christmas market in Germany, a tradition since 1434. Handmade regional crafts, delicious homemade foods such as cakes and cookies, and dozens of other goodies are featured in the Altmarkt. The blown-glass tree decorations from Lauscha are particularly stunning and virtual heirlooms since they never go out of style.

Nightlife & Entertainment

Dresden is Saxony’s cultural center. There’s always a variety of options for nightlife here, whether you’re looking for drama, classical concerts, punk-rock shows, dancing, or just a good place to drink.

The Performing Arts Between the Elbe River and the Zwinger, on the western side of Theaterplatz, stands the Semperoper (Semper Opera House) ★★★, one of the most exquisite opera houses in the world, Theaterplatz 2 ( 0351/4911705;www.semperoper.de; tram: 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 11, 12, 14, or 17). Both Wagner and Weber conducted here. Gottfried Semper, the same architect who mapped out the famous picture gallery in the Zwinger, designed the building. Restorers have brought the Renaissance-style two-tiered facade and the interior of the building back to life. Careful attention was paid to the replacement of Semper’s original paintings and decorations. More important, the fine acoustics for which the opera house was known have been reestablished. Good seats can be had for 20€ to 120€. Note: Seats are extremely difficult to get; purchase your tickets as far in advance as possible. The opera company takes a vacation mid-July to mid-August.

The Dresden Philharmonic appears at the Kulturpalast, in the Altmarkt ( 0351/4866306;www.kulturpalast-dresden.de; tram: 3 or 5). Tickets cost 14€ to 50€. Concerts, sometimes with accompaniment by ballet recitals, are also performed during June and August in the courtyards of the Zwinger.

For musical theater, come to the Staats Operette, Pirnaer Landstrasse 131, about 5km (3 miles) southeast of the city center ( 0351/2079929;www.staatsoperette-dresden.de; tram: 4), which mainly performs works from the 19th and early 20th centuries. The box office is open Sunday 1 hour before the show, Monday 11am to 4pm, Tuesday to Friday 11am to 7pm, and Saturday 4 to 7pm. Tickets cost 7€ to 25€.

The classical stage for drama in the city is Schauspielhaus, Postplatz ( 0351/4913555;www.staatsschauspiel-dresden.de; tram: 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, 11, 12, or 14), where dramas by Goethe, Schiller, and Shakespeare (in German) are performed. Performances usually start at 7:30pm. The box office is open Monday to Friday 10am to 6:30pm, Saturday and Sunday 10am to 2pm. Tickets cost 10€ to 28€. The Schauspielhaus box office also handles tickets and inquiries for the Residenztheater im Schloss, Theaterplatz ( 0351/491350; tram: 4 or 8), a small theater focusing on modern drama and small-ensemble pieces. The cost is 10€ to 72€. Both theaters are closed from July to mid-August.

For a family theater experience, check out Theater Junge Generation, Meissner Landstrasse 4 ( 0351/429120;www.tjg-dresden.de; tram: 1; bus: 94), which interprets Shakespeare and fairy tales in a way that both kids and parents can enjoy. The box office is open Monday to Saturday 10am to 6pm, and 1 hour before performances. Ticket prices are 5€ to 12€. In summer, some members of the troupe bring their acts outdoors, usually to the courtyard in front of the Staffhof, an imposing building originally intended as a stable.

Bars At Las Tapas, Münzgasse 4 ( 0351/4960108;www.las-tapas.de; tram: 1, 2, 4, or 14), within a stone-floored room modeled after an Iberian tasca (wine tavern), you’ll find small tables and a stand-up bar area, where up to 40 kinds of Spanish-style marinated mushrooms, sausages, Serrano hams, salted almonds, baked artichokes, and prawns in bacon are displayed behind glass. Priced at 3€ to 8€, they go well with beer or the Spanish wines sold here. More substantial platters, priced at 12€ to 20€, include lamb tenderloins with eggplant and spits of marinated pork tenderloin served with sherry sauce. It’s open daily 11am to between 1 and 2am, depending on business.

A once run-down but now gentrified nightlife destination that assembles about 20 different bars, art galleries, and restaurants into one historic site is Kunsthof, Alaunstrasse 70 ( 0351/8106617;www.kunsthof-dresden.de; tram no. 6, 7, or 13), where a series of hip cafes, art galleries, and affordable restaurants line the edges of an interior courtyard. A particularly appealing bar, tapas bar, and restaurant within the complex is the Spain-inspired El Perro ( 0351/8036723;www.elperro.de).

Clubs Dance clubs that are known to virtually every 20-something resident of Dresden include DownTown ( 0351/8115592;www.downtown-dresden.de) and Groove Station ( 0351/8029594;www.groovestation.de), set immediately adjacent to one another at Katharinenstrasse 11 and 13 (tram: 7 or 8). Clients can move freely from one to the other of this pair of cramped, sometimes convivial bars, where music rocks and rolls at high volumes and suds flow freely. Both are at their peak capacity on Friday and Saturday nights. Monday is gay and lesbian night, and on Sunday there’s dinner and dancing. Both of them are open daily from 9pm “until everybody leaves.” A single cover charge, ranging from 9€ to 15€, depending on the night of the week, applies to both clubs.

Projekttheater Dresden, Louisenstrasse 47 ( 0351/8107600;www.projekttheater.de; tram: 7 or 8), a publicly funded organization, usually, but not always, gives live jazz performances Tuesday to Sunday at 9pm and also maintains separate areas for the presentation of avant-garde films, lectures, and art exhibitions. Don’t expect a nightclub-style cabaret, as no drinks are served. Tickets, available 1 hour before showtime, cost 11€ each. Call to see if a performance is scheduled.

For an insight into Germany’s newest crop of political satirists, head for the irreverent premises of Herkules Keule, Sternplatz 1 ( 0351/4925555;www.herkuleskeule.de; tram: 1, 2, 4, 7, 8, or 11). Although it was well known during the heyday of the former GDR, its sometimes scathing pronouncements have reached their sharpest and shrillest since reunification. Come here if your knowledge of German is extremely good and if you’re prepared for caustic humor that touches on everything from politics to sex. Shows are presented Monday to Friday at 7:30pm and Saturday at 6 and 9pm. Admission is 10€ to 19€, depending on the night of the week.

Where to Stay

Since reunification and the amazing increase in tourism, Dresden’s hotel prices have soared, as has the demand for rooms. Even so-called “budget” hotels can command 130€ a night for a double.

Very Expensive

Kempinski Hotel Taschenbergpalais ★★★ Few hotels of post-reunification Germany have sparked as much pride among local citizens as this one. Its history dates from the early 18th century, when the elector of Saxony built a baroque castle for his favorite mistress, the Countess Cosel, who, for mysterious reasons, was later banished from his court. For 250 years, the palace was the pride of Dresden, a site visited almost as much as the Zwinger. Only the surreal remains of a massive marble staircase survived the bombs, but now the historic Taschenberg Palace is back better than ever.

A real estate developer spent $175 million on transforming the ruin into Dresden’s finest hotel, restoring the five-story baroque, sculpture-dotted facade to its original opulence. Rooms are the most luxurious in town. Those on the west and north sides overlook the Zwinger or the Opera.

Taschenberg 3, 01067 Dresden. www.kempinski-dresden.de. 0351/49120. Fax 0351/4912812. 214 units. 219€–339€ double; from 419€ suite. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 16€. Tram: 5 or 8. Amenities: 2 restaurants; 2 bars; airport transfers (60€); babysitting; bikes; concierge; exercise room; indoor heated pool; room service; spa. In room: A/C, TV, hair dryer, minibar, Wi-Fi (25€ per day).

Expensive

Bülow Residenz ★★★ We prefer staying at the Bülow Residenz, a charming, gracious boutique hotel and one of the most luxurious in eastern Germany, to the Taschenbergpalais (see above). This hotel, with a restored facade from the 1700s, has been a success since its opening in the early 1990s. The formal lounge, with its plush seating, sets the tone, and the garden patio is the perfect place to be on a summer day. Individually decorated rooms are unusually spacious compared to most in Dresden. Oversize beds and contemporary redwood furnishings offer a restful ambience. The sumptuous German-style 21€ breakfast buffet is well worth it; check the Web for special rates, as many packages include breakfast and/or a pair of nearly-impossible-to-obtain Semperoper tickets.

Rähnitzgasse 19 (near the Opera), 01097 Dresden. www.buelow-residenz.de. 0351/80030. Fax 0351/8003100. 30 units. 195€–250€ double; 310€–650€ suite. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 16€. Tram: 3, 4, 8, or 11. Amenities: Restaurant; bar; babysitting; bikes; exercise room; spa. In room: A/C, TV, hair dryer, minibar.

Hilton Dresden ★ This hotel is one of the best in the region, though lacking the romance and glamour of the Taschenbergpalais or the intimacy and charm of the Bülow (see above). Its conservative mansard-roofed facade blends harmoniously with the baroque buildings on the nearby Neumarkt. A glassed-in passageway connects the hotel to a 19th-century building, the Sekundogenitur, which contains two restaurants and an array of banqueting and conference rooms. Rooms are midsize, conservatively modern, and well maintained. Double-glazed windows cut down on noise. The best rooms face the Frauenkirche.

An der Frauenkirche 5, 01067 Dresden. www.hilton.com. 800/4458667 in the U.S. and Canada, or 0351/86420. Fax 0351/8642725. 333 units. 158€–243€ double; 248€–382€ suite. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 20€. Tram: 3, 5, 7, 8, or 12. Amenities: 7 restaurants; 2 bars; babysitting; bikes; concierge; health club and spa; indoor heated pool; room service. In room: TV, fridge (in some), hair dryer, minibar, Wi-Fi (22€ per day).

Hotel Suitess ★★★ A member of Small Luxury Hotels of the World, this is one classy address. It was reconstructed according to a historic architectural plan behind a detailed baroque facade. The entire hotel, which is government rated as five stars, is the epitome of charm, luxury, comfort, and service, with a Biedermeier aura. The Kempinski may be grander and larger, but for grace, style, and tranquillity, Suitess is the oasis of Dresden. Each room is individually designed, with a harmonious decor and a careful attention to detail. The staff is the best trained in town. The on-site Maurice Restaurant is for serious foodies, and uses luxury ingredients.

An der Frauenkirche 13, 01067 Dresden. www.suitess-hotel.com. 0351/417270. Fax 0351/41727160. 21 units. 113€–280€ double; from 247€ suite. AE, DC, MC, V. Amenities: Restaurant; bar; airport transfers (35€); babysitting; concierge; health club and spa; room service; Wi-Fi (free; in lobby). In room: A/C, TV/DVD, hair dryer, minibar.

Romantik Hotel Pattis ★★★ Lying outside Dresden center in the Kemnitz section, 4km (2 1/2 miles) to the northwest, this is one of the most romantic and atmospheric hotels in all of eastern Germany. It originated as a mill, but by 1870 it had become a popular day trip for the rich folk of Dresden, who came here to go boating on a lake and also to dance the waltz in its ballroom. The property fell into decline after World War II but was rescued by the Pattis family, which reconstructed the original house, which is surrounded by a large, landscaped park. All the spacious rooms and suites are beautifully furnished, cozy, and comfortable, with high-quality furnishings and fabrics. On-site is a gourmet restaurant. Begin the evening with a drink in the cozy bar or else in the library in front of a crackling open fire.

Merbitzerstrasse 53, 01157 Dresden-Kemnitz. www.pattis.de. 0351/42550. Fax 0351/4255255. 47 units. 130€–205€ double; 190€–350€ suite. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 5€ indoors. Bus: 94. Amenities: 2 restaurants; bar; bikes; concierge; exercise room; Jacuzzi; room service; sauna. In room: TV, hair dryer, minibar, Wi-Fi (free).

Steigenberger Hotel de Saxe ★★ In the 18th century a famous hotel once stood on this spot, opening onto views of the Neumarkt. Today, this luxury hotel has risen on the spot to grace the skyline of Dresden. Directly opposite the fabled Frauenkirche, the hotel was reconstructed in the grand baroque style with rows of dormer windows. The rooms are luxuriously furnished and most comfortable—definitely a hotel of the 21st century in spite of its old-fashioned architecture. Even the simplest rooms are called “superior,” although if you’re willing to pay more you can get a deluxe room with even better appointments.

Neumarkt 9, 01067 Dresden. www.steigenberger.com. 0351/43860. Fax 0351/4386888. 185 units. 145€–185€ double; 295€–395€ suite. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 20€. Amenities: Restaurant; bar; exercise room; room service; spa. In room: A/C, TV, hair dryer, minibar, Wi-Fi (15€ per day).

Westin Bellevue ★ The Bellevue, which we’d rank just under the Hilton, stands by the most attractive part of the Elbe. If you look out the hotel’s windows or from its terraces to the opposite riverbank, you’ll know you’re in the spot where Canaletto painted his magnificent scenes. The ornate walls of a pair of courtyards that survived the 1945 bombings have been integrated into the structure and are now a protected monument. Some rooms overlook the courtyards; others are in modern wings that often open onto the Elbe. Whether you stay in the old part or more modern section, you’ll find well-appointed rooms.

Grosse Meissner Strasse 15, 01097 Dresden. www.westin.com/bellevue. 0351/8050. Fax 0351/8051609. 343 units. 119€–299€ double; from 399€ suite. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 16€. Tram: 4 or 5. Amenities: 2 restaurants; bar; babysitting; concierge; health club & spa; indoor heated pool; room service. In room: A/C, TV/DVD, CD player, hair dryer, minibar, Wi-Fi (18€ per day).

Moderate

Art’otel ★ The six floors of this dramatic postmodern hotel are the most self-consciously “arty” of any hotel in Dresden. They were designed by Denis Santachiara, whose work has been heralded in Munich, Milan, New York, and Paris. One floor is an art gallery that focuses on striking contemporary paintings and sculpture by German artists. The stylish guest rooms are well furnished and comfortable, each with a neat, efficiently organized private bathroom. The staff is very conscious of cutting-edge trends in German cities.

Ostra-Allee 33, 01067 Dresden. www.artotels.com. 0351/49220. Fax 0351/4922777. 174 units. 129€–200€ double; from 160€ suite. Rates include buffet breakfast. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 15€. Tram: 11. Amenities: Restaurant; bar; bikes; exercise room; room service; sauna. In room: A/C, TV, hair dryer, minibar, Wi-Fi (8€ per hour).

Hotel am Terrassenufer Comfortable and reasonably priced, this hotel was built in the 1960s as a student dormitory. In the 1990s, it was renovated and enlarged into the streamlined 12-story hotel you see today. Set on the riverbank, a short walk from Dresden’s historic core, it offers large, airy, big-windowed rooms with lots of sunlight and compact bathrooms.

Terrassenufer 12, 01069 Dresden. www.hotel-terrassenufer.de. 0351/4409500. Fax 0351/4409600. 196 units. 81€–150€ double; 144€–240€ suite. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 10€. Tram: 3, 7, or 9. Amenities: Restaurant; bar; room service. In room: A/C, TV, hair dryer, minibar, Wi-Fi (8€ per hour).

Rothenburger Hof ★★ Beautifully renovated, this time-honored and traditional hotel, which first opened its doors in 1685, is once again claiming its regal position as a small luxury hotel. A family run hotel, it is in Neustadt, the area rebuilt after a great fire in the late 1680s. It’s within an easy walk of the historical monuments of the Old City. It’s much more comfortable today than when it first opened because so many modern improvements have been made, including the addition of a swimming pool, sauna, Turkish bath, and solarium, plus a garden terrace and an elevator. The midsize rooms are traditionally furnished and comfortable, with freshly renovated, tiled bathrooms. Guest-room furnishings are tasteful reproductions of antiques.

Rothenburger Strasse 15–17, 01099 Dresden. www.rothenburger-hof.de. 0351/81260. Fax 0351/8126222. 39 units. 99€–160€ double; 170€–185€ suite. Rates include buffet breakfast. AE, MC, V. Parking 8€. Tram: 11. Amenities: Children’s center; exercise room; indoor heated pool; room service; sauna. In room: TV, kitchen (in some), minibar, Wi-Fi (free).

Schlosshotel Dresden-Pillnitz ★★ Set within a few steps of Schloss Pillnitz (Pillnitz Castle), about 8km (5 miles) east of downtown Dresden, this historic building functioned as a restaurant as early as 1760, often feeding the courtiers and service personnel doing business with the castle. In 1999, the Zepp family poured time and money into its restoration. Today, the upper floors are devoted to well-maintained, discreetly tasteful guest rooms, each with big windows, well-crafted furniture, and comfortable beds. The lower floors contain a cafe, a reception hall, and a high-ceilinged restaurant with excellent food.

August-Böckelstiegel-Strasse 10, 01326 Dresden-Pillnitz. www.schlosshotel-pillnitz.de. 0351/26140. Fax 0351/2614400. 45 units. 115€–140€ double; 200€–240€ suite. Rates include buffet breakfast. AE, MC, V. Free parking. Amenities: Restaurant; bikes; Wi-Fi (8€ per day; in lobby). In room: TV, hair dryer, minibar.

Inexpensive

Raskolnikoff Pension This is one of the better pensiones (boardinghouses) in town, lying across the river in Neustadt (New Town). It takes its name from a Dostoevsky character, but don’t expect Crime and Punishment if you lodge here. Family owned and run, it is in a restored building dating from 1732 and is a rather artsy choice, with a modern gallery on-site. Special features include a courtyard garden and a cozy restaurant, serving regional specialties of Saxony. All the bedrooms have been renovated and are done in an extreme modern style, though private bathrooms have been installed in only two rooms. At these prices forget about in-room amenities.

Böhmische Strasse 34, 01099 Dresden. www.raskolnikoff.de. 0351/8045706. 6 units, 2 with private bathroom. 52€ double without bathroom; 55€ double with bathroom. Rates include continental breakfast. No credit cards. Amenities: Restaurant.

Meissen ★

25km (16 miles) NW of Dresden, 174km (108 miles) S of Berlin, 85km (53 miles) E of Leipzig

This “city of porcelain” is most often visited on a day trip from Dresden, although since reunification, it now has suitable accommodations for those who’d like to spend the night and get acquainted with the area.

Meissen lies on both banks of the Elbe, with the Altstadt on the left bank. It’s a very old town, dating from A.D. 929. Since 1710, Meissen has been known around the world as the center for the manufacturing of Dresden china. The early makers of this so-called “white gold” were virtually held prisoner here because the princes who ruled the city wanted to keep their secrets to themselves. Today, shoppers can find the greatest selection of porcelain in all Germany. However, not wanting to undercut their distributors in such cities as Munich or Berlin, Meissen porcelain manufacturers keep their prices about the same as elsewhere.

Essentials

Getting There

By Train Meissen Bahnhof is on the Deutsche Bundesbahn rail line, with connections departing for Dresden at 30- to 45-minute intervals throughout the day and evening. For rail information, call 01805/996633 or visit www.bahn.de.

By Bus Regional buses connecting Dresden with Meissen are operated by Verkehrsgesellschaft Meissen. Consult the tourist office in Meissen for a schedule of connections or ask at the tourist office in Dresden.

By Car Access is via the E40 Autobahn from Dresden or the E49 from Leipzig.

By Boat If you’re in Dresden in summer, you can go to Meissen by boat in about an hour and enjoy the scenery along the Elbe. The Sächsischer Dampfschiffahrt, Hertha Lindner Strasse 10 ( 0351/866090;www.saechsische-dampfschiffahrt.de), leaves daily between May and late October at 9:45am from Dresden’s Brühl Terrace, the fortified embankment on the other side of the Hofkirche. Boats arrive in Meissen 2 hours later. Waterborne returns to Dresden from Meissen depart at 2:45pm.

Visitor Information

Contact Tourist-Information Meissen, Markt 3 ( 03521/41940;www.touristinfo-meissen.de), November to March Monday to Friday 10am to 5pm and Saturday 10am to 3pm (closed Sat in Jan); April to October, hours are Monday to Friday 10am to 6pm, and Saturday and Sunday 10am to 4pm.

Exploring Meissen

Towering over the town is the Gothic-style Dom ★, Domplatz 7 ( 03521/452490;www.meiland.de), one of the smallest cathedrals in Germany, built between 1260 and 1450. Until the year 1400, the bishops of the diocese of Meissen had their seat next to the cathedral. Later, Saxon rulers were buried here, the first in 1428. Inside are works of art, including a painting by Lucas Cranach the Elder, along with rare Meissen porcelain. The cathedral has been Protestant since the 16th century. Admission costs 2.50€ per person. A 30-minute German-language guided tour, departing at virtually any time you specify, costs 5€ per person. Hours are April to October daily 9am to 6pm, and November to March daily 10am to 4pm.

Sharing the castle quarter with the cathedral is Albrechtsburg Castle ★, Domplatz 1 ( 03521/47070;www.albrechtsburg-meissen.de), where the first Meissen porcelain was made. Construction of the castle began in 1471 and went on intermittently until 1525. From 1710 to 1864 it was the site of the Meissen Porcelain Manufactory. It is open March to October daily 10am to 6pm, November and December daily 10am to 5pm. Closed January and February. Admission is 5€ for adults, 2.50€ for children 6 to 16, and free for children 5 and under.

But the prime attraction in town is the Porzellan-Manufaktur ★, Talstrasse 9 ( 03521/4680;www.meissen.com). At this factory, you can see how the centuries-old process of making Meissen china is still carried on, using the same traditional designs. You can rent a prerecorded audio device, priced at 9€, which will direct you (in any of several languages) on a self-guided tour lasting between 30 and 60 minutes, depending on how fast you move through the premises. You can visit the on-site Porcelain Museum, with 3,000 pieces, plus the workshop. Other than the cost of the guided tour, admission is free. The factory, its museum, and the audio machines are available May to October daily 9am to 6pm, and November to April daily 9am to 5pm.

Where to Eat

Romantik Restaurant Vincenz Richter ★ GERMAN/SAXON This charming, hearty, and traditional restaurant is in a vine-sheathed 1523 building. It has a hardworking, devoted staff and a cozy setting of Germanic charm. Try the fresh chanterelles in a creamy sauce with homemade bread dumplings and a green salad, or else grilled pikeperch with sauerkraut and herb-flavored potatoes. The bar stocks an impressive inventory of local wines, and the kitchens serve ample portions of Saxon food.

An der Frauenkirche 12 (uphill from Meissen’s Marktplatz). 03521/453285.www.vincenz-richter.de. Reservations recommended. Main courses 12€–18€; fixed-price menus 31€–44€. AE, DC, MC, V. Tues–Sat noon–11pm; Sun noon–6pm.

Shopping

Porzellan-Manufaktur (see above) has recently crafted, hand-painted porcelain, which they’ll ship home for you. However, don’t expect prices to be much cheaper than in other German cities. The same organization also maintains a shop, with basically the same prices, in the center of Meissen at Burgstrasse 6 ( 03521/458015).

Where to Stay

Welcome Park Hotel ★ This is the only first-rate hotel in town. For decades, Meissen didn’t have a suitable hotel, but this Art Nouveau villa filled the void in the early 1990s. You can request a room in the original villa, although most accommodations are in the more sterile modern annexes. A suite on the top floor under the eaves is perfect for romantic couples. Most rooms open onto panoramic vistas.

Hafenstrasse 27–31 (on the Elbe, directly across the water from the castle), 01662 Meissen. www.welcome-hotel-meissen.de. 03521/72250. Fax 03521/722904. 97 units. 78€–145€ double; 158€–210€ suite. AE, DC, MC, V. Parking 10€. Amenities: Restaurant; bar; exercise room; Jacuzzi; indoor heated pool; room service; sauna. In room: A/C, TV, hair dryer, minibar, Wi-Fi (free).

The Best of Germany

In this chapter, you’ll find our carefully compiled lists of the best that Germany has to offer, from castles and cathedrals to spas, restaurants, and sightseeing—and nearly everything else you’ll want to see and do.

The best Experiences

• Exploring the New Berlin: Anyone who lived through the fear of the Cold War can’t help but shudder at the memory of the Berlin Wall. Since reunification, civic planners, with almost manic enthusiasm, have demolished large sections of what once stood as a scar across the face of a defeated nation. The architectural changes and urban developments that constantly update the cityscape around Berlin’s Friedrichstrasse and Potsdamer Platz can be confusing. But regardless of which renewal program is churning up rubble at the time of your visit, a pilgrimage through what used to be the most bitterly contested urban turf in Europe can’t help but provoke powerful emotions.

• Spending a Midsummer’s Night in a Biergarten: When the temperature rises, head for the unpretentious cheer of the nearest Biergarten (everybody in Germany seems to have a favorite, so we’re not even going to try to name the “best”). These watering holes, which often feature trellises, climbing vines, Chinese lanterns, and arbors, offer low-cost fun on soft summer nights. You can order platters of hearty food with your beer or bring your own picnic.

• Cruising the Elbe, the Danube, and the Rhine: This trio of rivers, along with their tributaries, dominated German commerce for hundreds of years. Today, an armada of tugboats, barges, and cruise ships still plies the muddy waters beside riverbanks lined with the historic majesty (and sometimes the industrial might) of central Europe. Cruises begin and end at large cities of historic interest and last anywhere from 6 hours to 7 days. See “A Cruise on the Elbe”.

• Boating on the Königssee: A “King’s Lake” must surely be the best, and the natural beauty surrounding this body of cold, dark water doesn’t disappoint. The quiet boat ride using electric motors will allow you to hear the echoes off the forest-covered mountainsides, as you discover baroque chapels and isolated hamlets along the shore. It might just make a Romantic poet out of you.

• Hiking in the Bavarian Alps: If you’re heeding the call to climb every mountain, then the Bavarian Alps are the place to be in summer. Germany’s excellent network of trails, guides, and huts will allow you to discover the wealth of wildlife and stunning scenery. Two of the countless highlights include the 1,240m (4,070-ft.) Eckbauer south of Partenkirchen, and the southeastern “ear lobe” of Berchtesgaden National Park.

• Ascending the Zugspitze: If the gentle inclines of the Harz Mountains or the Thuringian forests aren’t dramatic enough for you, ride the cable car from Garmisch-Partenkirchen to the top of Germany’s tallest mountain, 2,960m (9,700 ft.) above sea level. The view from the top is suitably panoramic, and you’ll find an appealing aura of German-ness that comes from the many climbers and trekkers who fan out across the hiking trails.

• Experiencing a German Spa: In Germany, the question isn’t whether to visit a spa, but rather which spa to visit. Each resort has its virtues and historical associations, and can supply a list of the health benefits associated with its awful-tasting waters. Regardless of your choice, you’ll emerge from your treatment with a more relaxed attitude and a greater appreciation of German efficiency and sensuality. The most famous spas are in Baden-Baden.

• Motoring along the Neckar: The Neckar River meanders through about 80km (50 miles) of some of Germany’s most famous vineyards. But the real appeal of the winding road along the water is the medieval castles scattered along the way. Highlights en route include Heidelberg, Neckarsteinach, Hirschhorn, Eberbach, Zwingenberg, and Burg Hornberg. Don’t forget to stop en route for samplings of the local wines.

• Spending Harvest Time in the German Vineyards: Springtime in Germany brings the promise of bounty to the legendary vineyards of the Rhine and Mosel valleys, but the autumn harvest is truly the time to visit. Between late August and mid-October, the banks of the rivers turn gold and russet, and armies of workers gather buckets of grapes from rows of carefully pruned vines. Most of the medieval villages and historic castles scattered between Koblenz and Trier are associated with estates where you can sample the wines.

• Touring the Fairy-Tale Road (Märchenstrasse): This is one of the newer marketing ideas of the German tourist authorities, but considering its appeal, you’ll wonder why they didn’t think of it earlier. From the town of Hanau (a 30-min. drive northeast of Frankfurt), the route zigzags northward along the Weser River for about 600km (370 miles), through some of Germany’s most evocative folkloric architecture, ending in Bremen. Scores of well-marked detours pepper the way. Required reading for the trip is a collection of the fairy tales of the Brothers Grimm and the Nibelungen legends. Don’t overlook the psychological implications of Goldilocks, the Big Bad Wolf, and the Pied Piper of Hameln.

• Lounging on the Island of Sylt: Don’t expect a lush or verdant island—the climate is temperamental, the setting is savage, the winds blow cold from the north even in summer, and the grasses that manage to survive in the sandy dunes are as weathered and sturdy as the soldiers in a Prussian regiment. Why is it wonderful? Here, the no-nonsense residents of north Germany can preen, flutter, and show off to each other, far from the strictures of their workplaces and the hardworking grind of their everyday lives.

The best Museums

Financial prosperity, artistic flair, and academic curiosity have helped the Germans develop some of the finest museums anywhere.

• Neues Museum, Berlin: Left in ruins for decades after World War II, this museum today houses one of the greatest Egyptian museums in the world, filled with plunder from ancient Egypt. It is home to the celebrated bust of Queen Nefertiti, and its Papyrus Collection is also one of the finest in the world.

• Bode-Museum, Berlin: One of the greatest museums of Germany, the Bode reopened in 2008 to great acclaim. It houses a vast array of museums including a collection of late ancient and Byzantine art. The Picture Gallery is one of the grandest in Germany, and it is particularly strong in masterpieces from the Dutch and German schools of the 15th and 16th centuries.

• Gemäldegalerie, Berlin: This is one of Europe’s leading art museums, with a celebrated collection of works from the 13th to the 18th century. The cavalcade of major European masters ranges from Botticelli and Bruegel to Vermeer and Velázquez. Divided during the Cold War, the collection has been reunited in one home since 1998. The lighting and displays are better than ever.

• Pergamonmuseum, Berlin: Built in 1930 on an island in the Spree, this museum contains entirely reconstructed temples from ancient Assyria, Greece, Rome, and Sumer. Don’t miss the sprawling exhibitions devoted to the ancient art of the Islamic world and the Far East.

• Zwinger, Dresden: A vast rectangular esplanade flanked with pavilions, heroic statues, formal gardens, and galleries, this museum was designed for August the Strong (elector of Saxony and king of Poland), by his favorite architect, Pöppelmann (1662–1736). The destruction of the Zwinger (in the final days of World War II), one of Dresden’s most beautiful buildings, was a great loss, though its postwar reconstruction was a triumph for the East German government. Among the treasures amassed inside are paintings, 18th-century Dresden porcelain, and an ornamental collection of antique weapons.

• Deutsches Museum, Munich: Since 1925, this Louvre of science and technology has led the way in documenting humanity’s innovation. Thoroughly fascinating and amusingly hands-on, its historical exhibits will surely keep you entertained for hours.

• Alte Pinakothek, Munich: This outstanding collection of paintings spanning the 15th to 18th centuries rivals its counterparts in Cologne and Berlin. Its Rubens are gems, and Dürer fans may have to be subdued by the guards. The 19th-century hall provides just the right dosage of art for a few hours.

• Dachau Concentration Camp Memorial Site, Dachau, near Munich: Heinrich Himmler first organized Dachau as a concentration camp for enemies of the Reich in 1933. An escaped inmate, Joseph Rovan, described it as “implacable, perverted, an organization that was totally murderous, a marvelous machine for the debasement and dehumanizing of man.” Today, it’s one of the most poignant museums in the world.

• Lenbachhaus, Munich: Housed in the former villa of portrait painter Franz von Lenbach, this museum has a stunning and internationally renowned collection of modern art. In addition to works from the Blaue Reiter (Blue Rider) group, including Kandinsky, a rich collection of Gothic artwork is an added treat.

• Gutenberg Museum, Mainz: This museum is one of the most comprehensive tributes to printing and publishing anywhere in the world. The bulky presses, on which Johannes Gutenberg used movable type (42 lines per page), and two of the earliest Bibles ever printed are the primary displays here. There’s also a historical rundown on the science and technologies that have dominated the printing industry ever since.

• Museum Ludwig, Cologne: This is the home of one of the world’s largest collections of the works of Pablo Picasso, equaled only by the Picasso museums of Barcelona and Paris. The museum’s collection was beefed up when Irene Ludwig, widow of the late German art patron Peter Ludwig, donated 774 works of Picasso to the museum.

• Wallraf-Richartz Museum/Foundation Corboud, Cologne: The oldest museum in Cologne presents one of Germany’s grandest collections of art, covering the 14th to the 19th century. The collection of Gothic works alone is one of the finest in Europe, and the galleries are a virtual encyclopedia of art, from Flemish old masters to the French Impressionists.

• Kunsthalle, Hamburg: The leading art museum in northern Germany, the Kunsthalle is one of the most important in Europe, with some 3,000 paintings in its treasure-trove, along with some 400 sculptures. Some of its rare treasures date from the 14th century, including works by Bertram, the leading German master of the time. One section of the gallery also displays modern works, including pieces by such artists as Andy Warhol, Joseph Beuys, and Picasso.

The best Castles & Palaces

During the Middle Ages, Germany was divided into many intensely competitive feudal states and principalities. This unstable atmosphere encouraged the construction of fortified castles. As hostilities died down, architects began to design for comfort, style, and prestige, adding large windows, gilded stucco and plaster, frescoes, and formal gardens. As a result, Germany is full of all kinds and styles of Burg and Schloss (various names for castles and palaces).

• Sanssouci Palace, Potsdam: Friedrich the Great’s retreat, where he came to read, listen to music, and generally renew his allegiance to the principles of the Enlightenment, is Germany’s most successful blend of landscape and architecture. The more than 120 hectares (300 acres) of intricately landscaped gardens have enough pavilions, fountains, orangeries, and heroic statues to keep a visitor intrigued for days. The palace itself is an architectural highlight, approached by a terraced staircase of sublime beauty.

• Schloss Wartburg, Eisenach: Built between the 11th and 16th centuries, this was the headquarters of the Landgraves of Thuringia, a center of patronage for the Minnesinger (troubadours) of Germany, and a place of refuge for Martin Luther, who completed his translation of the Bible within its massive walls. Wagner used it as inspiration for the setting of Tannhäuser, and Johann Sebastian Bach and Goethe both visited. Today, from its position on a rocky hilltop, it’s a regional museum.

• Residenz, Würzburg: Built between 1720 and 1744 as the official residence of the powerful bishops of Würzburg, this is one of the most massive baroque palaces in Germany. It combines a Hofkirche (chapel) with gardens, a gallery of paintings, frescoes by Tiepolo, and enough decoration to satisfy the most demanding taste for ornamentation. Also within its showrooms are a worthy collection of ancient Greek and Roman artifacts and valuable paintings from the 14th to the 19th century.

• Neuschwanstein, near Füssen: Love it or hate it, this fairy-tale castle is actually a phenomenon worth seeing. Enter the romantic world of “Mad” King Ludwig II and his theater set designer, a world that further inspired the folks at Disneyland, or marvel at the tourist circus surrounding the 19th-century fantasy. Either way, the outstanding mountain scenery alone is worth the trip.

• Hohenschwangau Castle, near Füssen: Watching its bombastic younger brother from the opposite hill, this lesser-known residence built on 12th-century ruins merits just as much a visit. Finished in 1836, the eventual king Maximilian II lived here with his family, which included the young Ludwig II.

• Schloss Nymphenburg, Munich: This summer palace constructed between 1664 and 1674 features fine interiors on a modest scale that will leave you with enough energy to enjoy the splendid gardens and pavilions. An ideal place to experience the former glory of the long-lost Bavarian kingdom.

• Schloss Linderhof, near Oberammergau: This palace was built in the 1870s as a teenage indulgence by Ludwig II. Its architects created a whimsically eclectic fantasy, inspired by Italian baroque architecture. In the surrounding park, Moorish pavilions and Mediterranean cascades appear against Alpine vistas in combinations that are as startling as they are charming.

• Altes Schloss, Meersburg: Legend has it that this palace’s cornerstone was laid in 628 by Dagobert, king of the Franks. The palace remained a Catholic stronghold even during the Protestant Reformation, housing bishops who appreciated its 3m-thick (10-ft.) walls as a bulwark against the rising tempest around them. In the early 1800s, when its owners threatened to tear the palace down, a German Romantic, Baron Joseph von Lassberg, bought it and transformed it into a refuge for writers, poets, and painters. Although it remains mostly a private residence, you can visit many parts of the palace.

• Heidelberg Castle, Heidelberg: This castle originated as a Gothic-Renaissance masterpiece in the 1500s and was massively expanded as rival rulers competed for control of the Rhineland. After the French sacked and burned the town and the castle in 1689, it never regained its original glory. Today, the ruins brood in dignified severity from a position on a rocky hilltop high above the student revelry and taverns of the folkloric city below.

• Burg Eltz, Moselkern, near Cochem: Its multiple turrets and towers, which rise amid a thick forest near the Mosel River, evoke the chivalry and poetry of the Middle Ages. This is one of the best-preserved medieval castles in Germany.

The best Cathedrals

• Kaiserdom (Imperial Cathedral), Speyer: Partly because of their age, Romanesque churches are the most impressive symbols of early medieval Germany. This massive church, from 1030, has four bell towers; a cornerstone laid by one of Germany’s earliest kings, Konrad II; and an undeniable sense of the (anonymous) architect’s aesthetic links with the traditions of ancient Rome.

• Dom St. Peter, Worms: This church is a grand example of High Romanesque style, its oldest section dating from 1132. The Diet of Worms, held here in 1521, condemned the beliefs of the young Martin Luther and banished him to the far boundaries of the Holy Roman Empire.

• Kölner Dom, Cologne: Based on French Gothic models in Paris and Amiens, this cathedral was envisioned as one of the largest religious buildings in Christendom. It required 600 years to finish—work stopped for about 300 years (1560–1842), until the neo-Gothic fervor of the Romantic age fueled its completion. In 1880, it was inaugurated with appropriate pomp and circumstance in the presence of the German kaiser. Today, its vast russet-colored bulk towers are instantly recognizable from miles away.

• Dom (Cathedral), Aachen: Its size and the stonework dating from 1414 are deeply impressive, but even more so is the cathedral’s association with the earliest of German emperors, Charlemagne. He was crowned in an older building on this site in A.D. 800. The cathedral’s treasury contains gem-encrusted Christian artifacts from the 10th century, with heft and barbaric glitter that evoke pre-Christian Germania.

The most charming Small Villages

• Quedlinburg: Spared in part from the ravages of World War II, this town in the Harz mountains still evokes the Middle Ages with its 1,600 half-timbered buildings, more than any other town in the country. Named a UNESCO World Heritage Site, Quedlinburg is a gem of yesterday and was an imperial residence for 2 centuries. Wander the cobblestone streets of the Altstadt (Old Town) for a journey back in time.

• Meissen: Some 25km (16 miles) north of Dresden, this is a romantic little town built along the banks of the River Elbe. It’s celebrated for its porcelain, which carries a trademark of two crossed blue swords and is valued by collectors the world over. Even without its porcelain factory, the town merits a visit for its quiet charm, its old buildings, and its 15th-century castle.

• Rothenburg: If you have time for only one stop along the Romantic Road, make it Rothenburg ob der Tauber, which may be your only chance in life to see a still-intact medieval walled city. Rothenburg exists in a time capsule, though 40% of the town was destroyed during World War II. Luckily, locals quickly rebuilt their Altstadt in its former style to reclaim their glorious architectural past.

• Dinkelsbühl: If you have time for a second stop along the Romantic Road, try Dinkelsbühl. Though not as grand as the more celebrated Rothenburg, it has far fewer tourists and therefore retains more old-time charm.

• Mittenwald: This town has long been celebrated as the most beautiful in the Bavarian Alps, with magnificently decorated houses, painted facades and ornately carved gables. In the mid–17th century, it was known as “the Village of a Thousand Violins” because of the stringed instruments made here.

• Lindau: Dating from the 9th century, this former free imperial town of the Holy Roman Empire is like a fantasy of what a charming Bavarian lakeside village should look like, if only in the movies. But this garden “city,” under landmark protection, is for real. Lindau is enveloped by aquamarine waters, and one part of it is known as the Gartenstadt because of its luxuriant flowers and shrubs.

• Rüdesheim: The Rhine Valley’s most popular wine town is set along the edge of the mighty river. Rüdesheim is known for its half-timbered buildings and its Drosselgasse (Thrush Lane), a narrow cobblestone lane stretching for 180m (600 ft.) and lined with wine taverns and cozy restaurants.

• Cochem: If you’re seeking an idyllic medieval riverside town during your “grape tour” of the Mosel River valley, make it Cochem, famous for its towering castle, dating from 1027. On the left bank of the Mosel, Cochem lies in a picture-postcard setting of vineyards. Little inns serving a regional cuisine along with plenty of Mosel wine make Cochem a highly desirable overnight stop and a nice alternative to the more commercial centers found along the nearby Rhine.

The best Driving Tours

The appeal of the open road is a prominent part of German culture. Some of the best drives include the following:

• The Romantic Road: This well-traveled 350km (220 mile) route, which stretches between Würzburg and Füssen at the foot of the Bavarian Alps, is dotted with lovely medieval towns.

• The Fairy-Tale Road: The colorful characters of the Brothers Grimm live again along this 595km (370-mile) stretch, beginning in the little town of Hanau and stretching all the way north to Bremen. This is one of the great motor trips of Germany for those who thrilled to those nursery-room favorites.

• Alpine Road: Scenic majesty and architectural charm combine for an unforgettable experience on this 480km (300-mile) road through the foothills of the Bavarian Alps. See “Exploring the Region by Car.”

• Upper Black Forest: Fairy tales always seem more believable when you’re in the Black Forest, and the twisting secondary roads that connect Freiburg with Lake Titisee pass through lots of charming scenery and architecture. See the box “An Excursion to the Upper Black Forest.”

• Mosel Valley: The road along this Rhine tributary passes by some of the country’s most famous vineyards. At least a half-dozen of the cities en route are worth visiting as well.

The best Walks

• The Royal Castle Walk: For one of the grandest panoramas in all of the Alps (in any country), hike up to the Marienbrücke, the bridge that spans the Pöllat Gorge behind Neuschwanstein Castle. From there, if you’re up to it, you can continue uphill for about an hour for an amazing view of “Mad” King Ludwig’s fantasy castle.

• Partnachklamm: One of the most dramatic walks in all of the Bavarian Alps starts from the great winter sports resort of Garmisch-Partenkirchen. A signposted trail leads to the dramatic Partnachklamm Gorge. Carved from solid rock, the route passes two panoramic bottlenecks amid the thunder of falling water and clouds of spray.

• Mainau Island: A walk across the footbridge to Mainau, in Lake Constance, is like a visit to a tropical country. Mainau is filled with exotic plants collected by the Baden princes and members of the Royal House of Sweden. Tropical brushwood and other botanical wonders still thrive in this mild climate. You’ll hardly believe you’re in Germany.

• Cochem: Reichsburg Cochem (Cochem Castle), which towers over the little town of the same name, can be reached on foot in about 15 minutes from the town’s Marktplatz. Although hardly an Alpine climb, this walk is one of the most rewarding you’ll find in Germany, with panoramas in all directions.

The best Biking

• Munich by Bike: You see so many locals riding bikes that you might think Munich is the biking capital of Germany. If you’d like to join the fun, pick up a copy of the pamphlet Rad-Touren für unsere Gäste (Bike-Riding for Our Guests) at the tourist office. It outlines itineraries for touring Munich by bike.

• Lake Constance: Rent a bike at the train station in the former imperial town of Lindau, and set out in any direction to enjoy the views of this beautiful lake. The Lindau tourist office will provide a map and suggestions for the best routes to follow.

• The Neckar Valley Cycle Path: This signposted path allows you to follow the source of the Neckar, beginning in Villingen-Schwenningen and going all the way to the confluence of the Rhine at Mannheim. Instead of going the entire way, many visitors prefer to pick up a bicycle in Heidelberg and cycle along the riverbanks until they find a good spot for a picnic. See “Exploring on Two Wheels.”

• Lüneburg Heath: This wild heath in northern Germany is one of the country’s major natural attractions. (Some of Germany’s greatest poets have waxed rhapsodic about this shrub-covered land.) Rent a bike, pick up a map at the Lüneburg tourist office, and set out on your adventure. See “The Lüneburg Heath.”

The best Spas

• Bad Reichenhall: Many spa lovers head for this remote corner of Bavaria to “take the waters.” Europe’s largest saline source was first tapped in pre-Christian times and the place has a definite 19th-century aura. And though some of the hotels in the town are better than others, all have equal access to the spa and lie about a 5-minute walk away.

• Baden-Baden: There’s no better spa in all of Germany, and certainly none more fashionable or famous—it’s also site of the country’s most celebrated casino. Baden-Baden’s spa’s been going strong since the leisure class of the 19th century discovered its healing waters, although the Roman legions of Emperor Caracalla had discovered the springs long before that. As at Bad Reichenhall, all hotels, no matter the price range, have equal access to the spa.

• Wiesbaden: One of Germany’s oldest cities, Wiesbaden attracted Roman legions to its hot springs, and lures today’s fashionable traveler as well. It’s not as chic as Baden-Baden, but Wiesbaden has one of Germany’s most elegant casinos and concert halls, along with two gourmet restaurants. In summer, the beer garden at the Kurhaus is one of the liveliest along the Rhine.

• Bad Homburg: Bad Homburg lies at the foot of the Taunus Hills in a setting of medieval castles and luxuriant forests. There are more than 31 fountains in the town’s Kurpark. The Bad Homburg Palace was once the summer residence of Prussian kings.

The best Luxury Hotels

German efficiency and cleanliness are legendary, so it’s not surprising that you can choose from a great number of well-managed hotels.

• Grand Hotel Esplanade, Berlin (www.esplanade.de; 866/597-8341 in the U.S., or 030/254788255): This strikingly contemporary hotel near several foreign embassies is one of the most prestigious in the German capital. With its collection of modern art, its spacious, cheerfully decorated rooms, and its first-class service, it is a prime address for the luxury minded.

• The Regent, Berlin (www.theregentberlin.com; 888/201-1806 in the U.S., or 030/20338): One of Germany’s great luxury hotels, the Regent is all about opulence, superb service, and comfort. It’s discreet, tasteful, reliable, and a brilliant addition to the roster of luxury leaders in Germany’s capital.

• Hotel Elephant, Weimar (www.starwoodhotels.com; 03643/8020): This is one of Germany’s most interesting hotels because of its age (over 300 years), its name, its 50-year survival in Germany’s eastern zone, and its associations with such luminaries as Schiller, Liszt, and Goethe. Today, it’s a cost-conscious treasure chest of German history.

• Eisenhut, Rothenburg ob der Tauber (www.eisenhut.com; 09861/7050): This hotel’s 16th-century walls and valuable collection of antiques enhance the appeal of the most authentic Renaissance town in Germany.

• Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten Kempinski München, Munich (www.kempinski.com; 800/426-3135 in the U.S., or 089/21250): Munich’s most prestigious choice offers elegance and luxury. The wealthy and titled have checked in here for more than a century, enjoying the ambience, the antiques, the style, and the grace.

• Bayerischer Hof & Palais Montgelas, Munich (www.bayerischerhof.de; 089/21200): This deluxe hotel and 17th-century Bavarian palace together form Munich’s answer to New York’s Waldorf-Astoria. This is the only hotel in Munich to provide serious competition for the Kempinski Hotel.

• Der Kleine Prinz, Baden-Baden (www.derkleineprinz.de; 07221/346600): This hotel’s director once helped manage the New York Hilton and the Waldorf-Astoria. Today, he and his wife run a century-old pair of neobaroque houses in the heart of Germany’s most elegant resort, Baden-Baden. Inspired by Saint-Exupéry’s The Little Prince this stands as one of the most romantic of Germany’s many romantic hotels.

• Krone Assmannshausen, Rüdesheim-Assmannshausen (www.hotel-krone.com; 06722/4030): Sprawling along the banks of the Rhine in an oversize, grangelike, gingerbread-laden fantasy, this hotel has witnessed the arrival of many important Germans (including Goethe) in its 400 years. It also contains one of the best traditional restaurants in town.

• Fürstenhof Celle, Celle (www1.fuerstenhof.de; 05141/2010): This 17th-century manor, enlarged with half-timbered wings, stands out even in a town legendary for its medieval and Renaissance buildings. There’s a cozy bar in the medieval cellar and one of the best dining rooms in Lower Saxony.

• Fairmont Hotel Vier Jahreszeiten, Hamburg (www.fairmont.com/hamburg; 888/425-8227 in the U.S. and Canada, or 040/34940): Its dignified interior is as opulent as its 19th-century facade. This hotel’s appeal is correctly aristocratic, but it has a touch of the saltwater zestiness that makes Hamburg a great city.

The best Small Inns & Hotels

• Art’otel, Berlin (www.artotels.com; 030/884470): This hotel in the heart of Berlin is chic, discreet, and unique. The swirling action of the Ku’Damm lies right outside the door, but inside, the decor is soothing and serene, the work of some of the Continent’s top designers.

• Altstadt-Hotel, Passau (www.altstadt-hotel.de; 0851/3370): This inexpensive hotel stands at the convergence of three rivers—the Danube, the Ilz, and the Inn. But the hotel offers more than river views—it’s comfortably and traditionally furnished, and its regional cuisine and convivial pub attract the locals.

• Gästehaus Englischer Garten, Munich (www.hotelenglischergarten.de; 089/3839410): This is an oasis of charm and tranquillity, close to the Englischer Garten, where buffed Munich lies out nude in the sun. The furnishings are in an old-fashioned Bavarian style, but the comfort level is first-rate.

• Parkhotel Atlantic Schlosshotel, Heidelberg (www.parkhotel-atlantic.de; 06221/60420): This 24-room inn is on the wooded outskirts of Heidelberg, near the famous castle. Every room is comfortable and convenient, and in the afternoon you can go for long walks along the woodland trails surrounding the property.

• Antik-Hotel Bristol, Cologne (www.antik-hotel-bristol.de; 0221/120195): In the heart of this cathedral city along the Rhine, this unique hotel is filled with antiques, both country rustic and town-house elegant, making the atmosphere both authentic and inviting.

The best Restaurants

• Die Quadriga, Berlin ( 030/214050;www.brandenburger-hof.com): Critics hail this gastronomic wonder in the Hotel Brandenburger Hof as Berlin’s finest dining choice. Celebrated for its modern Continental cuisine, it’s where the president of Germany takes his favorite guests when he wants to “show off.” While seated in a 1904 chair designed by Frank Lloyd Wright, you can enjoy food that is, in a word, sublime.

• Essigbrätlein, Nürnberg ( 0911/225131): Food critics single this out as the best dining spot in Nürnberg, and we heartily agree. Its upscale Franconian and Continental cuisine is reason enough to visit the city.

• Weinhaus Zum Stachel, Würzburg ( 0931/52770;www.weinhaus-stachel.de): This is the oldest (ca. 1413) wine house in a town loaded with them. Food is good, portions are copious, the wine flows, and everyone has a wonderful time. This is old-time Deutschland at its most appealing.

• Tantris, Munich ( 089/3619590;www.tantris.de): Savvy German food critics have honored Tantris’s Hans Haas as the country’s top chef. He definitely serves some of the finest and most innovative food in Bavaria.

• Hanse Stube, Cologne ( 0221/2701;www.excelsiorhotelernst.com): Located in a landmark hotel, this restaurant lies on the same square as the fabled Rhineland cathedral. French cuisine in Cologne doesn’t get any better than this—the chefs have a prodigious talent for preparing food using only the finest and freshest ingredients.

• Victorian Restaurant, Düsseldorf ( 0211/865500;www.restaurant-victorian.de): Regulars know what a treasure they have in this restaurant: Market-fresh ingredients and a steady hand in the kitchen produce award-winning traditional and modern food.

• Waldhotel Sonnora, outside Bernkastel-Kues ( 06578/406;www.hotel-sonnora.de): In the Mosel Valley, the Waldhotel Sonnora is one of the most justifiably acclaimed restaurants in the country. Be sure to make a reservation as far in advance as possible and prepare yourself for a gastronomic adventure in Continental cuisine. Herr Thieltges, the chef, told us, “We don’t just serve dishes—rather, culinary masterpieces.” We agree.

• Fischereihafen Restaurant, Altona, near Hamburg ( 040/381816;www.fischereihafenrestaurant.de): Patrons from Tina Turner to Helmut Kohl have pronounced the food here delightful. From a window seat, you can overlook the boats that might have hauled in your sole, eel, turbot, herring, or flounder from the seas that day.

The best Beer Halls & Taverns

• Auerbachs Keller, Leipzig ( 0341/216100;auerbachs-keller-leipzig.de): The most famous tavern in eastern Germany, this is where Goethe staged the debate between Faust and Mephistopheles. The tavern dates from 1530 and has a series of murals evoking the Faust legend.

• Augustiner Bräustuben, Munich ( 089/5022569;www.braeustuben.de): Although many raid the famous Hofbräuhaus (see below), this authentic tavern at the backdoor of the Augustiner brewery combines the Bavarian camaraderie and flavorful fare without the tourist circus. It occupies the former horse stalls, but don’t fret—the odor has long since dissipated. Best of all, they fill the massive Mass glasses for one of the lowest prices in town.

* Hofbräuhaus, Munich ( 089/221676;www.hofbraeuhaus.de): Needing no introduction, the Hofbräuhaus can stake the claim as the world’s most famous beer hall, packing in up to 4,500 beer drinkers on any given night. Music from live bands and huge mugs of beer served at wooden tables combine to produce the best of Bavarian nighttime fun.

• Zum Roten Ochsen, Heidelberg ( 06221/20977;www.roterochsen.de): Over the years, “The Red Ox” has drawn beer drinkers from Mark Twain to Bismarck. Students have been getting plastered here since 1703, and the tradition continues to this day.

• Ratskeller, Bremen ( 0421/321676;ratskeller-bremen.de): This is one of the most celebrated Ratskellers in Germany. A tradition for decades, it serves top-notch German and international food and some of the best suds along the Rhineland, as well as one of the longest lists of vintage wines from the country’s vineyards.

The best Shopping

The best way to approach shopping here is to make it a part of your overall experience and not an end unto itself. Though Berlin and Munich are the major shopping centers in Germany, the rest of the country is okay—neither a shopper’s mecca nor the bargain basement of Europe. Still, you can find some good buys here.

• Porcelain: For centuries, Germany has been known for the quality of its porcelain. Names such as KPM, Rosenthal, and Meissen are household words. KPM, for example, has been a Berlin tradition for more than 2 centuries.

• Handicrafts: In the Bavarian Alps, woodcarvers still carry on their time-honored tradition. The best place to purchase woodcarvings is in the Alpine village of Oberammergau.

• Timepieces: Corny though they may be, carved Black Forest cuckoo clocks remain an enduring favorite.

• Cutlery: WMF (Württembergische-Metalwaren-Fabrik) and J. A. Henckels are two of the country’s premier producers of fine cutlery. Their knives are expensive, but longtime users say they last forever. Both WMF and Henckels stores are found all over Germany.

Germany in Depth

A unified, wealthy, industrial yet beautiful Germany awaits you and promises some of the most intriguing travel experiences in Europe.

Many of its treasures were lost in World War II, but much remains and has been restored. Natural scenery, particularly in the Black Forest, the Mosel Valley, the Harz Mountains, and the Bavarian Alps, is a potent lure.

For those who want to see history in the making, we’d recommend visiting Potsdam, Leipzig, Dresden, Meissen, and Weimar, all centers of East Germany before German unification in October 1990. Keep in mind, however, that although political developments have been fast paced, the infrastructure of the five new states cannot change overnight, and living standards there are still different from those in (the former) West Germany.

Germany is one of the most modern and, at the same time, the most traditional of countries. Its advanced technology and industry are the envy of the rest of the world. Here you’ll likely meet people of learning and sophistication, boasting a long cultural heritage and devotion to music and the arts.

This guide is meant to help you decide where to go in Germany and how best to enjoy its charms, but ultimately the most gratifying rewards will be your own serendipitous discoveries—drinking beer in a yard shaded by chestnut trees, picnicking in a Bavarian meadow, or spending time chatting with a winemaker in the Mosel Valley. You will surely remember experiences like these for years to come.

Germany Today

In late September 2009, Chancellor Angela Merkel swept to reelection, making her one of the longest-serving leaders among Europe’s major powers. Her Christian Democrats formed a new center-right government, triumphing over Social Democrats, who fared badly in the election.

In a union with the probusiness Free Democrats, Merkel strengthened her hand in Germany, and in the next year or so may begin to enact the kind of liberalizing economic plans she proposed when she first ran for chancellor.

Her victory was muted by Germany’s rising budget deficits as a result of the global economic crisis.

As an example of the changing times, Ms. Merkel, Germany’s first female chancellor, is joined by the first openly gay vice-chancellor and foreign minister, Guido Westerwelle, who shepherded his Free Democrats to their strongest showing ever. All this occurring in a country that a few decades ago sent homosexuals to the concentration camps and the gas chambers, along with Jews and Gypsies.

It is still ranked low on the threat of terrorism in spite of memories of the 1972 Munich Massacre at the Olympic Games, in which 11 Jewish athletes were killed.

Germany has about 84 million citizens, making it the most densely populated of the nations in the E.U. The capital, Berlin, has the largest population, with some 3.5 million residents, trailed by Hamburg and Munich.

Germany today remains split between Protestantism and Catholicism, and it is not homogeneous, as each year it greets an influx of non-German immigrants.

Turks form the largest group of immigrants (2.3 million), followed by Sorbs (about 60,000) and even some 50,000 Dane, who live in Schleswig-Holstein near the Danish border.

In spite of a gloomy economy, Germany still remains the third-largest economy in the world, with exports counting for 40% of its GDP.

Although East and West Germany long ago united as the Berlin Wall came tumbling down, conflicts remain. Westerners often express resentment at having to spend so many of their euros on propping up the less affluent Easterners, who lived for so long under Communist rule.

The Ossis, as Easterners are known in Germany, often claim that they feel like poor cousins come to live with a far more affluent family, the Wessis (those from the former West Germany).

The friends you’re likely to meet in Germany (and you’re likely to meet many) will probably be well educated and will possess linguistic skills (almost certainly including English) that, by the standards of the rest of the world, particularly the United States, are astonishing. Many younger Germans are likely to be guided by a sense of idealism, even zeal, for ecological and other causes.

Germans, like Americans, are worried about job security. The greatest fear sweeping across Germany today is of “job hemorrhage.” German companies are finding that more and more of their manufacturing plants and jobs can be farmed out to other locations, including, ironically enough, Alabama and South Carolina, where wages and benefits for workers at a BMW plant are about 30% less than in Germany. In the Czech Republic, just across the border, wages are equivalent to 10% of those paid in Germany, for workers nearly as well qualified.

But in spite of its problems, a modern Germany, centered around Berlin, continues to remain at the epicenter of European culture and a continuing powerhouse in the E.U.

Looking Back: German History

Note About Maps

This guide contains dozens of maps of varying sizes and complexity. If you find it hard to read a map on your device, use the zoom function to enlarge. You can also download and/or printout PDFs of all of the maps in this guide. Go to www.frommers.com/go/ebookmaps and click on the title of your guide.

Germany’s Historic Borders

Early Days

“A large build, very strong in the attack, but not suitable to the same extent for heavy work” was how Tacitus, the Roman historian, described the Teutons in A.D. 60. The Romans had been trying to push the borders of their empire up to the Rhineland, with mixed success, since 9 B.C., but the Teutonic tribes fought back ferociously. The first recognized German national hero was Arminius, who led his tribe (the Cherusci) in defeating three Roman legions near modern-day Bielefeld in A.D. 9.

After the deterioration of the Roman Empire, the Franks ruled much of what we now know as Germany. In 800, a Frankish king, Charlemagne, extended the Carolingian Empire from the Pyrenees to Saxony and Bavaria. His rule marks the high point of cultural and political development of that period. He divided the empire into counties, each with an administrator directly responsible to him, and promoted education, scholarship, and the revival of Greek and Roman culture.

The Holy Roman Empire

After Charlemagne’s death, the Carolingian Empire fell apart. In 843, the Treaty of Verdun granted the empire’s eastern territory to Louis the German, marking the beginning of German history.

In 962, the pope recognized Otto I as emperor of what was later called the Holy Roman Empire. This new political entity was formed both to impose unity on the European political world and to create a bulwark against the invasion of non-Christian tribes. It claimed direct links to the grandeur of ancient Rome and to the more contemporary might of the church.

Unity, however, did not prevail. The empire splintered into a bickering alliance of dukedoms, bishoprics, and principalities. The emperor’s authority was often dependent on German nobles and the pope. A capital city that could have served as a center of power was never established—the monarch simply moved from one city to another, mustering an army and collecting revenue wherever he could—so the possibilities for dynastic intrigues were endless. In subsequent jockeying, the church itself was a voracious competitor for power. This power struggle broke out into open conflict in 1076, when Pope Gregory VII excommunicated the emperor, Henry IV, who was forced to stand barefoot in the snow outside Canossa, humiliated, awaiting a repeal.

To strengthen their position as the Holy Roman Empire declined, the emperors turned to alliances with the wealthy, independent trading ports to the north and east, under the federation of the Hanseatic League. Such German cities as Hamburg, Lübeck, and Bremen grew in both economic and political power. Eventually the league controlled trade as far as Novgorod in Russia.

The Reformation & the Religious Wars

When an Augustinian monk, Martin Luther, nailed his theological and political complaints to a church door in Wittenberg in 1517, he set off a political and religious wildfire that spread across the landscape of Europe. The fragmented political situation in Germany played into Luther’s hands: For every prince who condemned him, he found one to protect him. Luther’s Reformation fanned the flames of Germany’s political factions. A new conflict between Catholics and Protestants set the stage for the devastation of the Thirty Years’ War (1618–48), which entrenched the divided sensibilities of the splintered nation.

The only powerful German state to emerge from these conflicts was Prussia, a tiny northeast kingdom on the Baltic Sea. The rise of Prussian power continued through the 18th century until, led by a soldier and patron of the Enlightenment, Friedrich (Frederick) the Great, Prussia became a major kingdom, with Berlin as its capital.

Napoleon Arrives

After the French Revolution, Napoleon and his new political ideas swept across Europe. The left bank of the Rhine came under French control. Under these pressures, the Holy Roman Empire officially came to an end in 1806. Around the same time, Napoleon’s armies invaded Prussia, making it, for a brief time, a part of the French Empire. But Napoleon was defeated at Leipzig in 1813; 2 years later, Britain and Prussia crushed him at the Battle of Waterloo.

Bismarck & Prussia

The Congress of Vienna (1814–15) redrew the map of Germany after Napoleon’s defeat, giving more territory to Prussia but making Austria the leader in a German Confederation. During this time, there was a rising spirit of nationalism, exploited to good effect by Prince Otto von Bismarck when he became Prussia’s prime minister in 1862. Prussia triumphed in the Austro-Prussian War of 1866, and after the subsequent Franco-Prussian War (1870–71), when Prussia laid siege to Paris, Bismarck succeeded in his goal of unification. Wilhelm I was made emperor of all Germany in 1871, and a strong, unified Germany at last took shape. Under Bismarck’s leadership, Germany adopted an advanced social welfare system and brought its military and industrial production, as well as technical and scientific achievements, to new heights.

The Prussians

Take, for instance, the Prussians: they are saints when compared with the French. They have every sort of excellence; they are honest, sober, hardworking, well instructed, brave, good sons, husbands, and fathers and yet . . . all with whom I have been thrown were proud as Scotchmen, cold as New Englanders, and touchy as only Prussians can be.

—Henry Labouchere, 1871

World War I

By 1907, Europe was divided into two camps: the Triple Alliance (Germany, Austria-Hungary, and Italy) and the Triple Entente (France, Great Britain, and Russia). The match that ignited the powder keg was struck at Sarajevo in 1914, with the assassination of Archduke Franz Ferdinand, heir to the Austro-Hungarian Empire. The subsequent German invasion of France launched the bloodiest war the world had ever seen. A new and particularly demoralizing form of battle, “trench warfare,” produced staggering casualties. On August 8, 1918, the Allies penetrated German lines, and the German high command realized the situation was hopeless.

To get more favorable treatment from the Allies, the Germans voluntarily declared a parliamentary democracy, ending the reign of the kaiser. Despite that concession, in 1918 Germany was forced to sign the humiliating Treaty of Versailles, which demanded the surrender of strategic territories, including Alsace-Lorraine, just west of the Rhine. The Allies—especially the French—also demanded huge monetary reparations.

Weimar Republic

In 1919, the National Assembly met in Weimar to draw up a new constitution, hailed at the time as the most progressive in the world. But in defeated and humiliated postwar Germany, extremists from both the left and the right launched savage attacks against the inexperienced and idealistic government. Enormous payments demanded by the Allies crippled the German economy. When Germany couldn’t make reparations, France retaliated by occupying the Ruhr, one of Germany’s most valuable industrial resources. Inflation destroyed what was left of the German economy.

Life is a Cabaret

by George McDonald

Cabaret existed in Germany long before World War I, and even in its early days it strained against the boundaries of censorship and the prevailing moral climate. But the form really came into its own during the years that followed defeat in the war. During the 1920s and 30s, the chaos of the Weimar Republic, hyperinflation and economic meltdown, street battles between militias of right and left, and the steady rise of the anti-Semitic Nazi Party formed the backdrop to a collapse of traditional values. Live it up while you can and spend money while you have it was the new morality. Cabaret provided entertainment with a satirical and political bent that suited the mood and circumstances of the times, influenced by cutting-edge artistic and social movements such as Dadaism, social expressionism, and Neue Sachlichkeit (new objectivity).

Berlin between the wars generally gets the historical kudos when it comes to cabaret, but in fact the capital was a long way behind pre-war Munich in taking to the genre. German Kabarett emerged as different from original French form in that it was nearly always a vehicle for political satire. In clubs like Die Elf Scharfrichter (The Eleven Executioners), founded in 1901 in the Schwabing district, Munich’s bohemians, socialists, progressives, and avant-gardistes of all stripes got together to gripe and poke fun at the smug, stultifyingly bourgeois society in which they lived.

Life in between-the-wars Berlin inspired writers like, among others, Christopher Isherwood, who lived in the city from 1929 to 1933. He wrote The Berlin Stories (1946), comprising two novellas—Good-Bye to Berlin and Mr. Norris Changes Trains—based in part on his experiences. The first of the two stories became the source of the stage and film versions of Cabaret.

“Old chums” and many more fans are still rolling up to the louche cabaret depicted in the modern Broadway show Cabaret, first performed in 1966 and revived at regular intervals ever since, and in the Hollywood movie based on the show, Cabaret (1972), directed by Bob Fosse and starring Liza Minnelli and Joel Grey.

Famous Period Cabarets

Die Katakombe Comedian Werner Finck (1902–78) found “The Catacombs” on Bellevuestrasse, just off Potsdamer Platz, in Berlin in 1929. His subtle jibes at Brownshirts, the Gestapo, and other “pillars” of the Nazi establishment made him popular—and brought secret policemen into the audience to “take notes.” Nazi propaganda minister Joseph Goebbels ordered the cabaret closed in 1935, and Finck spent 6 weeks in a concentration camp before enlisting in the German army.

Kabarett der Komiker Better known as Kadeko, the Cabaret of Comics took a less risky approach than Die Katakombe in its choice of material. A well-known Kadeko Conferencier (Master of Ceremonies), Fritz Grunbaum, frequently employed his acid wit on his own audiences, ribbing them for, among other things, their disgusting eating habits.

Wien-München From 1915 to 1916, the “Vienna-Munich” cabaret in Munich had as its director the comic actor Karl Valentin, who has been dubbed “the German Chaplin.” In the 1930s, Valentin made two failed attempts to get his Panoptikum für Gruseliges und Nonsens (Panopticon for Horror and Nonsense) exhibit in Munich off the ground.

Living the Revival

Popular among visitors to Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt, Dresden, and other German towns is the kind of nightspot depicted in the musical Cabaret, with floor-show patter and acts that satirize the political and social scene, though the satire is less biting than it was during the time of the Weimar Republic. Some of today’s cabaret shows may remind you of Broadway blockbusters, without much of the intimacy of the smoky, trenchant cellar revues of the 1920s and early 1930s.

Playlist

• Berlin; Marlene Dietrich.

• Berlin Cabaret Songs; Ute Lemper, Mischa Spoliansky.

• Kurt Weill’s The Seven Deadly Sins & Berlin Theatre Songs; Lotte Lenya.

• Songs of the Berlin Cabaret 1920–29; Friedrich Hollaender, Jody Karin Appelbaum, Marc-André Hamelin.

The Rise of Nazism

This was just the right climate for the rise of Adolf Hitler and the Nazi Party. The Nazis believed in the superiority of the Aryan race and blamed non-Aryans, particularly Jews, for Germany’s woes. At first Hitler’s anti-Semitic, nationalist ideas failed to gain popular support, even with right-wingers. Nazi membership in the Reichstag (parliament) dropped from 25 in 1925 to only a dozen following the elections of 1928.

In 1932, Hitler lost the electoral race for president against the compromise candidate of the democratic parties, war hero Paul von Hindenburg. Nevertheless, Hitler’s power increased, and on January 30, 1933, Hindenburg submitted to right-wing pressure and appointed Hitler chancellor. Upon Hindenburg’s death in 1934, Hitler declared himself Führer (leader) of the Third Reich, a new German empire. Protected by hastily drafted laws and regulations, he made his power absolute.

On June 30, 1934, Hitler disposed of any opposing elements in his own party in the “Night of Long Knives,” when hundreds were massacred, including Ernst Röhm, chief of his notorious Brownshirts. Heinrich Himmler’s black-shirted Schutzstaffel (SS) became a powerful political force. Surrounded by adoring fans (or, at best, passive witnesses), Hitler now viewed his empire as a worthy successor to those of Charlemagne and Bismarck.

In 1936, Hitler remilitarized the Rhineland and signed agreements with Japan and fascist Italy, forming the Axis alliance. In 1938, he enforced the Anschluss (annexation) of Austria and marched triumphantly into the country of his birth, and he occupied the German-speaking Sudetenland in Czechoslovakia, an act that other western powers could not summon the will to oppose.

The horrors of unchecked Nazi rule lasted until 1945. The Gestapo, or secret police, launched one of the most notorious reigns of terror in history. Anyone whom the Nazis considered enemies or simply undesirables—which included Communists, Social Democrats, homosexuals, political dissidents, Gypsies, and many others—was persecuted. Jews were disenfranchised, terrorized, and forced into ghettos and concentration camps.

World War II

In late August 1939, Hitler signed a nonaggression pact with the Soviet Union that gave him free rein to launch an invasion of Poland, which he did on September 1. France and Britain, honoring their agreements with Poland, declared war on Germany. Germany scored early victories, and in one of the most stunning campaigns of the 20th century, invaded and occupied France in June 1940. In 1941, Hitler turned on the Soviet Union.

Meeting in the Berlin suburb of Wannsee in 1942, the Nazi leadership formulated the implementation of the “final solution” to the “Jewish question,” the systematic extermination of millions of Jews. The mass murders of homosexuals, Gypsies, Communists, Slavs, and other “undesirables” were less systematic but also numbered in the millions.

Following Japan’s attack on Pearl Harbor, Germany declared war on the United States on December 11, 1941. But after defeats in north Africa in 1942 and at Stalingrad in 1943, the recurrent theme became one of Nazi retreat. The D-day landings along the coast of Normandy on June 6, 1944, began the steady advance of the Allied armies from the west, while Soviet armies relentlessly marched toward Berlin from the east. Hitler committed suicide in Berlin in April 1945. His country, along with much of Europe, lay in ruins.

Division of Germany

The Berlin Wall

At war’s end, Germany and its capital were divided. The nation shrank in size, losing long-held territories (among them East Prussia and Upper Silesia). The United States, Great Britain, France, and the Soviet Union divided the country into four zones of occupation. Berlin, in the heart of the Soviet district, was also divided among the four powers. In the late 1940s, the Soviet Union tried to cut off Allied access to Berlin, but a massive U.S.-sponsored airlift into the city thwarted the effort. In 1949, the Soviets established the German Democratic Republic (GDR). In response, the Federal Republic of Germany was established in the American, British, and French zones. In 1961, the GDR sealed off its borders and erected the Berlin Wall, a stark symbol of the Cold War.

Throughout the 1960s, the financial world buzzed with the talk of an economic miracle in Germany. Led by Ludwig Erhard, the economist, this miracle was called Wirtschaftswunder, and it saw West Germany rise to become the fourth-largest economy in the world.

This era of prosperity also saw the rise of a young German leader, Willy Brandt. Along with his Social-Liberal Coalition, Brandt, as chancellor, brought about long-overdue reform, an overhaul of education, and much improvement in industrial relations. His controversial Ostpolitik (Eastern Policy) improved relations with Soviet-dominated East Germany and other Communist countries to the east of Germany. His efforts in normalizing relations with the GDR brought Brandt the Nobel Prize of 1971.

The 1972 Summer Olympic Games were meant to show the entire world the bold new face of a radically rebuilt Munich. However, the terrorist attack on and murder of 11 Israeli athletes revived memories of the recent past.

Helmut Schmidt became chancellor in 1974, as West Germany continued to amaze the world with its economic muscle. Problems such as mounting unemployment remained, however, and in 1982, Helmut Kohl became the new German leader, pursuing welfare cuts, a tight-fisted money policy, and military cooperation with the U.S. The Kohl era saw the Green Party rise as a political force, with its goals of disarmament and protecting a fragile environment.

Fall of the Wall & Unification

The year 1989 was one of change and turmoil. In the wake of the collapse of Communist power across eastern Europe, the Berlin Wall also fell. The following year was perhaps the most significant in postwar German history. The two German nations announced economic unification in July, followed by total unification—with its thousands of inherent problems and headaches—on October 3, 1990. In 1991, Parliament voted to quit Bonn, seat of the West German government, and reestablish the once-mighty capital of Berlin.

After the first heady period of reunification, disillusionment set in, especially in eastern Germany, which was riddled with unemployment and unrealized expectations. Resentment against immigrant workers led to some violent neo-Nazi marches, bombings, and physical assaults. However, most Germans rose up to condemn the ultrarightists and the sporadic violence.

Psychological and emotional differences between the two zones were almost overwhelming, as were the vast disparities in industrial development. As the influential newspaper Frankfurter Rundschau editorialized, “The terms of east and west are not so much geographical expressions as they are descriptions of states of mind.”

Modern Germany

As the 21st century began, Germany, despite the enormous costs of reunification, remained an economic powerhouse in Europe. As a member of the European Union (E.U.), NATO, and the G8 group of the world’s industrial powers, Germany’s influence extends throughout Europe and across the globe.

Moving deeper into the 21st century, Berlin has become the center of the Continent. Of the three major European powers, including France and Great Britain, Germany appears to be the most dynamic. In fact, of all E.U. members, Germany most actively pursued the abandonment of national currencies, such as its own historic deutsche mark, and the adoption of the euro as the standard unit of currency for all E.U. countries. Other countries, such as Great Britain, though a member of the E.U., still hold back. German economists continue to hope that the adoption of a single currency for Europe will lead to prosperity for all in a future “United States of Europe.”

Homosexuals, once persecuted by the Nazis and sent to death camps along with Jews and Gypsies, moved significantly forward in postmillennium Germany. In 2001, in spite of fierce opposition from some conservatives, same-sex partners won legal status in Germany. The law, announced in Germany’s unofficial gay capital of Berlin, allows gay couples to register their unions at government offices and requires a court decision for divorce. Same-sex couples also receive the inheritance and health-insurance rights given married spouses.

In the aftermath of World War II, Germany had become an economic giant but remained a military midget. Because of its aggression in Hitler’s war, Germany appeared reluctant to make a strong show of military force anywhere in the world. But in 2001, Chancellor Gerhard Schröder announced a major change in military policy in which Germany would pursue a “more muscular policy.” He pronounced as “irrevocably passed” the day when Germany would be economically powerful but militarily passive. Schröder stated that now that Germany was reunited, it had to take on more responsibilities in the international community. As proof of his stated goal, Germany sent troops to aid the United States in its military strikes against terrorist bases in Taliban-controlled Afghanistan following the terrorist attacks against the United States on September 11, 2001.

But support for U.S. policies abruptly ended in 2003, when Chancellor Schröder took a stance against America’s war with Iraq. While this course proved politically rewarding in Germany, where most voters opposed U.S. involvement, it created a sharp rift with Washington, D.C., and irritated President George W. Bush. Schröder’s opposition to the war led to the lowest point in German-American relations since World War II. Since then, relations have been more cordial. In 2004 Schröder and Bush issued a joint statement on “The German-American Alliance for the 21st Century.” Schröder also attended the funeral of President Reagan as well as the 60th anniversary of the commemoration of the Allied D-day invasion of Normandy.

In a surprise development in 2005, conservative Angela Merkel became the first woman to govern modern Germany and the country’s first leader to grow up under communism in the Soviet-occupied East. Her conservatives finished just 1 percentage point ahead of Chancellor Gerhard Schröder’s center-left Social Democrats, with neither party getting a majority.

Merkel campaigned on pledges to shake up Germany’s highly regulated labor market and get the stagnant economy going again. She also promised to reinvigorate relations with the U.S. Merkel faced massive problems, including unemployment. Like the United States, the German economy remained strong but there were horrendous problems, including an economic slowdown. The financial burden of reunification has exerted a terrible price on Germany.

The new “First Man” of Germany, Merkel’s husband is mild-mannered chemistry professor Joachim Sauer, who likes to cook for friends and watch old Dustin Hoffman movies.

Although Germany in 2006 and early 2007 didn’t do anything earthshaking enough to discuss here, a significant historical event occurred in Luxembourg. An agreement was reached to open up millions of Nazi secret archives locked away since World War II. The vast archive has been hidden for decades in the German town of Bad Arolsen, but will in time become available to researchers.

An 11-nation International Commission has overseen the archives since the war. The files are available to Holocaust survivors and families of victims whose fate may not be clear. The files contain most of what the Nazis recorded on their death camps, including the prisoners held there, not only Jews but Gypsies and gay people, including “patients” subjected to cruel medical experiments.

In the fall of 2009, Chancellor Angela Merkel swept to victory with her conservative Christian Democrats in an alliance with the probusiness Free Democrats. Since then, her popularity has declined as Germany’s economy suffered under the global economic crisis. The nation as a whole is on the gloomy side, since the country’s money formed a significant part of the bailout for Greece in 2010.

Art & Architecture

Germany’s art ranges from medieval carved wood statues to Dürer prints to expressionist paintings, its architecture from Gothic cathedrals and riotous baroque chapels to neoclassical temples and Bauhaus buildings. This overview should help you make sense of it all.

German Art

Romanesque (11th–12th c.)

Artistic expression in early medieval Germany was largely church related. Because Mass was said in Latin, the illiterate masses had to learn Bible lessons via bas reliefs (sculptures that project slightly from a flat surface) and wall paintings, which told key tales to inspire faith in God and fear of sin.

The best examples of this period include scraps of surviving Romanesque sculpture on the 11th-century, carved wood doors at Cologne’s St. Maria im Kapitol, Augsburg’s Dom St. Maria, and the intricate The Shrine of the Magi reliquary (1182–1220) in Kölner Dom (Cologne Cathedral; ).

Gothic (13th–15th c.)

Late medieval German art continued to be largely ecclesiastical, including stained glass, church facades, and massive wooden altarpieces festooned with statues and carvings. In Gothic painting and sculpture, figures tended to be more natural looking than in the Romanesque, but remained highly stylized.

The best examples and artists include stained glass in Ulm Münster, Rothenburg’s St. Jakobskirche, and Cologne’s St. Gereon’s Sacristy. Stephan Lochner (active 1400–51) was the premier artist of the School of Cologne, where he painted the Cologne Cathedral’s Altar of the City Patrons (ca. 1440; ) and the Wallraf-Richartz Museum’s Madonna in the Rose Garden (1450; ). Bamberger Reiter is an anonymous equestrian statue in Bamberg’s Kaiserdom, a masterpiece of 13th-century sculpture. Tilman Riemenschneider (1460–1531) was Germany’s genius Gothic woodcarver of languid figures draped in flowing, folded robes. Some of his best works remain in Würzburg, including statues in the Mainfränkisches Museum.

Renaissance (Late 15th to 16th c.)

The German Renaissance masters, striving for greater naturalism, included the greatest of them all, Albrecht Dürer (1471–1528). A genius painter, superb illustrator, and one of the greatest draftsmen ever, Dürer was the most important Renaissance artist outside Italy. His art matched the scientific and geometric precepts of the Florentine Renaissance with a command of color learned in Venice, a Flemish eye for meticulous detail, and the emotional sensibility of the German Gothic. He was the first to paint stand-alone self-portraits (including one in Munich’s Alte Pinakothek; ), as well as watercolors and gouaches for their own sake rather than merely as sketches. His paintings grace Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie and the Germanisches Nationalmuseum in his native Nürnberg. Also see the box.

Lucas Cranach the Elder (1472–1553) melded Renaissance sensibilities with a still somewhat primitive, medieval look. As a young artist in Vienna, he helped popularize landscape painting as a member of the Danube School (Rest on the Flight into Egypt [1504] in Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie; ) and invented the full-length portrait (Duke of Saxony [1514] and The Duchess [1514] in Dresden’s Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister, in the Zwinger complex; ). Hans Holbein the Younger (1497–1543) was second only to Dürer in the German Renaissance, and one of the greatest portraitists ever. Germany preserves precious little of his work, but you can see the Portrait of Georg Gisze (1532) in Berlin’s Gemäldegalerie and a Nativity in the Freiburg Cathedral.

Baroque & Rococo (16th–18th c.)

The baroque is more theatrical and decorative than the Renaissance, mixing a kind of superrealism based on the use of peasant models and the exaggerated chiaroscuro (“light and dark”) of Italy’s Caravaggio with compositional complexity and explosions of dynamic fury, movement, color, and figures. Rococo is this later baroque art gone awry, frothy and chaotic. Artists from this period include Andreas Schlüter (1660–1714), whose sculptures can now be found at Berlin’s Schloss Charlottenburg. Balthazar Permoser (1651–1732) was court sculptor at Dresden. His stone pulpit stands in Katholische Hofkirche, his sculptures in the Zwinger.

Romantic (19th c.)

The paintings of the Romantics were heroic, historic, dramatic, and beautiful in contrast to the classically minded Renaissance artists or the overly exuberant baroque artists. Adam Elsheimer (1578–1610) created tiny paintings that bridged the gap from late Renaissance Mannerism (a style characterized by twisting figures in exaggerated positions), through baroque, to proto-Romantic. His Flight into Egypt (1609) resides in Munich’s Alte Pinakothek. Caspar David Friedrich (1774–1840) was the greatest of the German Romantics. Dresden’s Gemäldegalerie Alte Meister in the Zwinger complex houses his famous Cross in the Mountains (1808).

Early 20th Century

Until Hitler, Germany was one of Europe’s hotbeds of artistic activity. But the Nazis outlawed and confiscated what they called “degenerate” modern art. Almost all the artists listed below are represented at Cologne’s Museum Ludwig, save Höch and Grosz, whom you can find at Berlin’s Neue Nationalgalerie. At least one artist from every movement is at Stuttgart’s Staatsgalerie, and there are also good modern collections at Düsseldorf’s Kunstsammlung Nordrhein-Westfalen and Dresden’s Albertinum. Munich’s Pinakothek der Moderne is strong on expressionist artists.

The major artists and movements of the early 20th century include expressionism, which abandoned realism and embraced, to varying degrees, exaggeration, visible artistry (thick paint, obvious brush strokes, and strong colors) and, most important, abstraction—all to try to “express” the emotions or philosophy of the artist himself. Pure expressionism fell into two main groups, especially Die Brücke, founded in 1905 Dresden, which sought inspiration in folk art, medieval examples, and “unspoiled” landscapes. Its greatest members were Ernst Kirchner (1880–1938) and Karl Schmidt-Rottluff (1884–1976), though Impressionist Emil Nolde (1867–1956) also later joined for a while. They have their own Brücke Museum in Berlin. The second movement was Der Blaue Reiter group, set up in Munich in 1911 by Russian-born Wassily Kandinsky (1866–1944), Franz Marc (1880–1916), and August Macke (1887–1914) to oppose the cultural insularity and antimodern stance of Die Brücke. The “Blue Riders” embraced international elements, modern abstraction techniques, and bright, vibrant color schemes to seek an emotional, visceral intensity in their work. Determined critics of the horrors of World War I, Dadaists were by turns abstract, nihilistic (inviting gallery visitors to help destroy the art), and just generally anti-art (many made random collages of found materials). Its proponents included Hannah Höch (1889–1978), who collaged photographs and magazine cutouts to make social statements; George Grosz (1893–1959), who was more strictly a painter, and later moved on to the Neue Sachlichkeit movement (below); and Kurt Schwitters (1887–1948), who eventually started his own splinter group called “Merz,” which experimented with abstract and Russian constructivist elements.

Both Max Ernst (1891–1976) and Alsatian Jean “Hans” Arp (1887–1966) started as Blaue Reiter expressionists and, after their Dada collage period, ended up in Paris as surrealists (Ernst as a painter, Arp as a sculptor and painter of amorphous shapes).

Neue Sachlichkeit (New Objectivity) was a 1920s Berlin movement opposed to the abstraction of the expressionists. Their caricature-filled art was painted in harsh colors and focused on even harsher subjects such as sex and violence. Proponents included Otto Dix (1891–1969), who started as an expressionist but quickly became one of the most scathing and disturbing New Objectivity painters; George Grosz (see above); and Max Beckmann (1884–1950), who also was originally an expressionist.

Post–World War II Art

Germany hasn’t had any one style or school to define its art since World War II, though terms such as neoexpressionism (an antiabstract, antiminimalist, anticonceptual trend that grounds itself more in tradition and figurative art) are often bandied about. There have been, however, several important artists. All three listed below are represented in Stuttgart’s Staatsgalerie and Bonn’s Kunstmuseum. Notable post–World War II artists include Josef Beuys (1921–86), an iconoclast and nonconformist who made constructivist sculpture from trash; Anselm Kiefer (b. 1945), who made a return to huge, mixed-media figurative art, often with a strong historical bent; and Georg Baselitz (b. 1938), a figurative painter—and a sculptor, since the 1980s—a neoexpressionist with a penchant for portraying people upside down.

Architecture

Romanesque (10th–13th c.)

Romanesque architects concentrated on building large churches with wide aisles to accommodate the masses. Identifiable features include rounded arches, thick walls, small windows, huge piers, tall towers, dual chancels, and blind arcades.

The best examples include Mainz’s Dom, which looks more like a castle fortress than a church; Worms’s Dom St. Peter, with a dual-chancel arrangement and two imposing facades; and Speyer’s Kaiserdom, the largest cathedral in Germany, a four-towered Romanesque basilica with dwarf galleries and blind arcades.

Church floor plan

Dom, Mainz

Gothic (13th–16th c.)

Ceilings began to soar with Gothic architects, walls became thinner, and windows—often stained glass—proliferated. On the exterior, graceful buttresses and soaring spires rose over a town. Pointed arches, it was discovered, carried more weight than rounded ones. Other features included cross vaulting, a facade flanked by two towers, flying buttresses, spires, gargoyles, and delicate tracery.

Cross vault

Cross section of a Gothic church

The best examples of Gothic include Cologne Cathedral, Germany’s finest, at once massive and graceful; Freiburg Cathedral, built almost entirely during the Middle Ages; and Ulm Münster, second in size only to Cologne’s cathedral. Ulm’s Münster sports the world’s tallest spire—though it did take 500 years to complete. The best-preserved town centers with Gothic-style houses and buildings include Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Goslar, Regensburg, and Tübingen.

Cologne Cathedral

Renaissance (Late 15th Through Mid–17th c.)

Germany was so busy with the Reformation that the country had little time for the Renaissance, which really had an effect only in southern Germany (transalpine influences from Italy) and a few isolated examples in the far north (influences from Flemish and Dutch neighbors). Other than a close eye to the Renaissance ideals of proportion, symmetry, and the classical orders (distinguished by the use of three column capitals: Corinthian, Ionic, and Doric), little specifically identifies Italianate Renaissance buildings.

Classical orders

Weser Renaissance was a late-16th- and early-17th-century style prevalent in Lower Saxony, distinguishable on houses by pinnacled gables (the triangular upper portion of a wall at the end of a pitched roof), heavy scrollwork, elaborate dormers (an upright window projecting from a sloping roof), rounded pediments (a low-pitched feature above a window, door, or pavilion), and decorative stone bands.

Celle is the best preserved town center in the Weser Renaissance style, including its moated Herzogschloss. The Pied Piper town of Hameln has several fine Weser Renaissance houses, including the Rattenfängerhaus, Hochzeitshaus, and Dempterscheshaus. The only solidly Renaissance church in Germany is Michaelskirche in Munich, built 1583 to 1597 by Jesuits to resemble their church in Rome.

Baroque & Rococo (17th–18th c.)

With a seamless meshing of architecture and art, the German baroque flourished in the south and in Lower Saxony. Germany’s brand of over-the-top, baroque chaos worked better perhaps than in any other country. Whereas rococo is usually used as a derogatory term for the baroque gone awry into the grotesque, in Germany the rococo actually succeeds (sometimes). Baroque lines follow a complex geometry and interplay of concave and convex surfaces. The overall effect is to lighten the appearance of structures and add movement of line and vibrancy to the static look of the Renaissance.

The best example of a baroque palace is the Residenz in Würzburg (1720–44; ), designed by Balthasar Neumann, including a monumental staircase under the world’s largest ceiling fresco by the Italian master Tiepolo. Friedrich the Great’s Sanssouci Palace at Potsdam (1744–1860) is one of Europe’s best examples of the rococo.

Jean François de Cuvilliés (1698–1767), a French dwarf, was originally the elector of Bavaria’s court jester until his talent for architecture was recognized. After schooling in France, he returned to Munich to craft its greatest rococo monuments, including the jewel box of the Residenz’s Altes Residenztheater, which now bears his name, and the facade of the baroque Theatinerkirche. His masterpiece is Schloss Nymphenburg’s Amalienburg hunting lodge, which became a model for palaces across Europe.

Amalienburg, Schloss Nymphenburg

Neoclassicism & Romantic (Mid–18th Through 19th c.)

As a backlash against the excesses of the baroque and rococo, by the middle of the 18th century architects began turning to the austere simplicity and grandeur of the classical age and inaugurated the neoclassical style. Their work was inspired by the rediscovery of Pompeii and other ancient sites. However, many of their interiors continued to be rococo, though more muted than before. The sterility of German neoclassicism didn’t last long, however, and the 19th century left the increasing nationalist German society looking into its own past for inspiration, kicking off the neo-Gothic Romantic Movement.

The Prussians remade Berlin in a neoclassical image, starting with the Brandenburger Tor and moving on to the buildings of Karl Friedrich Schinkel (1781–1841), among which Altes Museum, Schloss Charlottenhof, and Nikolaikirche are his best. There’s a museum devoted to him called the Friedrichswerdersche Kirche–Schinkelmuseum. In Munich, Ludwig I had Leo von Klenze lay out neoclassical structures across his “new Athens,” including those surrounding Königsplatz and the nearby Alte and Neue pinakotheks. Caught up in Wagner’s dramatic operas set in the heroic Middle Ages, “Mad” King Ludwig II was the ultimate Romantic, building for himself a series of faux medieval fairy-tale castles, including Herrenchiemsee’s Neues Schloss and the incomparable fantasy of Neuschwanstein Castle, a festival of banner-fluttering towers and battlements right out of a Brothers Grimm folk tale, its entire setting chosen solely for its picture-postcard perfection.

Neuschwanstein

20th-Century Architecture

Germany’s take on the early-20th-century Art Nouveau movement was called Jugendstil. The Bauhaus was a 1920s avant-garde school of architecture led by Walter Gropius (1883–1969) that combined industrial-age architecture with art and craft to create functional buildings and furnishings. Among its chief designers and institute teachers were Marcel Breuer, Wassily Kandinsky, Oskar Schlemmer, and Paul Klee. The Nazis closed the school in 1933, though it was reborn in Chicago. Jugendstil houses and hotels exist across Germany, but the movement took its name from Jugend magazine published in the Schwabing district of Munich, where many buildings in the style survive. Munich is also home to the Jugendstil Museum in the Stuck-Villa, a hybrid neoclassical/Jugendstil structure. Bauhaus structures, too, pepper Germany in unobtrusive ways, often in city outskirts. One fine example is Berlin’s Die Siemensstadt, the first modern housing complex, built with long “slab” blocks by Walter Gropius. Berlin also has the Bauhaus-Archiv Museum für Gestaltung, devoted to Bauhaus drawings, photographs, and some design examples.

Siemensstadt

Germany in Pop Culture

Books

Biography

Taylor, A. J. P. Bismarck: The Man and the Statesman (1967). This is the story of the “Iron Chancellor,” who was instrumental in unifying the German states into the German Empire.

Trevor-Roper, Hugh. The Last Days of Hitler (1986). This is an insightful reconstruction of the twilight of the Third Reich.

Fiction

Goethe, Johann Wolfgang von. The Sorrows of Young Werther (1990). This is required reading for every German schoolchild. Goethe explored the theme of suicide in this early epistolary novella.

Grass, Günter. Dog Years (1989), The Tin Drum (1990), and The Flounder (1989). Grass’s works deal with the German psyche coming to terms with the dreadful legacy of Nazism and World War II.

Isherwood, Christopher. The Berlin Stories (1954). Isherwood lived in Berlin from 1929 to 1933. His most famous story was “Good-Bye to Berlin,” which became the source of the stage and film versions of Cabaret.

Mann, Thomas. The Magic Mountain (1969). This is Mann’s most celebrated masterpiece.

Remarque, Erich Maria. All Quiet on the Western Front (1987). This is a classic novel of World War I.

Folklore & Legends

Grimm, Jacob, and Wilhelm Grimm. Complete Grimm Tales. This is the world’s most famous collection of folk tales, with a cast of characters that includes everybody from Little Red Riding Hood to Tom Thumb.

The Nibelungenlied. Every school kid in Germany reads this great epic poem, which details the exploits of Siegfried and Kriemhild and the fall of the Burgundians. The Nibelungenlied is characterized by the violence of its emotions and its uncompromising emphasis on vengeance.

History

Beevor, Antony. The Fall of Berlin 1945 (2002). This is one of the most vivid accounts ever written of the Red Army’s assault on Berlin.

Large, David Clay. Berlin (2000). In this controversial and caustic survey of Berlin since 1871, the author claims that “no other place has so dramatically encapsulated the highs and lows of our modern human experience” as Berlin.

Schneider, Peter. The German Comedy: Scenes of Life after the Wall, translated by Leigh Hafrey and Philip Boehm (1992). Comic absurdities surrounding the collapse of the Wall fill this book, but Schneider (author of The Wall Jumper) also explores resurgent anti-Semitism and how West Germans are coping with the flood of refugees from the former East Germany.

Shirer, William L. The Rise and Fall of the Third Reich: A History of Nazi Germany (1959–60). This story has never been told better—the complete saga of Hitler’s empire from beginning to end.

Taylor, Frederick. Dresden: Tuesday, February 13, 1945 (2004). This book takes a new look at the destruction of Dresden by Allied bombings, which was more famously brought home in Kurt Vonnegut’s 1969 novel Slaughterhouse Five. A British historian, Taylor debunks the theory that Dresden contributed little toward the Nazi war effort, but was “one of the foremost industrial locations of the Reich.”

Travel

Twain, Mark. A Tramp Abroad (1989). The American humorist’s travels through Germany are comically detailed here. Read also his comments on “The Awful German Language.”

German literature: From Gutenberg to Grass

Even before Gutenberg invented the first printing press in the Western world in the 15th century, German literature—both oral and written—was being produced. The first written literary work known is The Lay of Hildebrand, a narrative poem handed down by ancient storytellers and copied by monks at the Benedictine Abbey at Fulda. Such tales of valor, love, sorrow, and death were strong in oral tradition, with the Rhine valley giving rise to many legends and songs through the centuries, Lohengrin, Roland, the Lorelei, and the Nibelungen being among the subjects.

The age of chivalry gave birth to lyric poetry in Germany. Like the troubadours in France, Minnesingers of the Holy Roman Empire roamed the land singing songs of love and derring-do inspired by the Crusades. One of these, Walter von der Vogelweide, a knight of the late 12th and early 13th centuries, is seen as the father of lyric poetry in Germany. Another early-13th-century poet of note was Wolfram von Eschenbach, whose epic, Parsifal, glorifies chivalry and religious devotion. By the 16th century, another “hero” had joined German folklore and literature—Til Eulenspiegel, a clownish fellow whose life around 1300 became the subject of story and song.

From the time of the Reformation (16th c.), Martin Luther’s influence can be traced in many fields of the German life of the mind and spirit. His translation of the Bible into modern German was hailed as the first great literary work in the language. A Luther contemporary, Hans Sachs, a Meistersinger (a “master singer” who carried on the traditions of the earlier Minnesingers), was a prolific author of stories, poems, plays, and songs.

Publications of a picaresque novel, Simplicissimus, by Grimmelshausen (17th c.), marked the start of production of long prose narratives in the country. The Age of Enlightenment in German literature dawned in the late 17th century, inaugurated by Klopstock in his epic, Der Messias, and his Odes, and it continued into the 18th century. Rationalization was the watchword in this Enlightenment period, or Aufklärung. Much writing was in the form of philosophical treatises (for example, the works of Leibniz and Kant). Also in this era, the principles of German drama were laid out by Lessing.

As a reaction to rationalization, a literary movement known as Sturm und Drang was born in the 18th century, marked especially by poetry and drama extolling both sentiment and grand passions and rejecting previous social, political, moral, and literary authority.

In this time, when ideas of storm and stress dominated the literati, Johann Wolfgang von Goethe arrived on the scene, a giant of letters. Dramatist, novelist, philosopher, and Germany’s greatest poet, Goethe followed the pattern of the times in youth and early manhood (the Urfaust or Early Faust, Egmont, and The Sorrows of Young Werther). However, he soon became disenchanted with Sturm und Drang, turning in midlife after a stay in Italy to a classical mode (Nausikaa). During this period, he reworked Faust so that the final product begins with storm and stress and then levels off into tranquil classicism. It was after his sojourn in Italy that he also produced Wilhelm Meisters Lehrjahre, a novel that served for decades as the prototype of the best German fiction.

Another literary immortal, Johann Friedrich Schiller, playwright and poet, a contemporary and friend of Goethe, also turned away from Sturm und Drang after presentation of Don Carlos, a powerful historical drama honoring liberty. Similar dramas were Wallenstein and Wilhelm Tell. Schiller’s outlook placed his interests in the fields of history and philosophy.

Besides these two masters of the literary world, which soon moved on from classicism to romanticism to historical romanticism, such names of world note as the brothers Jakob and Wilhelm Grimm, famous for their collection of fairy tales, folk tales, and myths, and Heinrich Heine appeared. Many of the works of Heine, second only to Goethe as Germany’s greatest poet, have become folk songs.

A poet who became known for his work in the first quarter of the 20th century was Rainer Maria Rilke. Another German, the novelist Erich Maria Remarque (All Quiet on the Western Front), moved to the United States to escape the political conditions of his homeland. Franz Kafka became known for his novels of the absurd. Bertolt Brecht (The Threepenny Opera and Mother Courage) chose to live in East Germany after World War II.

In 1959 Gunther Grass burst onto the scene with his extraordinary first novel, Blechtrommel (The Tin Drum). He became a spokesman for the German generation that grew up in the Nazi era and received the Nobel Prize in literature in 1999 as a poet, novelist, and playwright.

Other Germans who won the Nobel Prize for literature:

• Theodor Mommsen, 1902, philosopher

• Paul J. L. Heyse, 1910, novelist, dramatist, and poet

• Gerhart J. R. Hauptmann, 1912, dramatist

• Thomas Mann, 1929, novelist

• Hermann Hesse, 1946, novelist

• Heinrich Böll, 1972, novelist

The influence of German thought on the Western mind has been powerful, from as far back as the 13th century when Albertus Magnus became known as a scholastic philosopher, naturalist, and theologian. Through the centuries, other notable philosophers have been Kant, Moses Mendelssohn, Schopenhauer, Hegel, Marx, Engels, and Nietzsche (Thus Spake Zarathustra).

Music

Music is an important and pervasive facet of German life. German disunity over the centuries actually helped foster German music. The many small principalities and bishoprics that split up the German-speaking world meant that there were many courts to offer opportunities to musicians, both composers and instrumentalists. As a result, the German-speaking nations produced more composers of indisputable greatness than any other.

Today, the musical scene in Germany is as vibrant as ever. Every major city has an opera house and an orchestra, many of them world renowned. New composers are encouraged, and productions are often at the cutting edge.

Men (and Women) of Note: Germany’s Rich Musical History

by Donald Olson

Some of the greatest works of Western music have been written by German composers. The roster includes Bach, Handel, Beethoven, Brahms, Mendelssohn, Schumann, and Wagner, as well as 20th-century greats Alban Berg and Kurt Weill. The country’s rich musical history dates back to 12th-century Minnesängers (troubadours) and religious chants. Over the centuries, Germany’s musical traditions were fostered in convents, monasteries and churches where composers were hired to write sacred songs, cantatas and oratorios. Eventually, as opera houses and concert halls became a fixture in German cities, a wider public clamored for musical performances. Classical music remains an important part of German culture today and can be enjoyed in concert halls and opera houses throughout the country.

Hildegard of Bingen (1098-1179) Known as Saint Hildegard, this Benedictine abbess was revered in her day as an author, visionary, herbalist, poet, and composer. Over 70 of her compositions have survived, one of the largest repertoires among medieval composers. Hildegard’s music is monophonic, consisting of only one melodic line, but her soaring melodies go well beyond the range of medieval chant.

Johann Sebastian Bach (1685-1750) After stints as a violinist, an organist, and Kapellmeister, Bach arrived in Leipzig in 1723 and stayed for the rest of his life, writing more than 200 cantatas, the Passion According to St. Matthew, and the Mass in B Minor. He was prolific in other ways as well, fathering 17 children. Every June, Leipzig celebrates Bach’s musical legacy with the famous Bachfest (www.bach-leipzig.de), during which Bach’s works are performed in the Thomaskirche, where he is buried.

Ludwig van Beethoven (1770-1827) Beethoven brought emotional depth and new tone colors to music in the transitional period between the Classical (Bach) and Romantic (Brahms) eras. He began his career by composing and performing piano concertos, and he continued to compose (9 symphonies, the opera Fidelio) even when his hearing began to deteriorate in the late 1790s. By the time his monumental Ninth Symphony was premiered in 1824, Beethoven was so deaf that he had to be turned around to see the tumultuous applause of the audience. Music lovers can visit his birthplace, the Beethoven House Museum, in Bonn.

Johannes Brahms (1833-1897) Like Beethoven, Brahms was a composer and virtuoso pianist who performed many of his own works. He composed for piano, chamber ensembles, symphony orchestra, and for voice and chorus. The structure of Brahms’s music is rooted in the traditions of Baroque and Classical composition, but he developed musical themes in a way pioneered by Beethoven, creating bold new harmonies and melodies. Brahms’s glory years as a composer were between 1868, when he premiered A German Requiem, his largest choral work, and 1885, by which time he had composed his four symphonies and the Piano Concerto No. 2. In 1889, Brahms made an experimental recording of his first Hungarian dance on the piano, the earliest recording made by a major composer.

Richard Wagner (1813-1883) Known primarily for his operas, Wagner pioneered advances in musical language that greatly influenced the development of European classical music. His life was tumultuous, requiring periodic flights to escape creditors. It was while in exile from Germany that Wagner completed his four-act Ring cyle, the opera Tristan and Isolde, and developed his revolutionary vision of operas as Gesamtkunstwerk, or “total artwork”, a fusion of music, song, dance, poetry, visual arts, and stagecraft. His fortunes brightened when Ludwig II, king of Bavaria, became Wagner’s patron., Wagner built the Festspielhaus in Bayreuth, a theater where his operas—and only his—would be performed. He is buried in the garden at Villa Wahnfriend in Bayreuth.

Kurt Weill (1900-1950) Although he was classically trained and had some success with his works for the concert hall, it was Weill’s musical-theatre songs that became popular in Germany in the late 1920s and early 1930s. His best-known work, The Threepenny Opera, was written in 1928 in collaboration with the German playwright Bertolt Brecht contained his most famous song, “Mack the Knife.” As a prominent Jewish composer, Weill became a target of the Nazis and was forced to flee Germany in 1933.

A History of German Music

Baroque Music The greatest composer of the baroque era was Johann Sebastian Bach (1685–1750), who was a supreme master of all musical forms of his time. Bach produced many church cantatas, especially for St. Thomas Church in Leipzig, where he served as cantor. His compositions were technically outstanding, vigorous, and profound. Little of his music was published during his lifetime, but after his death, his influence steadily grew, especially that of his organ works. The musical tradition in his large family was maintained by two of his talented sons, Carl Philipp Emanuel Bach (1714–88) and Johann Christian Bach (1735–82). The Brandenburg Concertos are highly recommended.

Bach’s contemporary George Frideric Handel (1685–1759) was another great composer. He first rose to prominence as musician of the court of Hannover, a post that he left to become composer at the court of St. James of England. He was a leading composer of operas and instrumental music for the court. Listen to his oratorio, Messiah.

The Classical Period Wolfgang Amadeus Mozart (1756–91), although an Austrian, cannot be omitted from any discussion of German music. His operas, with their contemporary themes and lively musical characterizations, paved the way for later composers. Franz Joseph Haydn (1732–1809), another Austrian, also exerted great influence on German music, especially instrumental music. Listen to Mozart’s The Marriage of Figaro and Don Giovanni and Haydn’s “Drum Roll” Symphony no. 103.

The 19th Century & Romanticism The 19th century was rich in musical genius. Ludwig van Beethoven (1770–1827) ushered in romanticism. His works included symphonies, piano concertos, piano sonatas, quartets, and many others. He greatly expanded and developed the orchestra. Tragically, he completely lost his hearing in 1819. However, the chamber music he wrote after this event shows an even greater depth and complexity than his previous compositions. Listen to symphonies no. 5 and no. 9.

Other great composers of the era include Franz Schubert (1797–1828), Felix Mendelssohn (1809–47), Robert Schumann (1810–56), and Johannes Brahms (1833–97). Listen to Schubert’s Lieder, Mendelssohn’s “Overture” to A Midsummer Night’s Dream, Schumann’s Symphony no. 3, and Brahms’s German Requiem.

The giant of the 19th-century opera world was Richard Wagner (1813–83). His theories of musical drama exerted a tremendous influence on everyone who followed him, even his detractors. His influence can best be heard in the music of the later Romantic composer Richard Strauss (1864–1949), whose operas carry Wagner’s ideas of character development to greater psychological depth. Listen to Wagner’s The Ring of the Nibelungs and Strauss’s Salome.

The 20th Century Musical experimentation flourished in early-20th-century Germany. Austrian-born Arnold Schönberg (1874–1951) developed the 12-tone system of musical structure. Kurt Weill (1900–50) and Paul Hindemith (1895–1963) tried to reach a more popular audience. During the Nazi era, many composers fled Germany. Others, like Hans Pfitzner (1869–1949) and Strauss, remained in an uneasy relationship with the Nazis. Listen to Schönberg’s Five Pieces for Orchestra, Weill’s Threepenny Opera, and Hindemith’s Mathis der Maler. The music of Pfitzner is still heard in such operas as Palestrina from 1917 and Das Herz from 1931. The compositions of Strauss are among the most frequently played around the globe, especially his operas such as Salome (1905) and Elektra (1909).

More recently, major composers such as Karlheinz Stockhausen (1928–2007) and Hans Werner Henze (b. 1926) have brought the traditions of Germany’s musical past into the present. Listen to Stockhausen’s Gesang der Jünglinge (Song of the Youths). Henze has won cultural awards around the world for such compositions as The English Cat in 1980 and La Cubana in 1973.

Beyond Baroque: The Modern German music Scene

Modern German music tastes are heavily influenced by the American or British pop worlds, but many German musicians have created their own Teutonic sounds, notably the amusingly named “Krautrock.” Kraut, of course, was originally an ethnic slur used by American GIs to refer to Nazi soldiers. One critic defined Krautrock “as a mix of Anglo-American post-psychedelic jamming and moody progressive rock.” Its stars were the band Can, often compared to the Velvet Underground, and the band Faust, which became one of the first acts to sign with Richard Branson’s Virgin Records.

Crossing international boundaries is the German industrial metal band Rammstein, which nonetheless performs almost exclusively in German. The group is known for its rock hit “Du Hast.” Rammstein is also controversial—a liquid-ejecting dildo earned them a night in a Massachusetts jail. Rammstein band members much admire the music of Nina Hagen, who often leads protests concerning issues such as the war in Iraq. She headlined the Drop Dead Festival in New York City in 2005.

Neue Deutsche Welle (New German wave) was a form of punk rock and new wave music that rose in the mid-’70s. Out of this movement came a German band from Berlin, Wir Sind Helden (We Are Heroes), which has achieved great success, including sold-out concerts in London, with non-English lyrics.

Punk music became popular in the 1970s in the wake of the success of British bands like the Sex Pistols, who developed a devoted following in West Germany. After reunification, many punk bands such as Slime rose to rant against politicians who ignore the dangers of neo-Nazis in Germany. The late ’70s also saw the rise of Goth rock, with strong ties to the English punk rock scene. Since the turn of the millennium, Goth rock has declined in popularity but still flourishes in pockets.

German hip-hop entered the mainstream only in the early ’90s, bringing with it graffiti and break dancing. The controversial and mysterious Berlin rapper Sido released Maske, a debut album in 2004, which was hailed as the first real German hip-hop music. His most recent releases are the 2008 album Ich und meine Maske (Me and My Mask) and the 2009 album Aggro Berlin.

Film

German cinema came into its own in the aftermath of World War I, although it actually began in 1895, when the brothers Skladanowsky presented their Bioscop in the Wintergarten at Berlin. Early German film not only has earned a place in cinema history, but also has been enormously influential in both Europe and the United States. Das Cabinet des Dr. Caligari (The Cabinet of Dr. Caligari), directed by Dr. Robert Wiene and released in Berlin in 1920, was hailed as “the first work of art on the screen.” After viewing the film, the French coined the term Caligarisme to describe the “all upside-down” postwar world.

The 1920s saw the production of many notable German films, such as Fritz Lang’s Dr. Mabuse, der Spieler (Dr. Mabuse, the Gambler), a 1922 screen version of a novel by Norbert Jacques. In 1924, Lang achieved great popular success with his two Nibelungen films, which became classics. The influence of Lang’s science fiction film Metropolis (1927) can still be seen today, and his Spione (The Spy) became the forerunner of the Hitchcock thrillers. Carl Mayer achieved renown for his scripts, which were called “screen poems.” These include the expressionist 1920 film Genuine and 1924s Der Letzte Mann (The Last Laugh). Mayer is said to have “unchained” the camera.

In the late 1920s, Hollywood began drawing away Germany’s brightest stars, including directors Ernst Lubitsch and F. W. Murnau (Faust, 1926) and stars such as Conrad Veidt and Emil Jannings. As the worldwide recession hit Germany, film production suffered further. The most notable film to come out of this troubled period was Der Blaue Engel (The Blue Angel), released in 1930. It starred Emil Jannings and brought world acclaim to its female lead, Marlene Dietrich, who later found even greater glory in Hollywood.

When the Nazis came to power, German films became propaganda tools. Nazi films reached the zenith of their power in Leni Riefenstahl’s 1934 Triumph des Willens (Triumph of the Will), acclaimed for its cinematic techniques in spite of its glorification of Nazism. She went on to make Olympia, her classic account of the 1936 Berlin Olympics. Her innovative camera angles and close-ups of the athletes in action were brilliant, and the films won her both praise and condemnation.

In the first decades after World War II, the German film industry was not very creative. By the 1970s, however, a group of talented directors was emerging, including Rainer Werner Fassbinder, Werner Herzog, Wim Wenders, and Volker Schlöndorff.

Currently, there are few screen giants in Germany. The Berlin Film Festival often honors golden oldies, such as Pandora’s Box, by G. W. Pabst, starring American Louise Brooks. Many Pabst films have been restored and reconstructed. Pabst’s critical treatment of social issues earned him the sobriquet “The Red Pabst” during the Weimar Republic. Franz Seitz is often honored for producing some 80 films during his career, including 1979’s The Tin Drum.

The 1981 story of a doomed Nazi submarine, Das Boot (The Boat) still holds the record for the most Academy Award nominations for a German film, a total of six. The 1990 film Das schreckliche Mädchen (The Nasty Girl) tells the often shocking story of what a Bavarian high-school student uncovers when she sets out to investigate the Nazi past of her hometown. Michael Verhoeven’s picture was nominated for an Oscar as best foreign film. The movie is said to have been based on true-life experiences of a young woman. The German hometown in the film is actually Passau, covered later in this guide. Hitler once resided in Passau.

In 2006, Das Leben der Anderen (The Lives of Others) won an Academy Award as best foreign-language film. The film documented how Stasi (the East German secret police) spied on the lives of its citizens. In 2007, Die Fälscher (The Counterfeiters) also won an Oscar as best foreign-language film. Shot in Berlin, this Austro-German production told the story of how forgers were assigned the job of producing massive amounts of fake U.S. dollars and British pounds in an effort by the Nazi regime to weaken the Allied economy.

Modern films continue to offer us a glimpse of contemporary German life and culture as well. Most of these are available in the U.S. either dubbed or translated into English. Tom Tykwer’s Lola Rennt (1998) remains one of our favorites. It was called Run Lola Run in its English release. Starring Franka Potenta as Lola, the film has been called iconic of a reunified Germany. The plot involves a young woman who has 20 minutes to find and bring 100,000 German marks to her boyfriend before he robs a supermarket. The action is riveting, the soundtrack dynamic.

In Der Krieger und die Kaiserin (The Princess and the Warrior), director Tykwer is reunited with Potenta. First released in 2000, the film follows the travails of Sissi, who works in a psychiatric hospital. She becomes involved with a tormented ex-soldier who stages a bank robbery. A near-death experience throws Sissi’s life into chaos.

One of the freshest post-reunification films is Wolfgang Becker’s 2003 comedy Goodbye, Lenin!, set in East Germany in 1989. A young man, to protect his fragile mother from a fatal shock after a long coma, tries to prevent her from learning that her beloved East Germany has disappeared.

Eating & Drinking

Though traditional dishes like dumplings, Wurst (sausages), pastries, and beer may make Germany seem the worst possible place to eat healthfully, in reality, restaurants are offering foreign foods and neue Küche (modern cuisine). Chefs trained in Switzerland, France, or Italy return to Germany to open Continental restaurants, and Italians and Turks, many of whom originally came to Germany as “guest workers,” own restaurants featuring their own culinary traditions.

Regional Specialties

• Bavaria & Franconia: In southern Germany, you can feast on such hearty fare as Leberkäs (a chilled mold of minced pork, beef, and liver), Knödel (dumplings or soaked bread), Haxen (pork or veal trotters, most often consumed with Sauerkraut), Rostbratwürste (small finger sausages), and Leberknödel (large liver dumplings in a clear broth). Schweinwurst mit Kraut (pork sausages with Sauerkraut) is another unforgettable local dish.

• Lower Saxony & Schleswig-Holstein: Here in northwest Germany, with its maritime tradition, a typical local dish is Aalsuppe—sweet-and-sour eel soup flavored with bacon, vegetables, and sometimes even pears and prunes (or perhaps other fruits). The sailor’s favorite is Labskaus, a ground-together medley of pork, salt herring, and beef, along with potatoes and beets. The traditional topping is a fried egg and a side dish of cucumbers. Bruntes Huhn is salt beef on a bed of diced vegetables, a robust winter favorite. Rollmops, pickled herring rolled in sour cream, is another local specialty, as is Finkenwerder Scholle (plaice) and oysters, raw or baked with cheese.

• Berlin: During those cold nights in old Prussia, Berliners took comfort in their soups, notably Kohlsuppe (cabbage soup) and Erbsensuppe (pea soup), along with dark bread, especially Westphalia pumpernickel. Hase im Topf is a delicious rabbit pâté. Other favorites are Bratwurst, a pork sausage, and Regensburger Wurst, a spicy pork sausage. For dessert, Berliners like Kugelhupf, a marvelous coffeecake, and Käsekuchen, or cheesecake. But probably the most typical Berlin delicacy is Eisbein (pigs’ knuckles).

• Hassen & Westphalia: Famed for its hams, this region eats food guaranteed to put hair on your chest. Sample their Sulperknochen, made from the pigs’ trotters (feet), ears, and tail, and served traditionally with pea pudding and pickled cabbage. Try Tüttchen, a ragout of herb-flavored calves’ heads and calves’ brains, or settle for Pickert, sweet-potato cakes flavored with raisins.

• Baden-Württemberg: In the southern region around Stuttgart, begin with such dishes as Schneckensuppe (snail soup), Spätzle (egg-based pasta), or perhaps Maultaschen (ravioli stuffed with ground meat, spinach, and calves’ brains). A dish beloved in the area and widely consumed is Geschnetzeltes (slices of veal in a cream sauce). The favorite local dish in Stuttgart itself is Gaisburger Marsch, a beef stew. Another commonly served dish is Rostbraten, braised beef, invariably accompanied by Sauerkraut or Linsen mit Saiten, lentil stew cooked with sausages.

• Saxony & Thuringia: In eastern Germany, you can feast on everything from Linsensuppe mit Thüringer Rotwurst (lentil soup with Thuringian sausages) to Rinderzunge in Rosinen-Sauce (calves’ tongues in grape sauce). Kartoffelsuppe (potato soup) remains a favorite of the district, as does a baked appetizer, Quarkkeulchen, made from curd, boiled potatoes, flour, sugar, and raisins, topped with cinnamon and served with applesauce. Each city in the district also has its own popular local dishes. Leipzig, for example, has its Leipziger Allerlei, a blend of carrots, peas, asparagus, cauliflower, mushrooms, crayfish, oxtails, bits of veal, and dumplings.

• Rhineland: The Rhineland features dishes that have made Germans the subject of good-natured ridicule, especially in neighboring France. For example, there’s Saumagen, stuffed pork belly with pickled cabbage. Also beloved is Schweinepfeffer, a highly seasoned and spicy pork ragout that’s thickened with pig blood. After that feast, it’s on to Hämchen, pork trotters with pickled cabbage and potatoes, or else Sauerbraten, beef marinated in wine vinegar and spices. Postwar Chancellor Konrad Adenauer was a Rhinelander, and one of his favorite foods was Reibekuchen, small potato pancakes with a blueberry sauce or applesauce. Taverns along the Rhine fill up when Federweisser, partially fermented new wine, comes in. They drink it while devouring onion tarts.

The Best of the wurst

The German love affair with Wurst (sausage) dates from the dawn of history. Every region of Germany has its own specialty, but the overall favorite seems to be Bratwurst from Nürnberg, made of seasoned and spiced pork. Germans often take their Wurst with a bun and a dab of mustard. Weisswurst (white sausage) is a medley of veal, calves’ brains, and spleen. Bauernwurst (farmer’s sausage) and Knockwurst are variations of the Frankfurter, which originated (naturally) in Frankfurt. (Oddly enough, small Frankfurters, which are called wieners or Vienna sausages in the United States and Wienerwurst in Germany, are known as Frankfurters in Austria.) Leberwurst (made from liver) is a specialty of Hesse. Rinderwurst and Blutwurst (beef sausage and blood sausage) are Westphalian specialties and are often eaten with Steinhäger (corn brandy).

Beer & Wine

Beer For variety and quality, German beer is unequaled. The world’s oldest brewery is in Bavaria, but other regions in Germany have proud beer-making traditions. Export beers and the rather more bitter Pils, the most popular type of beer, are also produced in Berlin, Hamburg, the Ruhr, Hesse, and Stuttgart. Altbier, a very early product of the brewer’s art, can be found today all over Germany.

In Germany, if you go into a beer hall and ask the bartender for ein Bier, you’ll probably get the standard stock beer, Vollbier, which is 4% alcohol. More potent is Export at 5% or Bockbier at 6%. Connoisseurs specify the type of beer they want and often the brewery. The following is a bit of beer vocabulary. When the malt has been darkly roasted and fermented for much longer, it becomes dunkles Bier, or dark beer. Doppelbock is an extra-dark beer with a 6% alcoholic content. Helles Bier is light and brewed from malt dried and baked by the local brewery, or Brauerei. Many Germans, especially the citizens of Bamberg, like their beer “smoked.” If that appeals to you, request Rauchbier. In nearby Bayreuth, Richard Wagner’s old hometown, locals prefer a “steam beer” known as Dampfbier. The denizens of Düsseldorf and Frankfurt can often be heard requesting Alt, a brown, barley-malt brew. Kölsch is a light beer drunk mainly in Cologne in tall fluted glasses. Hefeweizen is a yeasty wheat beer consumed often with a squeeze of lemon. Berliner Weisse is made from wheat, like a Bavarian white beer, but with a dash of raspberry or woodruff syrup. Dark and sweet, malt beer has hardly any alcohol, whereas Starkbier is a powerful beer served when the barrels are opened after the post-Lenten celebrations in March. It has the highest alcohol content of them all. Finally, Pils, or pilsner, beers are light and contain more hops. Dortmund has earned a reputation in this field.

o’ zapfstisl (“The Barrel Is Tapped”)

The oldest brewery in the world is at Weihenstephan, a former Benedictine monastery 30km (19 miles) northeast of Munich in Old Bavaria. It dates from the year 1040, although there is evidence that a hop garden already existed near the grounds of the monastery in A.D. 768. The monks here brought beer to the masses in Europe. Even today, the oldest brewery within Munich itself, Augustiner, reflects brewing’s monastic heritage.

Over the centuries, monks brewed a strong beer for consumption during the fasting period of Lent, during which they were technically supposed to drink only water. The story goes that the pope heard about this custom and ordered that the beer be transported to Rome for him to sample. When the pope finally tasted the beer after its long journey (it didn’t have preservatives back then), he decided it tasted foul and decreed that the beer was strong enough punishment for the Bavarian monks to drink it during Lent. Today, all Munich breweries brew this strong beer during Lent; Salvator and Triumphator are the best-known brands. Ator in German means a strong beer. By long-standing tradition, the names of German Doppelbock Bier (a type of strong beer) end with an “-ator” suffix.

Wine Germany has produced delightful wines for centuries, but sometime in the 1970s, German wine became the butt of jokes. The postwar German economic miracle had led to a boom in wine production. Many new vineyards sprang up suddenly, and quality was not always their first priority. Cheap, cloyingly sweet table wines flooded the market. One label in particular, Liebfraumilch, began to sully the reputation of the entire industry; the mere mention of its name to anyone in the know met with a knowing titter or contemptuous sneer. Today, however, German viticulture has many smaller producers producing excellent wines.

Good German wine is renowned for its natural lightness and its delicate balance of sweetness and acidity. Most vineyards flourish on steep hillsides, protected from harsh winds by wooded neighboring hills, especially on the banks of the Rhine and Mosel rivers and their tributaries. The vineyards profit from the warmth reflected off the sunlit water. The slow maturing of the grapes gives German wines their typical fresh, fruity acidity.

Germany does produce red wine, but as a rule it’s better to stick to white or perhaps a rosé. Trocken (dry) or halbtrocken (semidry) are often given on the labels; look for them if you want to escape anything sweet. This avoidance, however, should not extend to the dessert wines, which resemble nectar.

The overload of information on a German wine label is often puzzling to foreigners, but it’s not really that hard to decipher. First of all, the grape variety should be indicated. Legally, German wines are only required to contain 85% of the declared variety. The classic is Riesling, which can range widely in taste from fruity to spicy. Other grapes include Weissburgunder, used to make dry wines, often with an aroma of melon or pear, and Scheurebe, which produces delicious, high-quality wine with the aroma of red currant. No grape reference on the label often means a poorly blended, inferior-quality wine.

“Vintage” refers to when the grapes were grown (not harvested). The question of origin is also something to keep an eye on. It’s best if the label gives a single vineyard, but these can be distinguished from the less specific vineyard zones only if you are in the know or can consult a pocket guide, such as Johnson’s.

Next, check for the level of ripeness. German law distinguishes between Tafelwein (table wine) and Qualitätswein (quality wine). QbA (Qualitätswein bestimmter Anbaugebiete) on a bottle means the wine is made from the approved grape varieties, which will give it the particular and traditional taste of its region. QmP refers to Qualitätswein mit Prädikat (wine with distinction) and carries one of six special attributes. These, in order of ascending price, are Kabinett, Spätlese, Auslese, Beerenauslese (BA), Eiswein, and the exclusive Trockenbeerenauslese (TBA).

As a classification, Kabinett was first used by Eberbach Abbey in 1712 to denote quality. This wine is especially good as an aperitif with light snacks or veal. The mildly sweet and fruity Auslese from the Mosel-Saar-Ruwer region and the rich Spätlese are well suited to richer dishes such as duck, smoked fowl, and oysters. Those trocken and halbtrocken Rieslings from the Rheingau and Mosel-Saar-Ruwer are perfect with pork, sausages, and Sauerkraut, as well as with mild cheeses. A fuller-bodied Riesling Spätlese and Auslese Trocken from Rheingau or Pfalz goes excellently with wild boar and lobster. The rarest vintages, those sweet wines carrying the BA and TBA designations, are best left for anything oily or pungent in flavor, such as goose-liver pâté or rich cheeses. They are also wonderful with desserts.

Many foreign visitors tour one of the winegrowing districts. Since reunification, a number of wine districts have emerged in eastern Germany; however, the traditional German wine country, stretching from the middle Rhine at Bonn down to Lake Constance on the Swiss border, is still the most charming, with its classic scenery of imposing castle ruins, elegant spas, and Brothers Grimm villages replete with spires and black-and-white gabled houses.

When to Go

The most popular tourist months are May to October, although winter travel to Germany is becoming increasingly popular, especially to the ski areas in the Bavarian Alps. Germany’s climate varies widely. In the north, winters tend to be cold and rainy; summers are most agreeable. In the south and in the Alps, it can be very cold in the winter, especially in January, and very warm in summer, but with cool, rainy days even in July and August. Spring and fall are often stretched out—in fact, we’ve enjoyed many a Bavarian-style “Indian summer” until late in October.

Holidays

Public holidays are January 1 (New Year’s Day), Easter (Good Friday and Easter Monday), May 1 (Labor Day), Ascension Day (10 days before Pentecost/Whitsunday, the seventh Sun after Easter), Whitmonday (day after Pentecost/Whitsunday), October 3 (Day of German Unity), November 17 (Day of Prayer and Repentance), and December 25 and 26 (Christmas). In addition, the following holidays are observed in some German states: January 6 (Epiphany), Corpus Christi (10 days after Pentecost), August 15 (Assumption), and November 1 (All Saints’ Day).

Calendar of Events

All dates and events are subject to change. Contact the German National Tourist Board (www.germany-tourism.de) for more information. The board publishes a free calendar of forthcoming events three times a year, in April, October, and January; the first two are biannual calendars and the last is a yearly preview. They give the dates of trade fairs and exhibitions, theatrical and musical performances, local folk festivals, sporting events, conferences, and congresses throughout Germany.

For an exhaustive list of events beyond those listed here, check http://events.frommers.com, where you’ll find a searchable, up-to-the-minute roster of what’s happening in cities all over the world.

January

New Year’s Day International Ski Jumping, Garmisch-Partenkirchen. This is one of Europe’s major winter sporting events. For more information, contact the tourist bureau on Richard-Strauss-Platz ( 08821/180700;www.gapa.de). January 1.

February

International Film Festival, Berlin (at various theaters; announced in local newspapers). Stars, would-be stars, directors, and almost anyone with a film to peddle show up at this well-attended festival. It lasts for 10 days and is a showcase for the work of international film directors as well as the latest German films. Tickets can be purchased at any box office. Contact the Berlin International Film Festival ( 030/259200;www.berlinale.de) for more information. Early February.

Ambiente. This is one of the principal consumer goods trade fairs of Europe. Its origins go back centuries. For information, call 069/75750 (http://ambiente.messefrankfurt.com). Mid-February.

Fasching. Carnival festivals take place throughout Germany, reaching their peak on the Tuesday (Mardi Gras) before Ash Wednesday. Particularly famous carnivals take place in Bonn, Cologne, Düsseldorf, and especially Munich.

March

Spring Fairs. Highlights throughout Germany, especially in Augsburg, Münster, Nürnberg, Hamburg, and Stuttgart. Dates vary from year to year.

April

Walpurgis Festivals. Celebrated in the Harz Mountains. Festivities occur on the night of April 30.

May

Hamburg Summer. An entire series of cultural events, including concerts, plays, festivals, and special exhibitions throughout May, June, and July. For information, contact the Hamburg Tourist Bureau, in Hauptbahnhof ( 040/30051300;www.hamburg-tourism.de).

International May Theatre Festival, Wiesbaden. This city near Frankfurt hosts a premier cultural event—a series of artistic celebrations lasting 1 month. For information, contact the Wiesbaden Tourist Office, Marktstrasse 6 ( 0611/1729780;www.wiesbaden.de).

June

Floodlighting of the Castle, Heidelberg. Fireworks enliven the display in this storied university city. For more information, contact the Heidelberg Tourist Bureau, Willy-Brandt-Platz 1 ( 06221/14220;www.heidelberg-marketing.de). June, July, and September.

Mozart Festival, Würzburg. Mozart fans flock to this major cultural event in the baroque city of Würzburg. For more information, contact Tourismus Zentrale, Falkenhaus am Markt Centrum ( 0931/372336;www.wuerzburg.de or www.mozartfest-wuerzburg.de). Early June to early July.

July

See Floodlighting of the Castle, Heidelberg, under June, above.

Freiburg Wine Tasting. Local residents and visitors enjoy the first vintages from grapes grown in the Black Forest district. For more information, contact the Freiburg Tourist Board, Rathausplatz 2–4 ( 0761/3881880;www.freiburg.de). Early July.

Richard Wagner Festival, Bayreuth. One of Europe’s two or three major opera events, this festival takes place in the composer’s Festspielhaus in the capital of upper Franconia. Note that opera tickets often must be booked years in advance. For information, contact Festival Administration, Bayreuther Festspiele, Kartenbüro, Postfach 100262 ( 0921/78780;www.bayreuther-festspiele.de). Late July to late August.

August

Red Wine Festival, Rüdesheim/Assmannshausen. This is held in Assmannshausen, the Rhine village most famous for red wines. For exact dates, contact the Rüdesheim Tourist Bureau, Geisenheimer Strasse 22 ( 06722/906150;www.ruedesheim.de). Late August.

Musikfest Berlin ( 030/254890;www.berlinerfestspiele.de) takes place for a little more than 2 weeks. During the festival, Berlin plays host to orchestras, ensembles, conductors, and soloists from around the world. The festival is organized in conjunction with the Stiftung Berliner Philharmoniker. Late August to mid-September.

September

See Floodlighting of the Castle, Heidelberg, under June, above.

Oktoberfest, Munich. Much of Germany’s most famous festival takes place in September, not October. Millions show up, and hotels are packed. Most activities are at Theresienwiese, where local breweries sponsor gigantic tents that can hold up to 6,000 beer drinkers. Contact the Munich Tourist Bureau ( 089/23396500;www.muenchen.de) for particulars or just show up. Reserve hotel rooms well in advance. Mid-September to mid-October.

October

Frankfurt Book Fair. A major international event for publishers, book dealers, agents, and authors. For more information call 069/21020 (www.frankfurt-book-fair.com) or contact the Frankfurt Tourist Office ( 069/21238800;www.frankfurt-tourismus.de). Mid-October.

Spielzeit’europa. Schaperstrasse 24, Berlin ( 030/254890;www.berlinerfestspiele.de), is a 4-month season of theater and dance performances at Festspiele. October to January.

November

Jazz-Fest Berlin. This annual festival, staged at the Philharmonie, attracts some of the world’s finest jazz artists, ranging from traditional to experimental. Contact the Berlin Festspiele Ticket Office ( 030/254890;www.berlinerfestspiele.de) for more information. Early November.

Winter Dom, Hamburg. An annual amusement fair (sometimes called Hamburg Dom) at the Heiligengeistfeld. For more information, contact the Hamburg Tourist Bureau, in Hauptbahnhof ( 040/30051300;www.hamburg-tourism.de). Early November to early December.

December

Christmas Fair, Mainz. Mainz stages its Christmas fair on the Rhine for the 4 weeks preceding Christmas. For more information, contact the Mainz Tourist Bureau, Brueckenturm am Rathaus ( 06131/286210;www.mainz.de). December. (Other German towns hold Christmas fairs in Nov.)

Responsible Travel

Germans, with some justification, consider themselves in the avant-garde of green travel. Although they suffered one of history’s most devastating attacks on their environment (World War II), in the postwar years they became a front-runner in preserving their environment and protecting nature.

“Germans are known for recycling and reusing their natural resources,” said Berlin activist Hans Welder.

In Germany, more and more systems are going into place to generate energy from wind and solar power.

Germans didn’t exactly invent walking or hiking across their countryside, but you would think so when you notice the numbers of citizens who prefer this form of exploration. It’s a way to stay in good health, enjoy nature, and avoid harming the environment, all at the same time.

Trails in Germany are often signposted, cutting through all areas of the country, from tidal shores to low mountain regions, with tours offered to some of the more difficult-to-reach points along mountaintops.

The outdoor enthusiast might want to concentrate on Germany’s national parks, 14 in all, with the heaviest concentration in Bavaria and in old East Germany. Our favorite of these biosphere reserves is the Bavarian Forest National Park in the south and the Harz National Park in Lower Saxony and Saxony-Anhalt.

We applaud the German effort to reintroduce wildlife that was once native to these parks. The last lynx in the Harz Mountains was shot in 1818. But the animal was reintroduced in 1999, and wild lynxes began to give birth in 2002. However, other attempts have failed, including an attempt to return the capercaillie to its former native habitat.

For general data about the parks of Germany, consult Nationalpark Service, Informationshaus, 17192 Federow, Germany ( 039/91668849;www.nationalpark-service.de). The national parks are free, but camping at designated areas ranges from 5€ to 10€ per night. Some parks have huts that are basic but better than a tent, and this form of accommodations costs from 10€ to 20€ per person. Park rangers crack down on those who harm the environment.

If you’re interested in camping, check the Great Outdoor Recreation Page (www.gorp.com) before you go. It has some fine data not only on camping but also on ways to enjoy the landscapes of Germany.

Many organizations are devoted to eco-tourism today, including Biosphefere Expedition, P.O. Box 917750, Longwood, FL 32791 ( 800/407-5761;www.biosphere-expeditions.org). This group sets up ecofriendly tours to the Bavarian Alps, for example. Earthwatch, 3 Clocktower Place, Ste. 1000, P.O. Box 75, Maynard, MA 01754 ( 800/776-0188;www.earthwatch.org), often includes Germany in its 1- to 3-week jaunts to promote conservation of natural resources.

An unusual offering for the true green visitor is provided by Willing Workers on Organic Farms, Postfach 210259, 01263 Dresden (www.wwoof.de). Charging a membership of 20€, the organization’s name says it all—participants get free room and board at a variety of organic farms throughout the country, but they must be willing to work for their supper.

One of the best ways for the green traveler in Germany is to take a tour from one bio hotel to another. These jaunts take you to the most scenic parts of the country, ranging from Lüneburg in the north to the Bavarian Forest in the south. For information and a list of these places to stay, check www.biohotels.info.

Increasingly popular is spending a vacation on a German farm, a welcome alternative for families with children. Sometimes guests can help with the activities, such as feeding the cows or helping with the harvest. Some lodgings are no longer working farms but have been turned into tranquil guesthouses with typical regional charm. Find out more about this type of holiday by searching www.landtourismus.de.

In addition to the resources for Germany listed above, see frommers.com/planning for more tips on responsible travel.

Tours

Germany is one of the great outdoor destinations of Europe. From its mountains to its beaches, from its rivers to its castles, there is much to see and explore. It has summer attractions galore, plus skiing on its Alpine slopes in winter. Here is but a sampling of the offerings that await you.

Biking

In Germany you can bike through green valleys and past rivers while enjoying rural landscapes and villages. Allgemeiner Deutscher Fahrrad-Club, P.O. Box 107747, 28077 Bremen ( 0421/346290;www.adfc.de), offers complete information on biking in Germany.

For over 20 years, Classic Adventures, P.O. Box 143, Hamlin, NY 14464 ( 800/777-8090; fax 585/964-7297; www.classicadventures.com), has offered bike tours of such areas as the Romantic Road. Euro-Bike and Walking Tours has teamed with Austin-Lehman Adventures to offer some of the best biking and walking tours in Germany. The company’s trips in Bavaria are particularly notable. For more information, check out www.austinlehman.com. You can also call 800/575-1540 in the United States and Canada, or else write to P.O. Box 81025, Billings, MT 59108.

Dozens of companies in Britain offer guided cycling tours. One of the best is the Cyclists Touring Club, Parklands, Railton Road, Guildford, Surrey GUZ 9JX ( 0870/873-0060;www.ctc.org.uk). It charges £36 a year for membership.

Cruises

The most popular cruises in Germany are along the Rhine.

Jody Lexow Yacht Charters rents hotel barges (including crew, food, and beverages) and smaller self-drive craft for touring the canals and rivers of Germany. For additional information, contact the agency at 26 Coddington Wharf, Newport, RI 02840 ( 800/662-2628;www.jodylexowyachtcharters.com).

Canal barge cruises are the way to see a rarely viewed part of Germany. The best such packages are available through European Barging, 25132 Oakhurst Dr., No. 130, Spring, TX 77386 ( 888/869-7907;www.europeanbarging.com). German itineraries focus on Berlin and the Mecklenburg lakes, and the “Mosel Cruise,” from Trier to Koblenz.

Escorted General-Interest Tours

Escorted tours are structured group tours with a group leader. The price usually includes everything from airfare to hotels, meals, admission costs, and local transportation.

Many people derive a sense of ease and security from escorted trips. Escorted tours—whether by bus, motorcoach, train, or boat—let travelers sit back and enjoy the trip without having to spend lots of time behind the wheel or worrying about details. You know your costs upfront, and there are few surprises. Escorted tours can take you to the maximum number of sights in the minimum amount of time with the least amount of hassle—you don’t have to sweat over the plotting and planning of a vacation schedule. Escorted tours are particularly convenient for people with limited mobility. They can also be a great way to meet people.

On the downside, an escorted tour often requires a big deposit upfront, and lodging and dining choices are predetermined. You’ll have few opportunities for serendipitous interactions with locals. The tours can be jampacked with activities, leaving little room for individual sightseeing, whim, or adventure—plus they often focus only on the heavily touristed sites, so you miss out on lesser known gems.

Brendan Vacations ( 800/421-8446;www.brendanvacations.com) has a selection of 8- to 15-day tours. Accommodations are at the better hotels, and rates include everything except airfare. Collette Vacations ( 800/340-5158;www.collettevacations.com) has an “Alpine Countries” tour that covers southern Germany, Austria, and Switzerland. Globus & Cosmos Tours ( 800/338-7092;www.globusandcosmos.com) offers 9- to 16-day escorted tours of various parts of Germany. It also has a budget branch that offers tours at lower rates. Maupintour ( 800/255-4266;www.maupintour.com) has a selection of upscale tours, such as a Rhine River tour of Berlin, Dresden, Meissen, Nürnberg, and Heidelberg. Its most popular tour is a 14-day trip that takes in such cities as Dresden, Berlin, Rothenburg, Munich, Meissen, Baden-Baden, and Potsdam, including a Rhine River cruise past the Lorelei Rock.

Abercrombie & Kent ( 800/554-7016;www.abercrombiekent.com) provides customized group tours to various areas of Germany.

Golf

Most German golf courses welcome visiting players who are members of courses at home. Weekday greens fees are usually around 50€, rising to as much as 90€ on Saturday and Sunday. For information about the various golf courses, write to the Deutscher Golf/Verband, Viktoriastrasse 16, 65189 Wiesbaden ( 0611/990200;www.golf.de/dgv).

The Swabian region of Allgäu has several good courses. Golf Club Oberstaufen und Steibis ( 08386/8529;www.golf-oberstaufen.de), at Oberstaufen, is an 18-hole course close to a forest and nature park. Ofterschwang, a small, peaceful resort on the scenically beautiful Tiefenberger Moor, has Golf Club Sonnenalp ( 08321/272181;www.golfresort-sonnenalp.de). A good 18-hole course is found at Golf Bodensee ( 08389/89190;www.gcbw.de) on Lake Constance in southern Germany. Farther north, the city of Augsburg has an 18-hole course at Golf Augsburg ( 08234/5621;www.golfclub-augsburg.de).

Hiking & Mountain Climbing

These sports are popular in the German uplands. It’s estimated that Germany has more than 80,000 marked hiking and mountain-walking tracks. The Deutschen Wanderverband, Wilhelmshöher Alle 157–159, 34121 Kassel ( 0561/938730;www.wanderverband.de), services the trails and offers details about trails, shelters, huts, and addresses of hiking associations in various regions. The Deutscher Alpenverein (DAV), Von-Kahr-Strasse 2–4, 80997 Munich ( 089/140030;www.alpenverein.de), owns and operates 50 huts in and around the Alps that are open to all mountaineers. This association also maintains a 15,000km (9,300-mile) network of Alpine trails.

The best Alpine hiking is in the Bavarian Alps, especially the 1,240m (4,070-ft.) Eckbauer, on the southern fringe of Partenkirchen. The tourist office will supply hiking maps and details. Another great place for hiking is Berchtesgaden National Park, Franziskanerplatz 7, Berchtesgaden ( 08652/64343;www.nationalpark-berchtesgaden.bayern.de), bordering the Austrian province of Salzburg. This park offers the best-organized hikes and will hook you up with various groups offering hikes.

Planning Your Trip to Germany

Getting There

By Plane

Lufthansa ( 800/645-3880 in the U.S., 800/563-5954 in Canada, or 01805/805805 in Germany; www.lufthansa.com) operates the most frequent service and flies to the greatest number of Germany’s airports. From North America, Lufthansa serves 23 gateway cities. In any season, there are more than 100 weekly flights from these cities to Germany. The largest of the gateways is the New York City area, where flights depart from both JFK and Newark airports. Lufthansa has an alliance with United Airlines and Air Canada to provide seamless air service to Germany and other parts of the globe from North America. Dubbed “Star Alliance,” the union allows cross-airline benefits, including travel on one or all of these airlines on one ticket and frequent-flier credit to the participating airline of your choice.

American Airlines ( 800/443-7300;www.aa.com) flies nonstop from Chicago and Dallas to Frankfurt daily, and American’s flights connect easily with ongoing flights to many other German cities on Lufthansa or British Airways. Continental Airlines ( 800/525-0280;www.continental.com) offers daily nonstop service from Newark to Frankfurt. Delta Airlines ( 800/241-4141;www.delta.com) offers daily connecting service to Hamburg (via Paris) and nonstop to Frankfurt from Atlanta, Cincinnati, and New York’s JFK; nonstop to Munich from Atlanta; and nonstop to Berlin from JFK. United Airlines ( 800/538-2929;www.united.com) offers daily nonstops from Los Angeles, New York, and Chicago to Frankfurt and Munich, and because of the Star Alliance, discussed above, all German flights by Lufthansa or Air Canada will also be honored as a part of a United ticket. US Airways ( 800/428-4322;www.usairways.com) also flies to Frankfurt and Munich daily (with nonstops from Charlotte and Philadelphia).

From London, British Airways ( 0870/8509850;www.britishairways.com) and Lufthansa ( 01805/805805;www.lufthansa.com) are the most convenient carriers to the major German cities, including Düsseldorf, Cologne, Frankfurt, Munich, and Berlin. British Midland ( 0870/6070555;www.flybmi.com) has daily flights to Cologne, Düsseldorf, Frankfurt, Hamburg, and Munich.

Flying for Less: Tips for Getting the Best Airfare

• Passengers who can book their ticket either long in advance or at the last minute, or who fly midweek or at less trafficked hours, may pay a fraction of the full fare. If your schedule is flexible, say so, and ask if you can secure a cheaper fare by changing your flight plans.

• Search the Internet for cheap fares. The most popular online travel agencies are Travelocity (www.travelocity.com), Expedia (www.expedia.com), and Orbitz (www.orbitz.com). In the U.K., go to Travelsupermarket ( 0845/345-5708;www.travelsupermarket.com), a flight search engine that offers flight comparisons for the budget airlines whose seats often end up in bucket shop sales. Other websites for booking airline tickets online include Cheapflights.com, SmarterTravel.com, Priceline (www.priceline.com), and Opodo (www.opodo.com). Meta-search sites (which find and then direct you to airline and hotel websites for booking) include Sidestep.com and Kayak.com—the latter includes fares for budget carriers such as JetBlue and Spirit as well as the major airlines. Lastminute.com is a great source for last-minute flights and getaways. In addition, most airlines offer online-only fares that even their phone agents know nothing about.

• Keep an eye on local newspapers for promotional specials or fare wars, when airlines lower prices on their most popular routes.

• Consolidators, also known as bucket shops, are wholesale brokers in the airline-ticket game. Consolidators buy deeply discounted tickets (“distressed” inventories of unsold seats) from airlines and sell them to online ticket agencies, travel agents, tour operators, corporations, and, to a lesser degree, the general public. Consolidators advertise in Sunday newspaper travel sections (often in small ads with tiny type), in both the U.S. and the U.K. They can be great sources for cheap international tickets. On the downside, bucket shop tickets are often rigged with restrictions, such as stiff cancellation penalties (as high as 50%–75% of the ticket price). And keep in mind that most of what you see advertised is of limited availability. Several reliable consolidators are worldwide and available online. STA Travel (www.statravel.com) has been the world’s leading consolidator for students since purchasing Council Travel, but their fares are competitive for travelers of all ages. Flights.com ( 201/541-3826) has excellent fares worldwide, particularly to Europe. They also have “local” websites in 12 countries. FlyCheap ( 800/359-2432;www.flycheap.com) has especially good fares to sunny destinations. AirTicketsDirect ( 888/858-8884;www.airticketsdirect.com), based in Montreal, is another good source.

• Join frequent-flier clubs. Frequent-flier membership doesn’t cost a cent, but it does entitle you to free tickets or upgrades when you amass the airline’s required number of frequent-flier points. You don’t even have to fly to earn points; frequent-flier credit cards can earn you thousands of miles for doing your everyday shopping. But keep in mind that award seats are limited, seats on popular routes are hard to snag, and more and more major airlines are cutting their expiration periods for mileage points—so check your airline’s frequent-flier program so you don’t lose your miles before you use them. Inside tip: Award seats are offered almost a year in advance, but seats also open up at the last minute, so if your travel plans are flexible, you may strike gold. To play the frequent-flier game to your best advantage, consult the community bulletin boards on FlyerTalk (www.flyertalk.com) or go to Randy Petersen’s Inside Flyer (www.insideflyer.com). Petersen and friends review all the programs in detail and post regular updates on changes in policies and trends.

Getting Through the airport

• Arrive at the airport at least 2 hours before an international flight to Germany. You can check the average wait times at your airport by going to the TSA Security Checkpoint Wait Times site (http://waittime.tsa.dhs.gov).

• Know what you can carry on and what you can’t. For the latest updates on items you are prohibited to bring in carry-on luggage, go to www.tsa.gov/travelers/airtravel.

• Beat the ticket-counter lines by using the self-service electronic ticket kiosks at the airport or even printing out your boarding pass at home from the airline website. Using curbside check-in is also a smart way to avoid lines.

• Help speed up security before you’re screened. Remove jackets, shoes, belt buckles, heavy jewelry, and watches and place them either in your carry-on luggage or the security bins provided. Place keys, coins, cellphones, and pagers in a security bin. If you have metallic body parts, carry a note from your doctor. When possible, keep liquids in checked baggage.

• Use a TSA-approved lock for your checked luggage. Look for Travel Sentry certified locks at luggage or travel shops and Brookstone stores (or online at www.brookstone.com).

Don’t Stow It—Ship It

Though pricey, it’s sometimes worthwhile to travel luggage-free, particularly if you’re toting sports equipment, meetings materials, or baby equipment. Specialists in door-to-door luggage delivery include Skycap International and Sports Express. Both services use the same website (www.sportsexpress.com).

By Train

Many passengers, especially holders of the Eurailpass, travel to Germany by train from other European cities. (See “Getting Around,” below, for information on purchasing rail passes.)

British Rail runs four trains a day to Germany from Victoria Station in London, going by way of the Ramsgate-Ostend ferry or jetfoil. Two trains depart from London’s Liverpool Street Station, via Harwich-Hook of Holland. Most trains change at Cologne for destinations elsewhere in Germany. You can purchase tickets through British Rail travel centers in London ( 866/274-8724 in the U.S. and Canada; www.britrail.com). See “Via the Chunnel,” below, for information about the Eurostar service running between London and Brussels via the Channel Tunnel.

Unless you pay a premium for rail travel on the Eurostar, which connects London’s St. Pancras station via the Chunnel (see below) with either Paris or Brussels, train travel from the U.K. to points within Germany can be lengthy and tedious, with multiple transfers en route and with long, bouncing segments aboard either hovercrafts or conventional ferryboats between the English port of Ramsgate and the Belgian port of Oostende. If you opt to save money and embark upon one of these non-Chunnel methods of transport, expect transit times between London and Cologne of up to 12 hours, and from London to either Berlin or Munich of between 18 and 22 hours, depending on the train and the ferryboat or hovercraft crossing.

Frankly, it’s far better to pay the extra premium aboard Eurostar, the name given to each of the trains running under the English Channel, between London and Brussels, and from there, taking a high-speed train onward to your destination within Germany. Even so, transit time from London to Cologne, requiring a change in Brussels, would take 4 hours and 45 minutes; from London to Berlin, requiring a single change in Brussels and Cologne, would take 9 hours; and from London to Munich, requiring a single change in Brussels, would require between 9 and 10 hours, depending on the day of the week.

By Car & Ferry

To bring a car over from England, you face a choice of ports from which you’ll continue driving to Germany. P & O Ferries ( 08716/645645 in the U.K.; www.poferries.com) has 30 to 35 ferryboat crossings a day, depending on the season, between Dover and Calais. The crossing can take as little as 1 hour and 15 minutes. Once you’re in Calais, the drive to Cologne takes about 3 hours. Other options involve passage from Harwich to the Hook of Holland, a sea crossing of about 8 hours. You can also take your car via the Chunnel (see below).

Via the Channel Tunnel

The $15-billion Channel Tunnel, one of the greatest engineering feats of all time, is the first link between Britain and the Continent since the Ice Age. The tunnel was built beneath the seabed through a layer of impermeable chalk marl and sealed with a reinforced concrete lining. The 50km (30-mile) journey between Britain and France takes 35 minutes, although actual time in the Chunnel is only 19 minutes. Once on the Continent, you can connect to Germany fairly easily.

Rail Europe (www.raileurope.com) sells tickets on the Eurostar direct train service between London and Paris or Brussels ( 800/622-8600 in the U.S., or 800/361-7245 in Canada; www.eurostar.com). In the U.K., make reservations for Eurostar at 0870/5186186. The train operates 24 hours a day, 365 days a year, running every 15 minutes during peak travel times and at least once an hour at night.

The tunnel also accommodates passenger cars, charter buses, taxis, and motorcycles from Folkestone to Calais. Tickets may be purchased at the tollbooth.

Getting Around

By Plane

From Frankfurt, most Lufthansa ( 800/645-3880 in the U.S., or 800/563-5954 in Canada; www.lufthansa.com) destinations in Germany can be reached in an average of 50 minutes, with at least four flights daily.

All German cities with commercial airports have an airport shuttle service, offering reduced fares and fast connections between the city center and the airport. Departure points are usually the airlines’ town offices and the city’s main rail terminal. Luggage can be checked at the DB (Deutsche Bahn/German Rail) baggage counter at the airport for delivery to the railroad station at your ultimate destination.

By Train

Whether you travel first- or second-class, you’ll find that the trains of German Rail (DB Rail; 0800/1507090;www.bahn.de) deserve their good reputation for comfort, cleanliness, and punctuality. All are modern and fast, and all cars are nonsmoking. A snack bar or a dining car, serving German and international cuisine as well as good wine and beer, can usually be found on all trains except locals.

For city sightseeing, you can leave your baggage in a locker or check it at the station’s baggage counter. In many cities, German Rail provides door-to-door baggage service, allowing passengers to have luggage picked up at or delivered to their hotels. Accompanying baggage can be checked for a nominal fee. Suitcases, baby carriages, skis, bicycles, and steamer trunks are permitted as baggage. Insurance policies of various kinds, including a travel medical plan, are also available.

About 20,000 InterCity (IC;www.bahn.de) passenger trains offer express service every hour between most large and medium-size German cities. IC trains have adjustable cushioned seats and individual reading lights, and often offer telephone and secretarial services. Bars, lounges, and dining rooms are available, too. A network of EuroCity (EC) trains connecting Germany with 13 other countries offers the same high standards of service as those of IC.

Germany’s high-speed rail network, known as InterCity Express (ICE), is among the fastest in Europe—their trains reach speeds of 280kmph (174 mph). One of these trains runs from Hamburg, via Würzburg and Nürnberg, to Munich; another from Frankfurt, via Stuttgart, to Munich; and yet another from Berlin, via Frankfurt, to Munich. Each train makes stops along the way. ICE significantly reduces travel time, making transits north to south across the country easily possible in the course of a single day. Some 200 east-west connections have been added to the German Rail timetable to link the Deutsche Bundesbahn (west) and the Deutsche Reichsbahn (east). Additional connections make Leipzig and Dresden more accessible.

InterCity Night (ICN)—one of the most comfortable night trains in Europe—operates between Berlin and Bonn, and Berlin and Munich. Even though the train doesn’t depart until 10 or 11pm, you may board as early as 8 or 8:30pm. Arrival the next morning is between 6:55 and 7:55am, and you have the option of remaining aboard until 9 or 9:30am.

The ICN offers first and tourist class. Sleeping accommodations in first class include single or double compartments with shower and toilet, and they are equipped with key cards, phones for wake-up service, luggage storage, and other amenities. Tourist class offers open seating with sleeperettes (reclining seats). The ICN is equipped with a restaurant and bistro car, and a breakfast buffet is included in the first-class fare. For an extra cost, a limited menu for dinner is offered. Advance reservations are mandatory for all sleeping accommodations.

German Rail issues tickets for the ICN and also makes reservations. Eurail and German Rail pass holders are accepted on this train but have to pay for the seat or sleeper reservation and also for meals. Youth-pass holders are accepted only in tourist class. Children 3 and under travel free, provided they do not require a separate seat; those between 4 and 12 are charged half fare.

Before leaving for Germany, you can get complete details about German Rail and the many plans it offers, as well as information about Eurailpasses, at Rail Europe ( 877/272-7245;www.raileurope.com).

German Rail Tourist Passes The German Rail Passes offer several options beginning with 3 days and going up to 10 days in 1 month. For example 3 days of travel in 1 month costs 230€ first class or 175€ second class.

If you’re age 12 to 25, ask about a Youth Pass, or inquire about a Twin Pass, which is shared by two adults traveling together at all times.

The passes also entitle the bearer to additional benefits, such as free or discounted travel on selected bus routes operated by Deutsche Touring/Europabus, including destinations not serviced by trains, or excursions along particularly scenic highways such as the Romantic Road and the Castle Road. The pass also includes free travel on KD German Line steamers (day trips only) along the Rhine, Main, and Mosel rivers.

These passes are available from www.bahn.com or buy them from travel agent Rail Europe ( 877/272-7245). Rail Europe can also arrange cost-effective “Rail and Drive” packages that combine a certain number of days on the train with a certain number of days in a rental car. Here’s an example of how it might work: Ride the train from Frankfurt to Munich, spend 3 days exploring the city, and then rent a car for a 2-day excursion to Berchtesgaden and the Bavarian Alps. The German Rail Flexipass is also sold by Premier Gateway ( 800/777-8369 in the U.S. and Canada; www.premiergateway.com).

Where to Buy Rail Passes Travel agents in all towns and railway agents in major North American cities sell all these tickets, but the biggest supplier is Rail Europe ( 877/272-7245;www.raileurope.com), which can also give you informational brochures.

Many different rail passes are available in the U.K. for travel in Britain and continental Europe. Stop in at the International Rail Centre, Victoria Station, London SW1V 1JY ( 0870/5848848 in the U.K.). Some of the most popular passes, including Inter-Rail and Euro Youth, are offered only to travelers 25 years of age or under; these allow unlimited second-class travel through most European countries.

By Car

British travelers who want to bring their own cars over should see “By Car & Ferry” under “Getting There,” earlier in this chapter.

Competition in the European car-rental industry is fierce, so make sure you comparison shop. You can make reservations by calling these toll-free numbers: Avis ( 800/331-1212;www.avis.com), Budget ( 800/472-3325;www.budget.com), Hertz ( 800/654-3001;www.hertz.com), Kemwel Drive Group ( 877/820-0668;www.kemwel.com), and Auto Europe ( 800/223-5555;www.autoeurope.com). You can often rent a car in one German city and return it to another for no additional charge.

There are some advantages to prepaying rentals in your native currency before leaving home. You get an easy-to-understand net price, the rental process is more streamlined, and you can avoid unpleasant surprises caused by sudden unfavorable changes in currency exchange rates. Remember, however, that if you opt to prepay and your plans change, you’ll have to go through some rather complicated paperwork for changing or canceling a prepaid contract.

Driving Rules In Germany, you drive on the right side of the road. Both front- and back-seat passengers must wear safety belts. Children 5 and younger cannot ride in the front seat.

Easy-to-understand international road signs are posted, but U.S. travelers should remember that road signs are in kilometers, not miles. In congested areas, the speed limit is about 50kmph (about 30 mph). On all other roads except the autobahns, the speed limit is 100kmph (about 60 mph).

In theory, there is no speed limit on the autobahns (in the left, fast lane), but many drivers going too fast report that they have been stopped by the police and fined, and the government recommends a speed limit of 130kmph (81 mph). Reasonable caution is recommended, for safety if nothing else. A German driver on the autobahn can be a ferocious creature, and you may prefer the slow lane.

Note: Drinking while driving is a very serious offense in Germany. Be sure to keep any alcoholic beverages in the trunk or other storage area.

Breakdowns/Assistance The major automobile club in Germany is Automobilclub von Deutschland (AvD), Lyoner Strasse 16, 60528 Frankfurt ( 069/660600;www.avd.de). If you have a breakdown on the autobahn, you can call from one of many emergency phones, spaced about a mile apart. On secondary roads, go to the nearest phone. If you don’t belong to an auto club, call 01802/222222. In English, ask for “road service assistance.” Emergency assistance is free, but you pay for parts and materials.

Driver’s Licenses American drivers, and those from E.U. countries, need only a domestic license to drive. However, in Germany and throughout the rest of Europe, you must also have an international insurance certificate, known as a carte verte (green card). Any car-rental agency will automatically provide one of these as a standard part of the rental contract, but it’s a good idea to double-check all documents at the time of rental, just to be sure that you can identify the card if asked by border patrol or the police.

By Bus

An excellent, efficient bus network services Germany. Many buses are operated by Bahnbus, which is owned by the railway. These are integrated to complement the rail service. Bus service in Germany is particularly convenient during slow periods of rail service, normally around midday and on Saturday and Sunday. German post offices often operate local bus services (contact local post offices for schedules and prices).

The most popular bus ride is along the Romantic Road, where special green-and-white buses carry tourists regularly from town to town. For more information, ask a travel agent or call Deutsche Touring GmbH, Am Römerhof 17, Frankfurt ( 069/7903501;www.touring.de).

By Boat

Perhaps Germany’s most beautiful features are its lakes and rivers. The mighty Rhine is the country’s most traveled waterway. German cruise ships also run on the Main River between Mainz and Frankfurt; on the Danube from Nürnberg to Linz (Austria), going on to Vienna and Budapest; and on the Mosel between Cochem and Trier.

To cruise the mythically rich rivers of Germany, especially the legendary Rhine, you can book cruises on the principal carrier, Viking River Cruises ( 800/304-9616 in the U.S., or 0800/319-6660 in the UK; www.vikingrivers.com).

Tips on Accommodations

In general, Germany has one of the highest standards of innkeeping in the world. Hotels range from five-star palaces of luxury and comfort to plain country inns and simple Gasthäuser (guesthouses), with a huge variation in rates. The cheapest accommodations are in Fremdenheime (pensions) or rooms in private homes (look for a sign saying ZIMMER FREI, meaning there are rooms for rent). Hotels listed as garni provide no meals other than breakfast.

Also, tourist offices will often book you into a room for a small charge. Obviously, the earlier you arrive in these offices, the more likely you are to get a good room at the price you want.

Surfing for Hotels

In addition to the online travel booking sites Travelocity, Expedia, Orbitz, Priceline, and Hotwire, you can book hotels through Hotels.com, Quikbook (www.quikbook.com), and Travelaxe (www.travelaxe.com).

HotelChatter.com is a daily webzine offering smart coverage and critiques of hotels worldwide. Go to TripAdvisor.com or HotelShark.com for helpful independent consumer reviews of hotels and resort properties.

It’s a good idea to get a confirmation number and make a printout of any online booking transaction.

Throughout Germany, as in many tourist centers worldwide, hotels routinely overbook, so booking by credit card doesn’t automatically hold your room if you arrive later than expected or after 6pm. The hotel clerk always asks when you expect to arrive, and the hotel usually holds the room until that time. Always pad your expected arrival by a few hours to be safe. However, all bets are off after 7pm, and the hotel is likely to give your room away unless you call and specifically ask them to hold it. If you’ve made a reservation very far in advance, confirm within 24 hours of your expected arrival. If you’re experiencing a major delay, alert the hotel as soon as you can.

Beware of billing. Readers report that sometimes in Germany they booked a room online (say, $100 a night) but were charged $125 when they checked out. Keep your online confirmation in case of a dispute.

Saving on Your Hotel Room

The rack rate is the maximum rate that a hotel charges for a room. Hardly anybody pays this price, however, except in high season or on holidays. To lower the cost of your room:

• Ask about special rates or other discounts. You may qualify for corporate, student, military, senior, frequent-flier, trade union, or other discounts.

• Dial direct. When booking a room in a chain hotel, you’ll often get a better deal by calling the individual hotel’s reservation desk rather than the chain’s main number.

• Book online. Many hotels offer Internet-only discounts, or supply rooms to Priceline, Hotwire, or Expedia at rates much lower than the ones you can get through the hotel itself.

• Remember the law of supply and demand. You can save big on hotel rooms by traveling in a destination’s off season or shoulder seasons, when rates typically drop, even at luxury properties.

• Look into group or long-stay discounts. If you come as part of a large group, you should be able to negotiate a bargain rate. Likewise, if you’re planning a long stay (at least 5 days), you might qualify for a discount. As a general rule, expect 1 night free after a 7-night stay.

• Sidestep excess surcharges and hidden costs. Many hotels have adopted the unpleasant practice of nickel-and-diming their guests with opaque surcharges. When you book a room, ask what is included in the room rate, and what is extra. Avoid dialing direct from hotel phones, which can have exorbitant rates. And don’t be tempted by the room’s minibar offerings: Most hotels charge through the nose for water, soda, and snacks. Finally, ask about local taxes and service charges, which can increase the cost of a room by 15% or more.

• Carefully consider your hotel’s meal plan. If you enjoy eating out and sampling the local cuisine, it makes sense to choose a Continental Plan (CP), which includes breakfast only, or a European Plan (EP), which doesn’t include any meals and allows you maximum flexibility. If you’re more interested in saving money, opt for a Modified American Plan (MAP), which includes breakfast and one meal, or the American Plan (AP), which includes three meals. If you must choose a MAP, see if you can get a free lunch at your hotel if you decide to do dinner out.

• Book an efficiency. A room with a kitchenette allows you to shop for groceries and cook your own meals. This is a big money saver, especially for families on long stays.

• Consider enrolling in hotel chains’ “frequent-stay” programs, which are upping the ante lately to win the loyalty of repeat customers. Frequent guests can now accumulate points or credits to earn free hotel nights, airline miles, in-room amenities, merchandise, tickets to concerts and events, discounts on sporting facilities—and even credit toward stock in the participating hotel, in the case of the Jameson Inn hotel group. Perks are awarded not only by many chain hotels and motels (Hilton HHonors, Marriott Rewards, and Wyndham ByRequest, to name a few), but by individual inns and B&Bs. Many chain hotels partner with other hotel chains, car-rental firms, airlines, and credit card companies to give consumers additional incentive to do repeat business.

For more tips on surfing for hotel deals online, visit Frommers.com.

Landing the Best Room

Somebody has to get the best room in the house. It might as well be you. You can start by joining the hotel’s frequent-guest program, which may make you eligible for upgrades. A hotel-branded credit card usually gives its owner “silver” or “gold” status in frequent-guest programs for free. Always ask about a corner room. They’re often larger and quieter, with more windows and light, and they often cost the same as standard rooms. When you make your reservation, ask if the hotel is renovating; if it is, request a room away from the construction. Ask about nonsmoking rooms and rooms with views. Be sure to request your choice of twin, queen-, or king-size beds. If you’re a light sleeper, ask for a quiet room away from vending or ice machines, elevators, restaurants, bars, and dance clubs. Ask for a room that has been recently renovated or refurbished.

If you aren’t happy with your room when you arrive, ask for another one. Most lodgings will be willing to accommodate you.

In resort areas, ask the following questions before you book a room:

• What’s the view like? Cost-conscious travelers may be willing to pay less for a back room facing the parking lot, especially if they don’t plan to spend much time in their room.

• Does the room have air-conditioning or ceiling fans? Do the windows open? If they do, and the nighttime entertainment takes place alfresco, you may want to find out when showtime is over.

• What’s included in the price? Your room may be moderately priced, but if you’re charged for beach chairs, towels, sports equipment, and other amenities, you could end up spending more than you bargained for.

B&B Stays

Many travelers prefer to go the B&B route when touring Germany. This can be an inexpensive alternative to all those pricey hotels. However, some B&Bs, just as in America, are more luxurious than even a first-class hotel. Naturally, these come with a higher price tag. Breakfast, as promised in the name, is served, and often the staff at a B&B will pack you a picnic lunch if you’re staying over in the area and want to go hiking. In some cases, and only if arranged in advance, a home-cooked German dinner might be served.

For reservations, contact Bed & Breakfast Inns Online ( 800/215-7365 or 310/280-4363; www.bbonline.com) or BnB Finder.com ( 888/547-8226 or 212/432-7693; www.bnbfinder.com).

Bungalow, Villa & Apartment Rentals

Dozens of agencies handle such rentals, the best of which include At Home Abroad, Inc. ( 212/421-9165;www.athomeabroadinc.com). Drawbridge to Europe ( 888/268-1148;www.drawbridgetoeurope.com) offers vacation rentals in Mittel Europa, including not only Germany but also Switzerland and Austria. The staff will even rent you a private castle. Interhome ( 800/882-6864 or 954/791-8282; www.interhomeusa.com) offers properties in 21 countries, including Germany.

Castle Hotels

There are more Schlosshotels (castle hotels) in Germany than anywhere else in Europe. After unification, many castles in the old East Germany were restored and opened to the public. Some are rather basic, having more character than comfort, but others are luxurious, with antiques such as four-poster beds and a baronial atmosphere, often harking back 3 centuries or more. Most of them have installed modern plumbing. Some visitors with a sense of the romantic book castle hotel packages throughout Germany. The best source for such vacations is Euro-Connections ( 800/645-3876 in the U.S.; www.traveldata.cc).

Farm Vacations

Growing in its appeal to tourists, a vacation down on the farm—Urlaub auf dem Bauernhof in German—cuts costs and is an adventure as well. Nearly every local tourist office has a list of farmhouses in its area that take in paying guests. Sometimes only bed-and-breakfast is offered; at other places a farm-style home-cooked dinner can be included if you wish. For more information, you can contact DLG (German Agricultural Association) at 069/247880 (www.landtourismus.de).

House Swapping

House swapping is becoming a more popular and viable means of travel; you stay in their place, they stay in yours, and you both get a more authentic and personal view of a destination, the opposite of the escapist retreat many hotels offer. Try HomeLink International (www.homelink.org), the largest and oldest home-swapping organization, founded in 1952, with more than 11,000 listings worldwide ($115 yearly membership). HomeExchange.com ($9.95 a month for 6,000 listings) and InterVac.com ($100 for more than 10,000 listings) are also reliable.

Romantik Hotels

Throughout Germany you’ll encounter hotels with a “Romantik” in their names. This is not a chain, but a voluntary association of small inns and guesthouses that have only one theme in common: They are usually old and charming, and romantic in architecture. If you like a traditional ambience as opposed to bandbox modern, then a Romantik hotel might be for you. The requirement is that the hotel be in a historic building (or at least one of vintage date) and personally managed by the owner. Usually you get a regional cuisine and good, personal service, along with an old-fashioned setting and cozy charm. Sometimes the plumbing could be better, and standards of comfort vary widely, but all of them have been inspected.

For more information, contact Romantik Hotels and Restaurants ( 800/650-8018 in the U.S., or 069/6612340 in Germany; www.romantikhotels.com).

Spa Hotels

More than any other country in Europe, Germany has developed the spa process to a high art. The heyday of German spa construction coincided with the rise of the bourgeoisie in the 19th century, when a lavish series of resorts was built around the dozens of mineral springs bubbling from the soil. Many of these springs had been known since the Middle Ages, or even Roman times, and to each was attributed specific cures for arthritis, gout, infertility, hypertension, and gynecological problems. (The German word Kur—Kurort means “spa”—is derived from the Latin cura, meaning “care.”) Going to a spa became an intensely ritualized social experience.

Regardless of the various medical claims made at the spas of Germany, the real reason to go to any spa, in our view, is to momentarily escape the stress of everyday life.

For more information, contact Deutschen Heilbaderverbandes, Reinhardtstrasse 46, 10117 Berlin ( 030/2463629-0;www.deutscher-heilbaederverband.de).

Youth Hostels

Germany has some of the best and most modern youth hostels (Jugendherbergen) in the world—some 550 of them are scattered throughout the country. Reservations are imperative in all cases, but especially in July and August. Venues range from rather bleak modern buildings to old castles in bucolic settings.

For more information and requirements, contact DJH Service GmbH, Bismarckstrasse 8, 32756 Detmold ( 05231/74010;www.jugendherberge.de). Most hostels in Germany are affiliated with Hostelling International USA ( 301/495-1240;www.hiusa.org).

Fast Facts

Business Hours Most banks are open Monday to Friday 8:30am to 1pm and 2:30 to 4pm (Thurs to 5:30pm). Money exchanges at airports and border-crossing points are generally open daily from 6am to 10pm. Exchanges at border railroad stations are kept open for arrivals of all international trains. Most businesses are open Monday to Friday from 9am to 5pm and on Saturday from 9am to 1pm. Store hours can vary from town to town, but shops are generally open Monday to Friday 9 or 10am to 6 or 6:30pm (Thurs to 8:30pm). Saturday hours are generally from 9am to 1 or 2pm, except on the first Saturday of the month, when stores may remain open until 4pm.

Car Rental See “By Car” under “Getting Around,” earlier in this chapter.

Cellphones See “Mobile Phones,” later.

Crime See “Safety,” later.

Customs You can take into Germany most personal effects and the following items duty-free: one video camera or two still cameras with 10 rolls of film each; a portable radio, a tape recorder, and a laptop PC, provided they show signs of use; 400 cigarettes, 50 cigars, or 250 grams of tobacco; 2 liters of wine or 1 liter of liquor per person 18 and over; fishing gear; one bicycle; skis; tennis or squash racquets; and golf clubs.

Returning U.S. citizens who have been away for at least 48 hours can bring back, once every 30 days, US$800 worth of merchandise duty-free. You’ll be charged a flat rate of 4% duty on the next US$1,000 worth of purchases. Be sure to have your receipts handy. On mailed gifts, the duty-free limit is US$200. With some exceptions, you cannot bring fresh fruits and vegetables into the United States. For specifics on what you can bring back, download the invaluable free pamphlet Know Before You Go online at www.cbp.gov. Or contact the U.S. Customs & Border Protection (CBP), 1300 Pennsylvania Ave. NW, Washington, DC 20229 ( 877/287-8667), and request the pamphlet.

For a clear summary of Canadian rules, you can download the booklet I Declare at www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca/publications. It is issued by Canada Border Services Agency ( 800/461-9999 in Canada, or 204/983-3500; www.cbsa-asfc.gc.ca). Canada allows a C$750 exemption, which can be used only once a year and only after an absence of 7 days. You’re allowed to bring back duty-free one carton of cigarettes, one can of tobacco, 40 imperial ounces of liquor, and 50 cigars. In addition, you’re allowed to mail gifts to Canada valued at less than C$60 a day, provided they’re unsolicited and don’t contain alcohol or tobacco (write on the package “Unsolicited gift, under C$60 value”). You should declare all valuables on the Y-38 form before departing Canada, including serial numbers of valuables you already own, such as expensive foreign cameras.

Citizens of the U.K. who are returning from an E.U. country will go through a separate Customs exit (called the “Blue Exit”). In essence, there is no limit on what you can bring back from an E.U. country, as long as the items are for personal use (including gifts) and you have already paid the necessary duty and tax. However, Customs law sets out guidance levels. If you bring in more than these levels, you may be asked to prove that the goods are for your use. Guidance levels on goods bought in the E.U. for your own use are 3,200 cigarettes, 200 cigars, 400 cigarillos, 3 kilograms of smoking tobacco, 10 liters of spirits, 90 liters of wine, 20 liters of fortified wine (such as port or sherry), and 110 liters of beer. For information, contact HM Revenue Customs at 0845/0109000 ( 02920/501261 from outside the U.K.), or consult their website at www.hmrc.gov.uk.

The duty-free allowance in Australia is A$900 or, for those 17 and under, A$450. Citizens can bring in 250 cigarettes or 250 grams of loose tobacco, and 2.25 liters of alcohol. If you’re returning with valuables you already own, such as foreign-made cameras, you should file form B263. A helpful brochure available from Australian consulates or Customs offices is Know Before You Go. For more information, call the Australian Customs Service at 1300/363263, or log on to www.customs.gov.au

The duty-free allowance for New Zealand is NZ$700. Citizens 18 and over can bring in 200 cigarettes, 50 cigars, or 250 grams of tobacco (or a mixture of all three if their combined weight doesn’t exceed 250g); plus 4.5 liters of wine and beer, or 1.125 milliliters of liquor. New Zealand currency does not carry import or export restrictions. Fill out a certificate of export, listing the valuables you are taking out of the country, so you can bring them back without paying duty. Most questions are answered in a free pamphlet available at New Zealand consulates and Customs offices: New Zealand Customs Guide for Travellers, Notice no. 4. For more information, contact New Zealand Customs Service, The Customhouse, 17–21 Whitmore St., Box 2218, Wellington ( 0800/428786 or 04/4736099 in New Zealand, or 04/4736099; www.customs.govt.nz).

Disabled Travelers Germany is one of the better countries for travelers with disabilities. All the large cities have excellent facilities. The local tourist offices can issue permits for drivers to allow them access to parking areas for people with disabilities. Newer hotels are more sensitive to the needs of those with disabilities, and the more expensive restaurants, in general, are wheelchair accessible.

Older, smaller towns may pose more of a problem, however, especially where the streets are cobblestone. Also, because of Germany’s many hills and endless flights of stairs, visitors with disabilities may have difficulty getting around outside of major cities, but conditions are slowly improving. If the areas you wish to visit seem inaccessible or you are not certain, you may want to consider taking an organized tour specifically designed to accommodate travelers with disabilities.

Organizations that offer assistance to travelers with disabilities include MossRehab ( 800/225-5667;www.mossresourcenet.org), which provides a library of accessible-travel resources online; Society for Accessible Travel & Hospitality (SATH; 212/447-7284;www.sath.org), which offers a wealth of travel resources for all types of disabilities and informed recommendations on destinations, access guides, travel agents, tour operators, vehicle rentals, and companion services; and the American Foundation for the Blind (AFB; 800/232-5463 or 212/502-7600; www.afb.org), a referral resource for those who are blind or visually impaired that provides information on traveling with Seeing Eye dogs.

Air Ambulance Card ( 877/4247633;www.airambulancecard.com) is now partnered with SATH and allows you to preselect top-notch hospitals in case of an emergency.

Access-Able Travel Source ( 303/232-2979;www.access-able.com) offers a comprehensive database on travel agents from around the world with experience in accessible travel; destination-specific access information; and links to such resources as service animals, equipment rentals, and access guides.

Many travel agencies offer customized tours and itineraries for travelers with disabilities. Among them are Flying Wheels Travel ( 507/451-5005;www.flyingwheelstravel.com) and Accessible Journeys ( 800/846-4537 or 610/521-0339; www.disabilitytravel.com).

Flying with Disability (www.flying-with-disability.org) is a comprehensive information source on airplane travel.

Also check out the quarterly magazine Emerging Horizons (www.emerginghorizons.com), available by subscription ($17 per year in the U.S.; $22 outside the U.S.).

The “Accessible Travel” link at Mobility-Advisor.com (www.mobility-advisor.com) offers a variety of travel resources to persons with disabilities.

British travelers should contact Holiday Care ( 0845/124-9971 in the U.K. only; www.holidaycare.org.uk) to access a wide range of travel information and resources for seniors and people with disabilities.

For more on organizations that offer resources to travelers with disabilities, go to Frommers.com.

Doctors Contact the International Association for Medical Assistance to Travelers (IAMAT; 716/754-4883 or 416/652-0137; www.iamat.org) for tips on travel and health concerns in Germany and lists of local, English-speaking doctors. You can find listings of reliable medical clinics in Germany at the International Society of Travel Medicine (www.istm.org).

Drinking Laws As in many European countries, drinking laws are flexible, enforced only if a problem develops. Officially, you must be 18 to consume any kind of alcoholic beverage. Bars and cafes rarely request proof of age. Drinking while driving, however, is treated as a very serious offense.

Driving Rules See “Getting Around,” earlier in this chapter.

Electricity In most places, the electricity is 220 volts AC (50 cycles). You will need a transformer and a plug that fits the German socket for your U.S. appliances. Many leading hotels will supply these.

Embassies & Consulates The following embassies and consulates are in Berlin. The embassy of the United States is at Pariser Platz 2 ( 030/83050;http://germany.usembassy.gov; U-Bahn: Brandenburger Tor), open Monday to Friday 8:30am to 3pm. The U.K. Embassy is at Wilhelmstrasse 70 ( 030/204570;http://ukingermany.fco.gov.uk/de; U-Bahn: Anhalter Bahnhof), open Monday to Friday 8am to 4:30pm. The Australian Embassy is at Wallstrasse 76–79 ( 030/8800880;www.germany.embassy.gov.au/beln/home.html; U-Bahn: Spittel-markt), open Monday to Thursday 8:30am to 5pm and Friday 8:30am to 4:15pm. The Canadian Embassy is at Leipziger Platz 17 ( 030/203120;www.canadainternational.gc.ca; U-Bahn: Potsdamer Platz), open Monday to Friday 9am to noon. The Irish Embassy is at Friedrichstrasse 200 ( 030/220720;www.embassyofireland.de; U-Bahn: Uhlandstrasse), open Monday to Friday 9:30am to noon and 2:30 to 3:45pm. The New Zealand Embassy is at Friedrichstrasse 60 ( 030/206210;www.nzembassy.com; U-Bahn: Friedrichstrasse), open Monday to Friday 9am to 1pm and 2 to 5:30pm.

Emergencies Throughout Germany the emergency number for police is 110; for fire or to call an ambulance, dial 112.

Family Travel To locate accommodations, restaurants, and attractions that are particularly kid-friendly, look for the “Kids” icon throughout this guide.

Health Germany should not pose any major health hazards. The heavy cuisine may give some travelers mild diarrhea, so take along some antidiarrhea medicine and moderate your eating habits. The water is safe to drink throughout Germany; however, don’t drink from mountain streams, no matter how clear and pure the water looks.

German medical facilities are among the best in the world. If a medical emergency arises, your hotel staff can usually put you in touch with a reliable doctor. If not, contact the American embassy or a consulate; each one maintains a list of English-speaking doctors. Medical and hospital services aren’t free, so be sure that you have appropriate insurance coverage before you travel.

If you suffer from a chronic illness, consult your doctor before your departure. Pack prescription medications in your carry-on luggage and carry them in their original containers, with pharmacy labels—otherwise they won’t make it through airport security. Carry the generic name of prescription medicines, in case a local pharmacist is unfamiliar with the brand name.

For conditions such as epilepsy, diabetes, or heart problems, wear a MedicAlert Identification Tag ( 888/633-4298;www.medicalert.org), which will immediately alert doctors to your condition and give them access to your records through MedicAlert’s 24-hour hot line.

Insurance For travel overseas, most U.S. health plans (including Medicare and Medicaid) do not provide coverage, and the ones that do often require you to pay for services upfront and reimburse you only after you return home.

As a safety net, you may want to buy travel medical insurance. If you require additional medical insurance, try MEDEX Assistance ( 800/732-5309 or 410/453-6300;www.medexassist.com) or Travel Assistance International ( 800/821-2828;www.travelassistance.com; for general information on services, call Worldwide Assistance Services, Inc. at 800/777-8710;www.worldwideassistance.com).

Canadians should check with their provincial health-plan offices or call Health Canada ( 866/225-0709;www.hc-sc.gc.ca) to find out the extent of their coverage and what documentation and receipts they must take home if they are treated overseas.

Travelers from the U.K. should carry their European Health Insurance Card (EHIC), which replaced the E111 form as proof of entitlement to free/reduced-cost medical treatment abroad ( 0845/605-0707;www.ehic.org.uk). Note, however, that the EHIC covers only “necessary medical treatment”; for repatriation costs, lost money, baggage, or cancellation, travel insurance from a reputable company should always be sought. Call 0870/033-9985 or visit www.travelinsuranceweb.com for quotes from several companies.

Travel Insurance The cost of travel insurance varies widely, depending on the destination, the cost and length of your trip, your age and health, and the type of trip you’re taking, but expect to pay between 5% and 8% of the vacation itself. You can get estimates from various providers through InsureMyTrip.com ( 800/487-4722). Enter your trip cost and dates, your age, and other information, for prices from more than a dozen companies.

U.K. citizens and their families who make more than one trip abroad per year may find that an annual travel insurance policy works out cheaper. Check www.moneysupermarket.com ( 0845/345-5708), which compares prices across a wide range of providers for single- and multitrip policies.

Most big travel agents offer their own insurance and will probably try to sell you their package when you book a holiday. Think before you sign. Britain’s Consumers’ Association recommends that you insist on seeing the policy and reading the fine print before buying travel insurance. The Association of British Insurers ( 020/7600-3333;www.abi.org.uk) gives advice by phone and publishes “Holiday Insurance,” a free guide to policy provisions and prices. You might also shop around for better deals: Try Columbus Direct ( 0870/033-9988;www.columbusdirect.net).

Trip-Cancellation Insurance Trip-cancellation insurance will help retrieve your money if you have to back out of a trip or depart early, or if your travel supplier goes bankrupt. Trip cancellation traditionally covers such events as sickness, natural disasters, and State Department advisories. The latest news in trip-cancellation insurance is the availability of expanded hurricane coverage and the “any-reason” cancellation coverage—which costs more but covers cancellations made for any reason. You won’t get back 100% of your prepaid trip cost, but you’ll be refunded a substantial portion. TravelSafe ( 888/885-7233;www.travelsafe.com) offers both types of coverage. Expedia also offers any-reason cancellation coverage for its air-hotel packages. For details, contact one of the following recommended insurers: Access America ( 800/284-8300; www.accessamerica.com), Travel Guard International ( 800/826-4919; www.travelguard.com), Travel Insured International ( 800/243-3174; www.travelinsured.com), and Travelex Insurance Services ( 800/228-9792; www.travelex-insurance.com).

Internet & Wi-Fi Many hotels, cafes, and retailers are signing on as Wi-Fi “hot spots.” Boingo (www.boingo.com) and Wayport (wayport.com) have set up networks in airports and high-class hotel lobbies. IPass providers (see below) also give you access to a few hundred wireless hotel lobby setups. To locate other hot spots that provide free wireless networks in cities in Germany, go to www.jiwire.com.

A few thousand hotels in Germany now offer free high-speed Internet access. In addition, major Internet service providers (ISPs) have local access numbers around the world, allowing you to go online by placing a local call. The iPass network also has dial-up numbers around the world. You’ll have to sign up with an iPass provider, who will then tell you how to set up your computer for your destination(s). For a list of iPass providers, go to www3.ipass.com and click on “Individuals Buy Now.” One solid provider is i2roam ( 866/811-6209 or 920/233-5863; www.i2roam.com).

To find cybercafes, check www.cybercaptive.com and www.cybercafe.com. Cybercafes can be found on almost every business street in large cities.

Aside from formal cybercafes, most youth hostels and public libraries have Internet access.

Language German, of course, is the official language, but English is widely understood. Germans start learning English in grade school.

LGBT Travelers Although Germany is one of the “gayest” countries of Europe, there is also prejudice and hostility here. Violence against gays and foreigners (especially nonwhite) is not unknown. On the other hand, homosexuality is widely accepted by a vast number of the country’s millions, especially young people. All major cities have a wide and varied gay and lesbian nightlife. Keep in mind that western Germany is far more gay-friendly than the more isolated outposts of the former East Germany. The legal minimum age for consensual homosexual sex is 18.

The International Gay and Lesbian Travel Association (IGLTA; 954/630-1637;www.iglta.org) is the trade association for the gay and lesbian travel industry and offers an online directory of gay- and lesbian-friendly travel businesses; go to its website and click on “Members.”

Many agencies offer tours and travel itineraries designed specifically for gay and lesbian travelers. Now, Voyager ( 800/255-6951;www.nowvoyager.com) is a well-known San Francisco–based gay-owned and -operated travel service. Olivia Cruises & Resorts ( 800/631-6277;www.olivia.com) charters entire resorts and ships for exclusive lesbian vacations and offers smaller group experiences for both gay and lesbian travelers. Gay.com ( 415/834-6500;http://daily.gay.com/travel) provides regularly updated information about gay-owned, gay-oriented, and gay-friendly lodging, dining, sightseeing, nightlife, and shopping establishments in every important destination worldwide.

The Canadian website GayTraveler (www.gaytraveler.ca) offers ideas and advice for gay travel all over the world.

The following travel guides are available at many bookstores, or you can order them from any online bookseller: Spartacus International Gay Guide, 38th edition (Bruno Gmünder Verlag; www.spartacusworld.com/gayguide); and the Damron guides (www.damron.com), with separate annual books for gay men and lesbians.

For more gay and lesbian travel resources, visit Frommers.com.

Mail Street mailboxes are painted yellow. It costs 1.70€ for the first 5 grams (about 1⁄5 oz.) to send an airmail letter to the United States or Canada, and 1€ for postcards. All letters to the U.K. cost .70€.

Medical Requirements Unless you’re arriving from an area known to be suffering from an epidemic (particularly cholera or yellow fever), inoculations or vaccinations are not required for entry into Germany.

Mobile Phones The three letters that define much of the world’s wireless capabilities are GSM, which stands for Global System for Mobiles, a big, seamless network that makes for easy cross-border cellphone use. In general, reception is good. But you’ll need a Subscriber Identity Module (SIM) card. This is a small chip that gives you a local phone number and plugs you into a regional network. In the U.S., T-Mobile and AT&T Wireless use this quasi-universal system; in Canada, Microcell and some Rogers customers are GSM, and all Europeans and most Australians use GSM. Unfortunately, per-minute charges can be high.

For many, renting a phone is a good idea. While you can rent a phone from any number of overseas sites, including kiosks at airports and at car-rental agencies, we suggest renting the phone before you leave home. North Americans can rent one before leaving home from InTouch USA ( 800/872-7626 or 703/222-7161; www.intouchglobal.com) or RoadPost ( 888/290-1616 or 905/272-5665; www.roadpost.com). InTouch will also, for free, advise you on whether your existing phone will work overseas.

Buying a phone can be economically attractive, as many nations have cheap prepaid phone systems. Once you arrive at your destination, stop by a local cellphone shop and get the cheapest package; you’ll probably pay less than $100 for a phone and a starter calling card. Local calls may be as low as 10¢ per minute, and in Germany incoming calls are free.

Money & Costs The euro (€) is the single European currency of Germany and other participating countries. Exchange rates of participating countries are locked into a common currency fluctuating against the dollar.

The major cities of Germany are some of the world’s most expensive. So, if you want to see the country without breaking the bank, you may want to cut short your time in Frankfurt, Munich, or Berlin and concentrate on regional capitals such as Freiburg in the Black Forest, where you can cut your travel cost by anywhere from 20% to 40%. You may also want to consider a rail pass.

Although prices in Germany are high, you generally get good value for your money. The inflation rate has remained low. Hotels are usually clean and comfortable, and restaurants generally offer good cuisine and ample portions made with quality ingredients. Trains are fast and on time, and most service personnel treat you with respect.

Many people come to Germany just for winter sports. The most expensive resorts are places like Garmisch-Partenkirchen. However, if you avoid the chic places, you can enjoy winter fun at a moderate cost. Some of the winter spots in the Bavarian Alps that haven’t been overrun by the beautiful people give you great value for your money. And prices in a village next to a resort are often 30% lower than at the resort itself.

In Germany, many prices for children (generally defined as ages 6–17) are considerably lower than for adults. And fees for children 5 and younger are often waived entirely.

Frommer’s lists exact prices in the local currency. The currency conversions quoted above were correct at press time. However, rates fluctuate, so before departing consult a currency exchange website such as www.oanda.com/currency/converter to check up-to-the-minute rates.

ATMs The easiest way to get cash away from home is from an ATM (automated teller machine), sometimes referred to as a Geldautomat. Note: Remember that many banks impose a fee every time you use a card at another bank’s ATM, and that fee can be higher for international transactions. In addition, the bank from which you withdraw cash may charge its own fee. For international withdrawal fees, ask your bank.

Note: Banks that are members of the Global ATM Alliance charge no transaction fees for cash withdrawals at other Alliance member ATMs; these include Bank of America, Scotiabank (Canada, Caribbean, and Mexico), Barclays (U.K. and parts of Africa), Deutsche Bank (Germany, Poland, Spain, and Italy), and BNP Paribas (France).

Credit Cards Credit cards are another safe way to carry money. They also provide a convenient record of all your expenses, and they generally offer relatively good exchange rates. You can withdraw cash advances from your credit cards at banks or ATMs, but high fees make credit card cash advances a pricey way to get cash. Remember that you’ll pay interest from the moment of your withdrawal, even if you pay your monthly bills on time. Also, note that many banks now assess a 1% to 3% “transaction fee” on all charges you incur abroad (whether you’re using the local currency or your native currency).

In Germany, American Express, Diners Club, MasterCard, and Visa are commonly accepted, with the latter two cards predominating.

Beware of hidden credit-card fees while traveling. Check with your credit or debit card issuer to see what fees, if any, will be charged for overseas transactions. Recent reform legislation in the U.S., for example, has curbed some exploitative lending practices. But many banks have responded by increasing fees in other areas, including fees for customers who use credit and debit cards while out of the country—even if those charges were made in U.S. dollars. Fees can amount to 3% or more of the purchase price. Check with your bank before departing to avoid any surprise charges on your statement.

For help with currency conversions, tip calculations, and more, download Frommer’s convenient Travel Tools app for your mobile device. Go to www.frommers.com/go/mobile and click on the “Travel Tools” icon.

Passports Visas are not needed by citizens of the U.S., Canada, Ireland, Australia, New Zealand, or the U.K. for visits of less than 3 months. You do need a valid passport, unless you’re a citizen of the E.U., EEA or Switzerland (in which case you need only an identity card, though we recommend you always carry a passport anyway).

Passport Offices

Australia Australian Passport Information Service ( 131-232, or visit www.passports.gov.au).

Canada Passport Office, Department of Foreign Affairs and International Trade, Ottawa, ON K1A 0G3 ( 800/567-6868; www.ppt.gc.ca).

Ireland Passport Office, Setanta Centre, Molesworth Street, Dublin 2 ( 01/671-1633; www.foreignaffairs.gov.ie).

New Zealand Passports Office, Department of Internal Affairs, 47 Boulcott Street, Wellington, 6011 ( 0800/225-050 in New Zealand or 04/474-8100; www.passports.govt.nz).

United Kingdom Visit your nearest passport office, major post office, or travel agency or contact the Identity and Passport Service (IPS), 89 Eccleston Square, London, SW1V 1PN ( 0300/222-0000; www.ips.gov.uk).

United States To find your regional passport office, check the U.S. State Department website (travel.state.gov/passport) or call the National Passport Information Center ( 877/487-2778) for automated information.

Police Throughout the country, dial 110 for emergencies.

Safety Overall, the security risk to travelers in Germany is low. However, Germany experiences a number of demonstrations every year on a variety of political and economic themes. These demonstrations have a tendency to spread and turn violent, and anyone in the general area can become the victim of a random attack. Prior police approval is required for public demonstrations in Germany, and police oversight is routinely provided to ensure adequate security for participants and passersby. Nonetheless, situations may develop that could pose a threat to public safety. All foreign visitors are cautioned to avoid the area around protests and demonstrations and to check local media for updates on the situation.

In addition, hooligans, most often young and intoxicated “skinheads,” have been known to harass or even attack people whom they believe to be foreigners or members of rival youth groups. While U.S. citizens have not been specific targets, several Americans have reported that they were assaulted for racial reasons or because they appeared “foreign.”

Violent crime is rare in Germany, but it can occur, especially in larger cities or high-risk areas such as train stations. Most incidents of street crime consist of theft of unattended items and pickpocketing. You should take the same precautions against becoming a crime victim as you would in any city.

Report the loss or theft abroad of your passport immediately to the local police and the nearest embassy or consulate. If you are the victim of a crime while in Germany, in addition to reporting to local police, contact the nearest embassy or consulate for assistance. The embassy/consulate staff, for example, can assist you in finding appropriate medical care, contacting family members or friends, and explaining how funds could be transferred. Although the investigation and prosecution of the crime is solely the responsibility of local authorities, consular officers can help you understand the local criminal-justice process and find an attorney if needed.

Senior Travel Mention that you’re a senior when you make your travel reservations. Although all major U.S. airlines have canceled their senior-discount and coupon-book programs, many hotels still offer discounts for seniors. In most cities, people 60 and over qualify for reduced admission to theaters, museums, and other attractions, as well as discounted fares on public transportation.

Members of AARP, 601 E St. NW, Washington, DC 20049 ( 888/687-2277;www.aarp.org), get discounts on hotels, airfares, and car rentals. AARP offers members a wide range of benefits, including AARP The Magazine and a monthly newsletter. Anyone 50 and over can join.

Many reliable agencies and organizations target the 50-plus market. Exploritas’s ( 800/454-5768;www.exploritas.org) programs include a wide spectrum in Germany. The most popular is a 10-night program in both Berlin and Munich, where participants join local experts to learn about the history and culture of Germany. For the more athletic, there is a 13-night program spent biking along the Danube. Those interested in opera and classical music can join a 12-night cultural and fine arts program that takes place in the vibrant cultural cities of Berlin, Dresden, and Leipzig.

Recommended publications offering travel resources and discounts for seniors include the quarterly magazine Travel 50 & Beyond (www.travel50andbeyond.com) and the best-selling paperback Unbelievably Good Deals and Great Adventures That You Absolutely Can’t Get Unless You’re Over 50 (McGraw-Hill), by Joann Rattner Heilman.

Frommers.com offers more information and resources on travel for seniors

Smoking Check before lighting up. In general, you cannot smoke in most restaurants and many bars in Germany, but it is in a continuous state of flux and rules vary by federal state—in some cases smoking is banned by law and enforced. In other cases the official law is not enforced in bars of a certain size, or after the kitchen closes at restaurants that are open late and morph into a barlike setting as the night goes on. Throughout the country, smoking is banned in all public buildings and transport.

Taxes As a member of the European Union, Germany imposes a tax on most goods and services known as a value-added tax (VAT) or, in German, Mehrwertsteuer. Nearly everything is taxed at 16%, including vital necessities such as gas and luxury items such as jewelry. Food and books are taxed at 7%. VAT is included in the prices of restaurants and hotels. Goods for sale, such as cameras, also have the 16% tax already factored into the price. Stores that display a tax-free sticker will issue you a Tax-Free Shopping Check at the time of purchase. When leaving the country, have your check stamped by the German Customs Service as your proof of legal export. You can then get a cash refund at one of the Tax-Free Shopping Service offices in the major airports and many train stations, even at some of the bigger ferry terminals. Otherwise, you must send the checks to Tax-Free Shopping Service, Mengstrasse 19, 23552 Lübeck, Germany. If you want the payment to be credited to your bank card or your bank account, mention this. There is no airport departure tax.

Telephones The country code for Germany is 49. To call Germany from the United States, dial the international access code 011, then 49, then the city code, then the regular phone number. Note: The phone numbers listed in this book are to be used within Germany; when calling from abroad, omit the initial 0 in the city code.

For directory assistance: Dial 11837 if you’re looking for a number inside Germany, and dial 11834 for numbers to all other countries.

For operator assistance: If you need operator assistance in making a call, dial 0180/200-1033.

Local and long-distance calls may be placed from all post offices and from most public telephone booths, about half of which operate with phone cards, the others with coins. Phone cards are sold at post offices and newsstands in denominations of 6€ to 25€. Rates are measured in units rather than minutes. The farther the distance, the more units are consumed. Telephone calls made through hotel switchboards can double, triple, or even quadruple the base charges at the post office, so be alert to this before you dial. In some instances, post offices can send faxes for you, and many hotels offer Internet access—for free or for a small charge—to their guests.

German phone numbers are not standard. In some places, numbers have as few as three digits. In cities, one number may have five digits, whereas the phone next door might have nine. Germans also often hyphenate their numbers differently. But since all the area codes are the same, these various configurations should have little effect on your phone usage once you get used to the fact that numbers vary from place to place.

Be careful dialing toll-free numbers. Many companies maintain a service line beginning with 0180. However, these lines might appear to be toll-free but really aren’t, costing .12€ per minute. Other numbers that begin with 0190 carry a surcharge of 1.85€ per minute—or even more. Don’t be misled by calling a 1-800 number in the United States from Germany. This is not a toll-free call but costs about the same as an overseas call.

To call the U.S. or Canada from Germany, dial 01, followed by the country code (1), then the area code, and then the number. Alternatively, you can dial the various telecommunication companies in the States for cheaper rates. From Germany, the access number for AT&T is 0800/8880010, and for MCI, 0800/8888000. USA Direct can be used with all telephone cards and for collect calls. The number from Germany is 013/00010. Canada Direct can be used with Bell Telephone Cards and for collect calls. This number from Germany is 013/00014.

If you’re calling from a public pay phone in Germany, you must deposit the basic local rate.

Tipping If a restaurant bill says Bedienung, that means a service charge has already been added, so just round up to the nearest euro. If not, add 10% to 15%. Bellhops get 1€ per bag, as does the doorperson at your hotel, restaurant, or nightclub. Room-cleaning staffs get small tips in Germany, as do concierges who perform some special favors.

Toilets Use the word Toilette (pronounced twah-leh-tah). Women’s toilets are usually marked with an F for Frauen, and men’s toilets with an H for Herren. Germany, frankly, doesn’t have enough public toilets, except in transportation centers. The locals have to rely on bars, cafes, or restaurants—and using them isn’t always appreciated if you’re not a paying customer.

VAT See “Taxes,” above.

Visas See “Passports,” above.

Visitor Information All cities and nearly all larger towns in Germany have tourist offices. The German National Tourist Board headquarters is at Beethovenstrasse 69, 60325 Frankfurt am Main ( 069/751903;www.germany-tourism.de or www.cometogermany.com).

In the U.S., they can be reached at 122 E. 42nd St., Ste. 2000, New York, NY 10017 ( 212/661-7200).

In Canada, tourist offices are at 480 University Ave., Ste. 1500, Toronto, ON M5G 1V2 ( 877/315-6237 or 416/968-1685). In the U.K., you can write P.O. Box 2695, London W1A ETN ( 020/7317-0808).

Water See “Health,” earlier.

Wi-Fi See “Internet & Wi-Fi,” earlier.

Useful Terms & Phrases

Getting There & Getting Around

I am looking for… Ich suche…

…a porter. …einen Träger für mein Gepäck.

…the check-in counter. …den Abfertigungsschalter.

…the ticket counter. …den Kartenschalter.

…arrivals. …den Ankunftsbereich.

…departures. …den Abreisebereich.

…the waiting area. …den Wartebereich.

…the men’s restroom. …die Herrentoilette.

…the women’s restroom. …die Damentoilette.

…the police station. …die Polizeidienststelle.

…a security guard. …einen Sicherheitsbeamten.

…the smoking area. …den Raucherbereich.

…the information booth. …den Informationsstand.

…a public telephone. …ein öffentliches Telefon.

…an ATM. …einen Geldautomaten.

…baggage claim. …die Gepäckausgabe.

…a luggage cart. …einen Gepäckwagen.

…a currency exchange. …eine Geldwechselstube.

…a café. …ein Café.

…a restaurant. …ein Restaurant.

…a bar. …eine Bar.

…a bookstore or newsstand. eine Buchhandlung oder einen Zeitungsstand.

…a duty-free shop. …einen Duty-Free-Shop.

Is there Internet access here? Gibt es hier einen Internetzugang?

I’d like to page someone. Ich möchte jemanden ausrufen lassen.

Do you accept credit cards? Akzeptieren Sie Kreditkarten?

Common Airport Signs

Ankunft Arrivals

Abreise Departures

Terminal Terminal

Gate Gate

Tickets Ticketing

Zoll Customs

Gepäckausgabe Baggage Claim

Drücken Push

Ziehen Pull

Rauchen verboten No Smoking

Eingang Entrance

Ausgang Exit

Herren Men’s

Damen Women’s

Pendelbusse Shuttle Buses

Taxis Taxis

Security Lingo

Bitte ziehen Sie Ihre Schuhe aus. Please remove your shoes.

Ziehen Sie Ihre Jacke aus. Remove your jacket / sweater.

Legen Sie Ihren Schmuck ab. Remove your jewelry.

Legen Sie Ihre Taschen auf das Band. Place your bags on the conveyor belt.

Treten Sie zur Seite. Step to the side.

Wir müssen Sie abtasten. We have to do a hand search.

Road Signs

Geschwindigkeitsbegrenzung Speed Limit

Stopp Stop

Vorfahrt gewähren Yield

Gefahr Danger

Sackgasse No Exit

Einbahnstrasse One Way

Einfahrt verboten Do Not Enter

Strasse gesperrt Road Closed

Maut Toll

Nur Bargeld Cash Only

Parken verboten No Parking

Parkgebühr Parking Fee

Parkhaus Parking Garage

General Terms

Basic Greetings & Expressions

Hello. Hallo.

How are you? Wie geht es Ihnen?

I’m fine, thanks. Mir geht es gut, danke.

And you? Und Ihnen?

My name is ____. Ich heiße ____.

And yours? Wie heißen Sie?

It’s a pleasure to meet you. Freut mich, Sie kennen zu lernen.

Please. Bitte.

Thank you. Danke.

Yes. Ja.

No. Nein.

Okay. OK.

No problem. Kein Problem.

I’m sorry, I don’t understand. Entschuldigung, ich verstehe Sie nicht.

Would you speak slower please? Könnten Sie bitte etwas langsamer sprechen?

Would you speak louder please? Könnten Sie bitte etwas lauter sprechen?

Do you speak English? Sprechen Sie Englisch?

Do you speak any other languages? Sprechen Sie irgendeine andere Sprache?

I speak ____ better than German. Ich spreche besser ____ als Deutsch.

Would you spell that? Könnten Sie das bitte buchstabieren?

Would you please repeat that? Könnten Sie das bitte wiederholen?

Would you point that out in this dictionary? Könnten Sie mir das bitte in diesem Wörterbuch zeigen?

Common Words

Allee Avenue

Altes Rathaus Old town hall (a historical monument; no longer used as the headquarters of the city’s officials)

Altstadt Old part of a city or town

Anlage Park area

Apotheke Pharmacy

Auf Wiedersehen Goodbye

Ausgang Exit

Bad Spa (also bath)

Bahn Railroad, train, course

Bahnhof Railroad station

Berg Mountain

Bitte Please

Brücke Bridge

Burg Fortified castle

Danke Thank you

Dom Cathedral

Domplatz Cathedral square

Drogerie Shop selling cosmetics, sundries

Eingang/Einfahrt Entrance

Eintritt Admission

Fahrrad Bicycle

Flughafen Airport

Gasse Lane

Gasthaus Inn, tavern, restaurant

Gasthof Inn

Gutbürgerliche Küche German home cooking

Hallo Hello

Hauptbahnhof Main railroad station

Hotelgarni Hotel that serves no meals or serves breakfast only

Insel Island

Kammer Room (in public building)

Kapelle Chapel

Kaufhaus Department store

Kino Cinema

Kirche Church

Kloster Monastery

Kneipe Bar for drinking; may serve snacks

Konditorei Cafe for coffee and pastries

Kunst Art

Land State

Marktplatz Market square

Neue Küche Cuisine moderne

Neues Rathaus New town hall (the seat of current city business)

Neustadt New part of city or town

Palatinate A region of Germany bordering France

Platz Square

Polizei Police

Postamt Post office

Rathaus Town or city hall

Ratskeller Restaurant in a Rathaus cellar serving traditional German food

Reisebüro Travel agency

Residenz Palace

Schauspielhaus Theater for plays

See Lake (der See) or sea (die See)

Seilbahn Cable car

Speisekarte Menu

Spielbank Casino

Stadt Town, city

Stadtbahn (S-Bahn) Commuter railroad

Steg Footbridge

Strasse Street

Strassenbahn Streetcar, tram

Tagesmenu Menu of the day

Tankstelle Filling station

Teller Platter

Tor Gateway

Turm Tower

Ufer Shore, riverbank

Untergrundbahn (U-Bahn) Subway, underground transportation system

Verkehrsamt Tourist office

Weg Road

Weinstube Wine bar or tavern serving meals

Zimmer Room

Menu Terms

Meats & Poultry (Wurst, Fleisch & Geflügel)

Aufschnitt Cold cuts

Beefsteak Hamburger steak

Brathuhn Roasted chicken

Bratwurst Grilled sausage

Eisbein Pigs’ knuckles

Ente Duck

Frankfurter Hot dog

Gans Goose

Hammel Mutton

Kalb Veal

Kassler Rippchen Pork chops

Lamm Lamb

Leber Liver

Ragout Stew

Rinderbraten Roast beef

Rindfleisch Beef

Sauerbraten Marinated beef

Schinken Ham

Schnitzel Cutlet

Schweinebraten Roast pork

Tafelspitz Boiled beef usually served with applesauce and horseradish—a famous staple of Austria

Truthahn Turkey

Wiener schnitzel Breaded veal cutlet

Wurst Sausage

Fish (Fisch)

Aal Eel

Forelle Trout

Hecht Pike

Karpfen Carp

Lachs Salmon

Makrele Mackerel

Muschel Mussel

Rheinsalm Rhine salmon

Schellfisch Haddock

Seezunge Sole

Eggs (Eier)

Eier in der Schale Boiled eggs

Mit Speck With bacon

Rühreier Scrambled eggs

Spiegeleier Fried eggs

Verlorene Eier Poached eggs

Vegetables (Gemüse)

Artischocken Artichokes

Blumenkohl Cauliflower

Bohnen Beans

Bratkartoffeln Fried potatoes

Champignon Mushroom

Erbsen Peas

Grüne Bohnen Green or string beans

Gurken Cucumbers

Karotten Carrots

Kartoffel Potato

Kartoffelbrei Mashed potatoes

Kartoffelsalat Potato salad

Knödel Dumplings

Kohl Cabbage

Reis Rice

Rettich Radish

Rote Rüben Beets

Rotkraut Red cabbage

Salat Lettuce

Salzkartoffeln Boiled potatoes

Sellerie Celery

Spargel Asparagus

Spinat Spinach

Steinpilze Boletus mushrooms

Tomaten Tomatoes

Weisse Rüben Turnips

Desserts (Nachtisch)

Auflauf Soufflé

Bienenstich Honey almond cake

Blatterteiggebäck Puff pastry

Bratapfel Baked apple

Dolce di Castagne Chestnut roll

Eis Ice cream

Kaffeecreme Coffee mousse

Käse Cheese

Kirschtorte Black Forest cake

Kompott Stewed fruit

Obstkuchen Fruit tart

Obstsalat Fruit salad

Pfannkuchen Sugared pancakes

Pflaumenkompott Stewed plums

Schlagsahne Whipped cream

Schokolademus Chocolate mousse

Tarte Tatin A tart filled with, most often, apples

Topfenpalatschinken Cottage cheese pancakes

Zwetschkenknodel Plum dumplings

Fruits (Obst)

Ananas Pineapple

Apfel Apple

Apfelsine Orange

Banane Banana

Birne Pear

Erdbeeren Strawberries

Himberren Raspberries

Kirschen Cherries

Pfirsich Peach

Weintrauben Grapes

Zitrone Lemon

Beverages (Getränke)

Bier Beer

Ein dunkles A dark beer

Ein helles A light beer

Eine Tasse Kaffee A cup of coffee

Eine Tasse Tee A cup of tea

Eistee Ice tea

Geist Brandy

Hiesse Schokolade Hot chocolate

Kaffee Coffee

Kaffee mit Rahm/Milch/Zucker Coffee with cream/milk/sugar

Kaffee mit Suss-stoff Coffee with artificial sweetener

Kaffee Schwarz Black coffee

Koffeinfrei Decaffeinated coffee

Kräutertee Herb tea

Leicht Light (wine)

Likör Liqueur

Limonade Lemonade

Milch Milk

Mineralwasser Mineral water

Mit Eis With ice

Mit Wasser With water

Ohne Eis Without ice

Ohne Wasser Without water

Pur Straight

Rotwein Red wine

Saft Juice

Schaumwein Sparkling wine

Schnaps Schnapps

Schokolade Chocolate

Soda Club soda

Soda mit gas Soda with gas (to make sure your club soda is carbonated)

Süss Sweet (wine)

Tee mit Milch Tea with cream

Tee mit Zitrone Tea with lemon

Trocken Dry (wine)

Wasser Water

Weisswein White wine

Condiments & Table Items (Würze & Tafelgeschirr)

Brot Bread

Brötchen Rolls

Butter Butter

Eis Ice

Essig Vinegar

Flasche Bottle

Gabel Fork

Glas Glass

Kalte pikante sosse Ketchup

Löffel Spoon

Messer Knife

Öl Oil

Pfeffer Pepper

Platte Plate

Sahne Cream

Salat Zubereitung Salad dressing

Salz Salt

Senf Mustard

Tasse Cup

Teller Platter

Tischzeug Napkin

Zucker Sugar

Cooking Terms

Gebacken Baked

Gebraten Fried

Gedämpft Steamed

Gefüllt Stuffed

Gekocht Boiled

Geröstet Roasted

Gut durchgebraten Well done

Heiss Hot

Kaltes Cold

Mittep Medium

Nicht durchgebraten Rare

Paniert Breaded

Pochiert Poached

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Saxony and Thuringia, Germany: Frommer’s® Shortcuts

Table of Contents

Saxony & Thuringia

Weimar

Essentials

Exploring Weimar

Where to Eat

Shopping

Nightlife & Entertainment

Where to Stay

Side Trips from Weimar

Leipzig

Essentials

Exploring Leipzig

Where to Eat

Shopping

Nightlife & Entertainment

Where to Stay

Side Trips from Leipzig

Dresden

Essentials

Exploring Dresden

Where to Eat

Shopping

Nightlife & Entertainment

Where to Stay

Meissen

Essentials

Exploring Meissen

Where to Eat

Shopping

Where to Stay

The Best of Germany

The Best Experiences

The Best Museums

The Best Castles & Palaces

The Best Cathedrals

The Most Charming Small Villages

The Best Driving Tours

The Best Walks

The Best Biking

The Best Spas

The Best Luxury Hotels

The Best Small Inns & Hotels

The Best Restaurants

The Best Beer Halls & Taverns

The Best Shopping

Germany in Depth

Germany Today

Looking Back: German History

Early Days

The Holy Roman Empire

The Reformation & the Religious Wars

Napoleon Arrives

Bismarck & Prussia

World War I

Weimar Republic

The Rise of Nazism

World War II

Division of Germany

Fall of the Wall & Unification

Modern Germany

Art & Architecture

German Art

Architecture

Germany in Pop Culture

Books

Music

Film

Eating & Drinking

Regional Specialties

Beer & Wine

When to Go

Holidays

Responsible Travel

Tours

Biking

Cruises

Escorted General-Interest Tours

Golf

Hiking & Mountain Climbing

Planning Your Trip to Germany

Getting There

By Plane

By Train

By Car & Ferry

Via the Channel Tunnel

Getting Around

By Plane

By Train

By Car

By Bus

By Boat

Tips on Accommodations

Surfing for Hotels

Saving on Your Hotel Room

Landing the Best Room

B&B Stays

Bungalow, Villa & Apartment Rentals

Castle Hotels

Farm Vacations

House Swapping

Romantik Hotels

Spa Hotels

Youth Hostels

Fast Facts

Useful Terms & Phrases

Getting There & Getting Around

Common Airport Signs

Security Lingo

Road Signs

General Terms

Basic Greetings & Expressions

Common Words

Menu Terms

Meats & Poultry (Wurst, Fleisch & Geflügel)

Fish (Fisch)

Eggs (Eier)

Vegetables (Gemüse)

Desserts (Nachtisch)

Fruits (Obst)

Beverages (Getränke)

Condiments & Table Items (Würze & Tafelgeschirr)

Cooking Terms