Travelling is good for you: Germany

Apparently France is the most visited country on the planet, although I'd bet that a third or even more of all visitors are on their way somewhere else, like Spain or Italy. For this reason, Germany is the country everyone likes to drive through on their way somewhere else - everyone knows Germany because of its terrifyingly sprawling Autobahn network. Until recently though not everyone stopped there except for a cup of coffee or a fillup of petrol in one of the enormous variety of stopoff points. This has been noticed by the German authorities - so much so, a few weeks ago, I passed an Autobahnkirche, yes, a motorway church. This undeserved treatment of Germany's free-to-use Autobahns means most people see the country at 190 km/h. Until recently. For two reasons:

The first reason is that the average speed going east-to-west or west-to-east has decreased in recent times due to the amount of new traffic on the roads. The recent admission of Poland to the EU has had a detrimental effect on Germany's once high-speed road system. You see, the Poles just don't get the idea of motorways - they have so few in Poland that it's not really their fault, but they just can't grasp the fast-middle-slow lane mentality. Driving on the main thoroughfare from Belgium to Berlin is a hazardous prospect and I've done this trip three times recently. God, it was scary. The driver of the vehicle I was in on those three occasions was faultless, but what do you expect from an ex-German Air Force helicopter pilot? However, I had no faith in any of the other cars around me. I frequently squeezed the door grip, tightened my legs and pushed my feet into the floor as if subliminally braking, not that it would have helped much...

It wasn't so much the speed of the other drivers, but their lack of it, combined with their sudden urges to shift to another lane, including the "fast" lane. It's high time the east-west motorways had minimum speed signs placed above the lanes or on the road surface. In Polish. That's at least better than the alternative - tolls. These would only mean the cars would find alternative ways of getting to and from home, possibly causing national routes to be clogged at certain intervals, and punishing the local drivers, who correctly put a brick on the accelerator pedal and drive at speeds Americans can only have wet dreams about.

The other reason why not all visitors see Germany at 190km/h is much more positive. Since the World Cup in Germany in the summer of 2006, foreign visitors have decided no longer to whizz through the land to reach their destination before nightfall or daybreak. People are actually visiting and they're doing it in bigger and bigger numbers. Germany is, and has always been, a tourist-friendly country. Germans are, contrary to all myths, enormously welcoming, very sociable, fairly well-educated and highly humorous people. Their land is so rich in history and nature, their cities beautifully looked after, and their villages more active than most Belgian towns.

A couple of weeks ago, I took a group of my students from China on a cruise up the river Rhine. As the group had mainly ideas of urban Europe, with trips to Barcelona, Paris, Amsterdam, Rome and London high on their agendas, I wanted to show them somewhere which I believe to be the essential Europe, the Europe we all read about in our fairy tales, the folkloric Europe we often dream of but never enter. Germany is that land, but we just never admit it. I'm sure, when you see films like Shrek, with all that delightful scenery, the castles and valleys, the open plains and heathland, you will find it there between Aachen and Görlitz, Oberstdorf and Flensburg.

You just can't go wrong in Germany. And since the summers started getting hotter, many more Germans themselves are holidaying in their own country. Let's take a trip to some of the places you can go:

Rhine boat trip

The Köln-Düsseldorfer boat company (http://www.k-d.de) provides the largest fleet of boats on the Rhine. You can sail from Cologne to Bonn to Remagen to Koblenz to Boppard to St Goar to Bacharach to Bingen and finally to Mainz, a trip of a couple of hours on the train, in 12 hours, and fill up a whole photo memory card with all the sights on the way. Koblenz is a good place to stop - some delightful views, a lively atmosphere and plenty of romantic walks. St Goar and St Goarshausen sit on opposite banks of the river, joined by a ro-ro car ferry no bigger than two tennis courts. The walking possibilities are endless.

Black Forest - Schwarzwald

If you should go to the Black Forest, the immense tree-covered area of land which takes up most of the state of Baden-Württemberg, you should head to Freiburg and surrounding area. The city has everything the adventurous traveller should need: mountains to climb or to visit on a lift (try the Schauinsland - http://www.schauinsland.de/ - a restaurant awaits you at the top! Or you can go round the Feldberg, 1493 metres high, or even drive over the Kandel, 1242 metres high); it has romantic villages and routes, for example the Cuckoo Clock Way, where the largest cuckoo clock in the world - the size of a house - stands in the village of Triberg and waits until the pterodactyl dressed as a cuckoo pops out every half hour. Let us not forget what the Black Forest is famous for - its gâteau. If you want to try the BFG made with the most love, please go to Café Schuler (http://www.cafe-schuler.com/) where you can also stay the night in breathtaking scenery and noiseless luxury for 80 euro full board. Another good reason to go there is your mobile phone doesn't pick up a signal. Bliss. I don't visit the place often enough but I have the fondest memories.

The Alps
Just south and east of the Black Forest the resplendent roundedness of the mountains becomes more jagged, as the Alps force their way into the clouds. Here, you can visit any number of places, but the pick would be Neuschwanstein, the crazy castle of King Ludwig II, (http://www.neuschwanstein.com/english/index.htm), the colourful ruler who invited Richard Wagner to write music there. Another less well-known place is the Breitachklamm, a gorge carved by a rapid river (http://www.breitachklamm.de/) which you can walk very close to, along its overhanging gangways and footbridges.

Munich
This city is just unique. But what makes it unique is the oneness to nature of its inhabitants. So much so, that in the Englischer Garten, the English Garden for all those who require a translation, right in the middle of Munich, you would never believe that you were even within the city boundaries of one of Europe's great urban centres. Another trait of it is the nakedness of the people roaming around there. Students and pensioners alike, everyone is just wearing a smile and nothing else. In fact, when I was there, I got stared at for being clothed. So I also joined the locals in their ritualistic closeness to nature. Later, when I got to the tram stop, the doors were just about to close as a man carrying only his rucksack jumped on. He had either left his clothes at home or he was in a hurry to get the tram so went without dressing. Either way, nobody even seemed to notice.

Dresden
Passing through the scenic towns of Regensburg, Bamberg, Bayreuth and Nürnberg, we reach the cultural city of Dresden, the place where people care so much about their city, they are arguing over where to place a new bridge so that it doesn't spoil the unique riverside promenades. In fact the inhabitants' love of their city runs so deep, they even rebuilt the Frauenkirche, http://www.frauenkirche.de/, an exquisite building destroyed in the savage allied bombings, based on original drawings. They also rebuilt their Opera House, which went the same way as the Frauenkirche. The twin city of Dresden is Coventry in the UK. Coventry is an ultra-square functional urban area with enormous grey beercrates called office blocks and Jenga-style towers with drying clothes hanging off them where people actually live, whereas Dresden was lovingly restored, even down to the cobblestones on the roads and the gargoyles on the public buildings.

Brandenburg
This German state surrounds Berlin completely and is full of little gems, for example Potsdam, the royal city of Germany. Every major royal nation has something like this: St Petersburg has Petergof, France has Versailles, England has Hampton Court and Windsor Castle, Spain has El Escorial. But what makes Potsdam extraordinary is its size and variety. To give you some idea, click here: http://www.potsdam.de/cms/ziel/26670/EN/

Werder is another interesting town to visit - there's not much point being there for more than a day, but the fact it lies in the middle of the river is worth a look. And it too is famous for ketchup far better than H*i*z and fruit wines, the like of which if it doesn't turn your teeth dark will surely make the tongue behind crave more. But be careful - it is notoriously deceiving. You think you're not drunk then after a few glasses, you get up to offer your round and your legs disagree on the route you need to take to the counter.

I'm not going to describe every other place you need to go to, but here is a list of places no less deserving of a visit:
Berlin (of course) - http://www.goslitski.net/template.cfm?action=berlin
Hamburg
Aachen
Leipzig
Hannover and Braunschweig
Münster and the Porta Westfalica
Schwerin and the Baltic coast
Wuppertal and the overhead light railway
Heidelberg
Baden-Baden

Bah, the list goes on and on and on...

So forget about the hideous Torremolinos (Coventry-On-Sea), the expensive Venice, the overrated Corfu, and spend a peaceful, or adventurous, or romantic, or historic, or cultural, or exciting time in the quintessential European country we should grow to appreciate, Germany.