So with Germany in this World Cup, we’ve been paying closer attention than usual. This one is personal.
We Know This Firsthand
Last summer we took the boys through Europe: a long trip, a lot of ground covered, a lot of countries checked off. Germany was part of it, and not the obvious parts.
We spent a day wandering Strasbourg, a city that sits right on the French-German border and can’t quite decide which it is. French cafés next to German beer gardens, a Gothic cathedral towering over canal-lined streets, everything mixing in a way that shouldn’t work as well as it does. We parked and walked with no real plan, grabbed pastries, and let the city do its thing. If you’re ever routing through the Alsace region, don’t skip it.
From there we drove back through German wine country, winding through villages that weren’t on any Top 10 list and were better for it. Timbered buildings, flower boxes, vineyard-covered hills rolling past the windows. Nobody asked how much longer. That’s the whole review.
The villages between Strasbourg and the Black Forest that most people drive past without stopping.
The next day we put on hiking boots and got into the Black Forest: dense, quiet, and exactly what it sounds like. Two days in a region most American travelers blow through on the way to somewhere else. We’d go back without hesitation.
How It Comes Back Around
Years ago, my family hosted a German exchange student. He spent a year learning the rhythms of American life, and somewhere along the way became the kind of friend who doesn’t require a reason to stay in touch. Now he has a family of his own, and they’re visiting the US this summer. It just happens to coincide with Germany playing a World Cup here. That’s not the point of the trip, but it adds a certain layer.
The kind of connection that doesn’t have an expiration date.
That’s what cultural exchange actually does when it works. It doesn’t produce a semester’s worth of memories and a photo album. It produces something that comes back around, years later, on both sides of the Atlantic. He showed up as a student. He left as family.
The Germany Most Americans Miss
Berlin earns its reputation. Munich earns its reputation. If you haven’t been to either, go. But if Germany keeps getting deferred because it feels like something you already know enough about, that’s worth questioning.
The best historical places in Germany extend far beyond the capital. Cologne Cathedral took over 600 years to build and miraculously survived the bombing of World War II. Neuschwanstein Castle inspired Disney’s fairy-tale aesthetics. Wartburg Castle housed Martin Luther as he translated the Bible, reshaping the Reformation. Quedlinburg, tucked into the Harz Mountains, is a perfectly preserved medieval town with over 1,300 half-timbered houses dating back six centuries and a UNESCO World Heritage designation that most American travelers have never heard of.
The Moselle Valley runs through some of Germany’s most scenic wine country. The Bavarian Alps offer hiking that competes with anything in the Alps next door. Baden-Baden is Germany’s grandest 19th-century spa resort, while Freiburg functions as the Black Forest’s de facto capital, a likable university town that serves as a natural base for the region.
The country rewards the traveler willing to go sideways instead of straight to the famous stuff.
About the Beer
We’d be leaving something important out if we didn’t mention it.
Germany’s relationship with beer is not casual. The Reinheitsgebot, the German beer purity law, dates to 1516, making it one of the oldest food regulations in the world. It originally mandated that beer could only be brewed with water, barley, and hops. That commitment to craft has never fully gone away, and what it produced is a beer culture that’s genuinely regional in a way that most countries’ aren’t.
Cologne has Kölsch. Düsseldorf has Altbier. Bavaria has its lagers. These aren’t the same drink with different labels.
Cologne has Kölsch: a light, crisp ale brewed only in Cologne, served in small cylindrical glasses, and replaced automatically by your server until you put a coaster on top to signal you’re done. Düsseldorf has Altbier. Bavaria has its lagers, its wheat beers, its beer gardens where you sit at long communal tables in the open air and order by the liter. These are genuinely different traditions, tied to specific places.
Food in Germany goes far beyond beer and bratwurst. And then there’s Flammkuchen: the Alsatian flatbread that crosses the border into southwestern Germany and sits somewhere between a pizza and a tarte that you didn’t know you needed until it’s in front of you. We ordered it on a whim in a small village restaurant on the way back from Strasbourg. The kids were skeptical. They finished it before we did.
In the Shadow of Its Neighbors
Germany sits right next to France, Austria, and Switzerland on the map, and somehow it consistently lands lower on the American travel priority list than any of them. The itinerary always seems to pull toward Paris, the Amalfi Coast, the Swiss Alps. Germany becomes a stopover or a day trip or something you’ll get to next time.
That’s a gap worth closing. The country doesn’t need to oversell itself. It just needs travelers to actually commit to going. If Germany keeps appearing on the list of places we want to get back to, there’s probably a reason for that.
The name on this blog is German. The wanderlust that drives it is too. If you’ve been putting Germany off, this is a reasonable moment to stop.
Thinking About Germany?
Whether it’s the cities, the wine regions, or a wider European circuit, Jennifer can help put together an itinerary that actually gets you there. Our itinerary advisor is a good place to start.
