Ask a visitor where to go in France and the answer comes back as one word. Same with Britain. Ask about Germany and watch the pause.
There’s no single answer, because there’s no single center. There are four.
For most of the past thousand years this was a few hundred small states. Each had a capital, a court, and a cathedral. Each had a duke who wanted his residence to outshine the one two valleys over. Nobody here was building a single great city. Everybody was building their own.
So the good stuff is scattered. The best gallery hangs in Dresden. The oldest university sits in Heidelberg, the biggest port in Hamburg, and the busiest theme park in a village on the French border.
Which changes how you plan. You do not see Germany. You pick a corner and do that corner properly, then you come back for the rest.
The pages below are sorted the way a trip actually happens: getting here, sleeping somewhere, filling the days.
Getting to Germany and Getting Around
Which airport you land at matters more here than it does in a country with one dominant city. Frankfurt has the most connections. Munich is second. But if your trip is really about the Baltic coast, landing at either one costs you most of a day. Look at where you actually want to wake up, then book backward from that.
Once you’re on the ground, the train usually wins. The network is dense. Regional lines reach villages that have no business being on a railway at all. You can cross the country without ever signing a rental agreement.
One thing catches visitors out constantly. The cheap nationwide monthly pass we call the Deutschlandticket covers local and regional transport everywhere in the country. It does not cover the fast long-distance trains. Board an ICE with it and you’re riding without a ticket.
Then there’s the Autobahn, and what everyone has heard about it is only half true. There’s no blanket speed limit. A large share of the network is posted anyway. And the open stretches aren’t the racetrack of the imagination.
Average speed where no limit applies runs around 110 km/h (about 68 mph). The 130 km/h (81 mph) you see on the blue signs is a Richtgeschwindigkeit, a recommendation rather than a rule. Drive faster, have a crash, and your share of the blame goes up.
One more thing before you rent anything: a lot of city centers are low-emission zones and want a sticker on the windshield, the Umweltplakette. Rental cars usually have one. Usually.
Traveling in Germany Starts with the Train
Trains, cars, long-distance buses, and domestic flights. An honest account of which one wins on which route. The answer is the train more often than you would guess.
Which German Airport to Fly Into
The cheapest fare often lands at the wrong airport. How each one connects to its city, how long that connection really takes, and when paying more is the faster trip.
German Airlines Are Not Just Lufthansa
Lufthansa is the name everybody knows. The group behind it owns several of the others on your booking confirmation. Who flies which routes, and who’s actually operating the flight.
Where to Stay in Germany
Start with the bed, because it will surprise you. A German double is two single mattresses inside one frame, with two separate duvets on top. No top sheet, no shared blanket, no tucking anything in. Couples who have been fighting over the covers for twenty years go quiet for a moment when they see it. Then they go home and buy two duvets. :-)
The budget end of the range is a German invention. The story is better than it needs to be.
In 1909 a schoolteacher named Richard Schirrmann was out walking with his class when a thunderstorm caught them. They spent the night in an empty village school. He spent the next three years arguing that the country needed a chain of cheap beds a day’s walk apart. In 1912 he moved the idea into the castle above Altena in Westphalia and became the first warden the world had. The entire global hostel network grew out of that one room.
Whatever you book, the price you see is usually not the last one. Towns that live off visitors charge a Kurtaxe. That’s a small levy per person per night. It applies whether you’re in a five-star hotel, a rented apartment, or a tent.
It’s often collected at the front desk rather than online, so it feels like a surprise. It is not new at all. Baden-Baden was charging one in 1507. The big cities do the same thing under other names.
Hotels in Germany and What the Stars Mean
The stars come from the hotel industry, not the government, and taking part is optional. What each level actually buys you, and what a house calling itself garni is telling you.
German Resorts Are Towns, Not Compounds
Around 300 towns hold a spa designation the state awards and can take away again. Where the spa towns, the coastal resorts, and the winter valleys sit, and what each season buys you.
Holiday Homes Put You in a Neighborhood
A kitchen, a washing machine, and a bakery on the corner where the staff start recognizing you by day three. Usually cheaper than a hotel, and better for anything over a long weekend.
Hostels in Germany Started the Whole Idea
Bunk rooms are no longer the whole offer. Private rooms, central locations, and a network that puts you in castles and half-timbered houses as readily as in concrete.
Camping in Germany Comes with Rules
Wild camping is illegal here, and the fines are real. Where you can legally put a tent or a camper, and why the sites near the lakes fill up months ahead.
Things to Do in Germany
This is where the scattering pays off. The busiest theme park in the country isn’t outside Berlin or Munich. It sits in Rust, a village on the French border. Around six million people a year come through the gates. On a Saturday in July the park holds more people than the village does.
Zoos are the other thing we have in unreasonable quantity, and they’re better than the word suggests. Hamburg’s Hagenbeck opened in 1907 with something nobody had tried at that scale: moats instead of bars. The animals appeared to be standing in open landscape. Every modern zoo you’ve ever walked through is a descendant of that idea.
River trips deserve their own line, because the middle Rhine only makes sense from the water. Those castles were customs posts. They were built to watch the boats coming and make them stop and pay. So the view they were designed around is the one from the deck. Not the one from the parking lot.
And one practical warning that wrecks more trips than anything else: shops close on Sundays. Not most shops. Shops. Bakeries open for the morning, gas stations and railway station stores stay open, and that’s roughly the list.
So Sunday is the day for the museum, the zoo, the boat, or a walk in the woods. Saturday is the day you buy the groceries.
Tourist Attractions Start with a Question
A top-twenty list tells you what other people enjoyed. So I ask instead: mountains or flat, church or factory, wine or beer, and where you want to wake up? Answer three and the country narrows down to yours.
Theme Parks beyond Europa-Park
Rust gets the headlines, and it’s not the only one worth a day. A Legoland in Bavaria, a park run by a board game company, and coasters that pull people across borders.
German Zoos Did Away with the Bars
Berlin, Hamburg, Leipzig, Cologne, and a dozen more. From the pandas in the capital to the wildlife parks where the deer walk right up to the car window.
River Cruises Go Where the Castles Are
The Rhine, the Moselle, the Danube, and the Elbe. From week-long cruises down to the afternoon boat that costs less than lunch. Which stretch is worth which kind of trip.
The mistake almost everybody makes on a first trip is the itinerary with six cities in nine days. You spend the week in stations and check-in lines, and you go home with a phone full of platforms.
Pick two bases instead. Four nights each. Take day trips out and come back to the same bed. Let the third day in one place be the slow one.
That’s how you end up in some town nobody told you about, which is where the good stories live anyway. ;-)
For the wide view of the country, start at Germany. To browse destinations before you commit to anything, go to Top Places to Visit in Germany.