The sleepy village of Trendelburg sits around the skirts of a castle-topped outcrop, amid a sumptuous flowing landscape of forests and fields in the region of Hesse, north of Kassel. These days the castle itself, Burg Trendelburg, is a hotel which plays a significant role in the Fairytale Road, as it is from one of its five towers that Rapunzel was meant to have let down her hair for her handsome prince to climb.

Not far away, through the wild boar and deer rich forests of the Reinhardswald, is Sababurg, which also plays a role on the Road, this time as Sleeping Beauty’s Castle, although here the whole place is currently sleeping, pending refurbishment as a hotel. Its grounds remain popular for walking.

There’s a lot more good walking between the two, in the Urwald section of the giant Reinhardswald forest, a place where you can really suspend your disbelief whilst wandering through a cathedral of beech trees and giant anthropomorphically-shaped oaks, some of which are thought to be between 700 and 1,000 years old.

As for Burg Trendelburg itself, it is a lovely place to stay for anyone with a smidgen of imagination or romanticism.

The thousand-year-old fortification surrounds a courtyard of chestnut trees which is entered across a drawbridge. Its entrance hall has tapestries and metal knights, from where a creaking dark oak staircase leads up to bedrooms with ‘himmelbett’ (heaven bed) four posters and modern bathrooms hidden ingeniously away through pretend cupboards. By virtue of its position each of the bedrooms has a commanding view, especially the tower bedroom where Rapunzel supposedly hung out.

It’s moderately priced, and particularly popular with overseas visitors.

A place to celebrate

Of course there’s no evidence of the truth of any of the Rapunzel malarkey – it’s a fairy story – but one of the early editions of Grimm’s fairytales had an illustration of a tower castle, and the tourism people were looking for a suitable lookalike when contemplating the creation of the Fairytale Road, over 50 years ago. Hey presto: Trendelburg becomes Rapunzel’s castle. Great marketing.

It certainly capitalizes on it. A large downstairs restaurant – far too big for a 22 bedroom property – has embossed leather armchairs, fleur de lys carpets and swords on the walls, plus an expansive outdoor terrace with commanding views. It’s an obvious choice for celebrations.

So the place that was once known for hiding maidens away in towers, is now a very popular wedding venue.

Düsseldorf has long been the headquarters city for the Ruhr, Germany’s powerhouse industrial region. It is the place for worker relaxation and for the spending of big industrialist salaries, which in turn patronises great arts and culture in a succession of big public galleries. It pays for eyecatching city architecture, too, and the net result is the secondmost liveable city in Germany (after Munich).

The city’s mostly pedestrianized centre is so new and modern it feels like an architect’s model. There’s Daniel Liebeskind’s curvaceous Kö-Bogen, whose ‘cuts’ in its façade sprout with greenery, and nearby Kö-Bogen II, a shopping centre disguised under beech hedges. Its most famous more traditional shopping boulevard, the ‘Kö’ – Königsallee – looks like a slice of Amsterdam, running as it does down both sides of a leafy canal, lined with flagship stores of famous names and patrolled by the unfeasibly tanned.

The old town

Beyond the Kö towards the Rhine is old Düsseldorf, a network of cobbled streets busy with bars and restaurants. There’s not a lot in the way of truly old architecture here but what it lacks in antiquity it makes up for in conviviality. The nightlife is vibrant, particularly along Bolkerstrasse, although you might want to steer clear on a football night.

The speciality of some of the old town taverns is Altbier, whose darker colour comes from the roasting of the malt. It is unpasteurised, so best drunk fresh at traditional locations like Uerige, Füchschen or Schlüssel, where the breweries themselves are directly on site. Here there’s a whole culture around drinking, mostly at convivial standing tables, where service is by middle-aged men (Köbes) who record your tally with marks on your beer mat.

Bordering the old town is the Rhine, with fully laden barges lumbering laboriously around its giant bend. Sheep graze on the floodplain on the far bank, while the near bank is lined with a long promenade, hugely popular amongst locals when the weather is kind. There are bars here, but the most dramatic view is from the top of the 240 metre Rheinturm, looking down on the river and the parliament building.

The city has a big encampment of galleries and concert halls – mostly just downriver from the old town – with a particularly large and significant art academy. No fewer than four art movements started here in the 1960s, during the time when the likes of Joseph Beuys and Gerhard Richter were students. These days its K20 art gallery has one of the biggest collection of 20^th century artists – Picasso, Kandinsky, Klee, Miro, Chagall etc – of any institutions in the world.

Art in the region has always been cutting edge, but not always recognised as such. Back in the 1980s, Joseph Beuys placed five kilograms of butter in an exhibition in the art academy, and called it ‘Fat Corner’. Eventually a gallery cleaner mistakenly cleared it away. Ever since then there’s been a German saying: Ist das Kunst oder kann das weg? “Is it art, or can I throw it away?”

For a city of just over 200,000 inhabitants to have a local Nobel Prize Winner is something to shout about. To have a second, well that would be really special. However to have three…. now that could just be seen as greedy. This is exactly what the city of Lübeck on the northern Baltic coast can claim – along with its fascinating background in the Hanseatic League. To be fair only two of the Nobel laureates were born there and the third died there, but it’s still not a bad haul and puts the city firmly on the cultural map of Germany.

Thomas Mann was born in the city in 1875, and despite moving away aged 16, he used it as the setting for Buddenbrooks, his majestic novel about the decline of a once proud family and its business. Despite never explicitly naming Lübeck in the book, it is clearly where the family lived and worked.

Subsequently going on to be hailed ‘the novel of the century’ it won Mann the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1929. The house where he was born and spent his childhood, the Buddenbrookshaus, has exhibits illustrating 19^th century life in Lübeck and giving an account of Mann’s life and career (as well as that of his brother Heinrich, who also wrote and grew up there).

Brandt and Grass

And now to politics. Willy Brandt was the German Chancellor from 1969 to 1974. Following 20 years of West Germany refusing to recognise the GDR (East Germany) after World War II, he came into office promising to engender a closer relationship with the ‘other Germany’ and with Germany’s other eastern neighbours.

This he went on to achieve, concluding hugely significant treaties with not only with the GDR (which considerably improved links between the two countries), but with the Soviet Union, Poland and pre-division Czechoslovakia. On a visit to Poland in 1970 he famously fell to his knees in front of the Warsaw Ghetto and prayed, one of the most iconic images in postwar German history. He was awarded the Nobel Peace Prize in 1971 in acknowledgement of his efforts to ease East West tension.

Brandt was born Herbert Frahm in humble surroundings in Lübeck in 1913, only fleeing the city in 1933 when the Nazis took over. He adopted his new alias and settled in Norway, returning to Germany in 1945. His life and achievements (he was also mayor of West Berlin when the Wall was erected in 1961) are commemorated at the Willy Brandt Haus in the city.

Günter Grass is to post-war German literature what Thomas Mann was pre-war. Born in Danzig (now Gdańsk in Poland), he wrote some of the most significant novels of the 1960s when West Germany really began to explore and evaluate its Nazi history. His Danzig Trilogy, featuring his most famous work, The Tin Drum, was particularly controversial at the time, focusing on issues which questioned people’s participation in the Nazi regime and their reluctance to acknowledge this.

Grass was very active politically, and coincidentally a close associate of Brandt. In his later years he based himself in Lübeck though spent a considerable amount of time in reunified Germany’s new capital, Berlin. He was awarded the Nobel Prize for Literature in 1999 and died in Lübeck in 2015. The city has subsequently opened the Günter Grass Haus dedicated to his life and work.

Visits to any or all of the city’s museums (although the Buddenbrookshaus is closed to 2023) will provide valuable insights to the history of both Lübeck and 20^th century Germany as a whole. – Mark Arrol

In 1960 a young band from Liverpool came to play a series of nights in the St Pauli area of Hamburg, which was best known for its dockers’ pubs, nightclubs and strip bars. The Beatles, then comprising five members and all in their teens, were sent across by their manager to earn some money and hone their skills. It undoubtedly worked!

Living in what they described as a store cupboard, with no hot water and limited hygiene facilities, they played for four hours daily (six at weekends) at the Indra Club on Große Freiheit in the city’s Reeperbahn district, probably Europe’s best-known red-light zone after Amsterdam.

For that they received the princely sum of 30 Deutschmarks (£2.50 per person) a day, but it allowed them to practice their technique and develop as live performers. “We had to learn millions of songs because we’d be on for hours,” George Harrison later said. “Hamburg was really like our apprenticeship, learning how to play in front of people”.

Over the next couple of years they moved to play in other bigger venues in the area: the Kaiserkeller (where they met future drummer Ringo Starr), the Top Ten Club and the Star Club. Their last appearance in the city was on New Year’s Eve 1962, by which time they had already made their entry into the British charts.

As young men dropped into a strange city with temptation on every doorstep, it’s fair to say they made the most of their time in St Pauli. As John Lennon once said “I was born in Liverpool but I grew up in Hamburg.”

Fab Five landmarks

In recognition of the city’s role in helping shape the most famous band of all time, the square where the Reeperbahn meets Große Freiheit has been renamed Beatles Platz and features a 29 metre image of a record in the paving, together with five steel hollow sculptures. There are numerous plaques in the area indicating where the Beatles played and lived.

A spotlight on the group’s early years doesn’t exactly showcase Germany’s second biggest city in the most favourable light, as the St Pauli area is still fairly seedy. It hasn’t changed too much in the last 60 years and still features a variety of late night venues along the Reeperbahn.

There are a couple of ways to follow the Beatles experience in Hamburg. The Beatles Tour runs for three hours daily every Thursday-Sunday, with a tour guide who grew up in the area in the 50s and 60s giving his own personal recollections of what it was like for the Beatles to perform back then.

For a more individual experience self confessed Beatles super-fan Stefanie Hempel has been showing tourists around the local sites for over 15 years. Her tour is interwoven with Beatles tunes knocked out on her ukulele and finishes with a selection of their greatest hits on the Beatles Platz.  Her tour comes highly recommended by Beatles historian Mark Lewisohn and head of the Beatles fan club Freda Kelly.

The role the city played in the formative years of a band that went on and conquered the world gives Hamburg an important part in rock n roll history

Two things give Münster, one of the most vibrant and captivating cities in northern Germany, its unique character: over 50,000 students and an estimated 500,000 bikes. That means around 20 percent of the city’s core population of 275,000 are studying at its university or colleges and that there are almost twice as many bikes as residents.

The two factors work together as a virtuous circle, as the preponderance of bicycles (or ‘leeze’ as they are known locally) and the associated freewheeling lifestyle actually attracts students from elsewhere in Germany. As a result, Germany’s ‘cycling capital’ claims to be the only city in the country where more journeys are made by bike than by car.

The city centre Altstadt is largely pedestrianised and is encircled by the Promenade, a green five kilometre ring trail through parkland, perfect for cycling, jogging or walking. As a result the pace of life in Münster is seen as a bit less frenetic than in other cities in this part of Germany.

Bicycles are everywhere, and the surplus of machines over residents is due both to multiple ownership and to daily commuting in from the surrounding region. There are bike racks for parking throughout the city centre, including one with 3,300 available spaces opposite the main railway station. Over 60 specialist bike retailers operate in the city and many will offer a rental service to visitors.

Home for the weekend

One feature of German student life is that a large number decide to study at their nearest university, whilst still living at home with their parents. Because the Westfälische Wilhelms-Universität (named after the former German emperor) is the sixth largest in Germany, this has the effect of reducing the number of people in the city over the weekends, actually making it quieter and even more appealing.

The average age of the city’s residents is around 40, making it one of the youngest in the country, a feature it shares with other medium sized cities with large universities, such as Heidelberg and Freiburg. The Altstadt is well endowed with bars and restaurants which appeal to the student population. Wednesday is the big night out for students and the teaching staff at the university helpfully avoid scheduling lectures for Thursday mornings!

Aside from the social life and the bikes, the quality of the other local open spaces is one of the reasons why the city is so appealing to potential students. It has a very justifiable reputation as a “green” city, further enhancing its appeal. The Aasee, a beautifully set lake just to the south west of the city centre, is a magnet for the student population when the weather is good, either just for relaxation purposes after lectures or to participate in any number of the water sports activities available.

The area surrounding the city, known as the Münsterland, is largely flat and ideal for cycling as a way to explore the region. The Rieselfelder Nature Reserve, with its 130 lakes, is just north of the city and the 100 Castle Route offers four routes (north, south, east or west) and the opportunity for a longer ride out to see a variety of attractive stately homes and romantic castles.

For quality of life and visitor appeal, there are few places that can rival Münster. – Mark Arrol

The River Ems runs north from Rheine on the Lower Saxony/North Rhine Westphalia border to the North Sea at Emden, close to the Dutch border. Compared to other parts of Germany, it’s fair to say it lacks dramatic landscape beauty, being extremely flat, and its handsome brick farms and manor houses a largely hidden away.

However this flatness – a maximum elevation of just 59 metres above sea level – and subtlety appeals to the growing market of cycle-based holidaymakers. Many are riding the Emsland Route, a circular cycling path over 300 km long which is a perfect way to see and experience the region. One half follows the path of the river, from Rheine to Papenburg, and the other takes you across the more varied landscape of moorland, forests and fields. The route also takes in the region’s major towns (Lingen, Meppen and Haren) and the 5,000-year-old megalithic stones that were brought across by Scandinavians during the Ice Age. Many of these are thought to be tombs, and they also feature on Germany’s Route of Megalithic Culture.

Whilst the Emsland Route is the most popular path, there are over 40 other marked long distance cycle paths around the region, covering over 3,000 km. Many of these routes are relatively flat and consequently accessible to all. This focus on Emsland as a tourist destination for bike tours has allowed many of the hotels in the area to market themselves as ideal places for cyclists to stay, such as Meppen’s Hotel Tiek.

It’s not just tourists that cycle, the locals do as well.  The roads are full of cyclists and at the region’s largest football club, SV Meppen, there are hundreds of bicycles parked outside the stadium, way more than the number of cars in the car parks. For many short journeys, going by bike is the best option, being both healthier and more environmentally friendly.

So if you are looking for a family-oriented break, where you can pedal at a leisurely place through attractive towns and countryside, it is worth considering Emsland.      – Mark Arrol

A small coastal town in Germany’s Schleswig-holstein not far from the border with Denmark, Eckernförde has more than a touch of Danish hygge. Some of the port buildings alongside the creek are painted that rusty red typical of Scandinavian countries, and the narrow cobbled lanes lined with half-timbered fishermen’s cottages look to be straight out of Hans Christian Andersen’s fairytales, particularly where the wooden lifting footbridge spans the narrows in the port.

Not so long ago this was primarily a fishing town, famous for its silver harvest of sprats and herring, which used to be prolific in these parts of the Baltic. A century ago there were as many as 47 smokeries in town, preserving the fish for winter consumption; all but one are now closed, and the one in Gudewerdtstrasse is now a very authentic Alte Fischräucherei museum run by volunteers.

These days Eckernförde is better known as an Ostseebad, a spa resort, which means the beach is thick with Strandkorb beachbasket chairs, including a new line that you can actually stay in overnight. You can see why the place is popular, because the beach itself is three miles of gentle sands, beautifully protected at the back of a sheltered bay, backed by a promenade dotted with little cafes.

Fish food

You can still eat fish here, of course. Notably in the rather unremarkable-looking Meergold restaurant/shop in Jungfernsteig, where good value fish lunches (including herring) are super fresh. For top-end cuisine, Fischdeel (Kattsund 22) is a proper gastronomic experience, with engaging chef Torsten Schott regularly popping out of his kitchen to find out exactly what his customers want.

Some of that fish is still landed in the small port, where you can often buy direct from the fishermen themselves. Otherwise the port often has vintage tall-masted sailing ships berthed here, with the quayside itself backed by newly-developed coffee places and upmarket apartments.

Unlike many a beach resort Eckernförde is a proper town, and whilst a lot of the shops are craft- and gift-oriented for the holiday visitor, it also has all the normal high street activity required to sustain a community outside the holiday seasons. One particular feather in its cap is the annual nature documentary festival ‘Green Screen’, which takes place here every September, when the small town brims over with international film makers and broadcasters.

All in all, it’s a charming mix of Danish and German port-beach-town, and worth seeking out.

For a certain generation the Volkswagen Beetle, or Käfer, as it’s known in Germany, is epitomised by the plucky, endearing Herbie in the 1968 Disney movie The Love Bug. Astonishing, then, to discover that the Beetle was conceptualised by no less a person than Adolf Hitler who, while in prison during the 1920s for his unsuccessful putsch, dreamt of a way to solve Germany’s unemployment problem by building a series of straight roads (autobahns) for motor vehicles, and mass producing a car which the average man in the street would be able to buy.

By 1933, the Nazis having taken power, work began on those roads, while the following year, a Stuttgart-based design company, owned and run by eccentric engineer Ferdinand Porsche, was given the prestigious task of designing the ‘People’s Car’.

Hitler’s criteria for this vehicle of the future were that the car must be able to reach 62mph, run at 42 miles per gallon of fuel, and must be able to readily transport a family of four. The maximum acceptable price for such a vehicle was £86.

The design which matched these requirements had a rear engine, a backbone chassis and torsion bar front suspension, and it was based on a model Porsche had already built for Zundapp in 1931, though legend also tells that it was Hitler himself that suggested it should look like a beetle, due to the natural streamlining of the insect.

By 1938, with war looming in Europe, the long awaited factory was opened in the Saxon city of Fallersleben. Low level production continued during WWII but didn’t pick up until the Americans handed over the factory to British control in 1945. What happened next has entered the annals of automotive history because, when the British offered the production line to a range of existing manufacturers, they found themselves unanimously refused. An official report famously found that “the vehicle does not meet the fundamental technical requirement of a motor-car … it is quite unattractive to the average buyer … To build the car commercially would be a completely uneconomic enterprise.”

It very nearly didn’t get built

It might have all ended there, and that would have been the end of the Volkswagen. Instead, Yorkshire born Ivan Hirst, a major in the Royal Electrical and Mechanical Engineers sent to dismantle the entire production line and ship out the machinery and tooling as reparations, became a great champion of the little car. Over the next few years Hirst re-commissioned machine tools, body presses and assembly jigs, even setting up a sales and service network. By 1952, the Beetle was being sold in 46 countries: its success a symbol of hope for the young republic edging out from the rubble of war.

There was a kind of synthesis between the story of the Beetle and how the post-war German people imagined themselves, as resilient, reliable and without pretension. By the late 1950s, the car had so endeared itself to the emerging American middle classes that auto magazines were using the phrase ‘Beetlemania’ to describe the phenomenon by which this quirky German import had captured the hearts of the most passionate car-loving nation in the world.

The last Beetle was produced in Mexico in 2003, by which time more than 21 million of these vehicles had come off the production line, over a period of 64 years.  Not only was it the first car ever to have outsold Ford’s Model T, but the fact that it did so with its roots in such a difficult period of German history just says a tremendous amount about the integrity of its design.

The Beetle is, of course, one of the key iconic designs in the Zeithaus collection at VW’s Autostadt, in Wolfsburg.

Come the darkest days of January, just after the first frost, the woodlands and heath around cities such as Hannover, Bremen and Oldenburg fill with shadowy cabbage-fanciers, taking it in turns to haul a handcart that clinks suspiciously as it goes over the bumps. Occasionally they will break into song, and some of them may even peel off to bosseln (hurl a ball) into the gloom. Given the normally dour outlook of many northern Germans, these groups are surprisingly cheerful given the time of year, the coldness of the air and the shortness of the day. But then they’re doing a Kohlfahrt, a cabbage walk, and the secret to their conviviality may be the clinking contents of the handcart.

The Kohlfahrt is one of the traditions of a region which, with Schleswig-Holstein, grows the lion’s share of Europe’s cabbage. A lot of this winter vegetable is turned into sauerkraut, but large amounts of kale or Grünkohl are eaten fresh, and celebrated with a long schnapps-assisted walk.

A group activity that everyone can afford, which combines exercise and conviviality at a time of year when the choice of recreation is limited

Cabbage walks can be organized by associations, by families, or for visitors. Many hotels will advertise packages where they provide the handcart, equipped with map, soft drinks, beers, spirits, and hot drinks. The map will be marked with a three-hour route, starting and finishing at the hotel or restaurant, many of which will also provide the Bosseln ball and an explanation of the rules.

Basically, Bosseln is similar to the road-bowling done in Ireland. It involves hurling a specially made (usually hard rubber) ball as far as possible either down a road or across fields and through woods. And although it sounds athletic, few take it terribly seriously, using it instead as an excuse for more refreshment.

The cabbage walk ends with a Grünkohlessen, cabbage dinner, at the hotel or restaurant which provided the handcart. On the menu is Grünkohl and pinkel, a special kind of sausage, along with smoked ham and potatoes. At the end of the meal the diners elect a cabbage king or cabbage couple, either the people who ate the most, or who performed most memorably during the drinking games of the walk. They have the responsibility of organizing the next year’s entertainment.

And despite the good humouredness of the whole proceedings, there’s an element of seriousness to the tradition. The Kohlfahrt is a group activity that everyone can afford, which combines exercise and conviviality at a time of year when the choice of recreation is limited. It sure beats yet another day of mooching around Ikea.

Getting There: International airports at Bremen, Hamburg, and Hanover. International rail connections into Cologne from Brussels (Thalys), which connect with the Eurostar from London. See our Travel page for airlines, rail and tour operators.

Staying There: our recommended hotels are here for Niedersachsen, here for Bremen, and here for Hamburg. They include a schloss or two.

In the UK it is the barrow boys of London’s markets who have a reputation for quick-witted, earthy humour, but in Northern Germany it is the fishermen, particularly those do their own marketing. Buying fresh fish straight from the boat is a surprising feature of many small, mud-clogged North Sea ports – Hooksiel, for example – and usually there’ll be a witticism thrown in with your change.

Whether or not that was the actual ship that caught the fish, or even the actual people who did the fishing, doesn’t really matter. Certainly the likes of Eely Dieter at the Hamburg Fishmarket has transcended any humble origins as a deckhand. He’s now a TV personality, famed for his sharp tongue and pungent innuendo, but you do have to get up at 6am on a Sunday morning for the honour of becoming the butt of his jokes: many do.

Buying fresh fish straight from the boat is a surprising feature of many small, mud-clogged North Sea ports

Northern Germans love their fish, but they do it a bit differently to other countries – and indeed other parts of Germany. A big traditional feature of this coast are Krabben, which are small prawns, caught by boats called Kuttes. The problem with these little beasts is the handling required, and many a port, and many a seafood restaurant, have prawn-peeling competitions to keep the interest alive. Otherwise, the Krabben tend to get sent to Morroco, where the fiddly business takes place, and then get trucked back.

Also generally making a long journey from suppliers overseas are the locally-available herring, which come in many forms. Herring used to be abundant off these shores, but have been overfished, but they still put on a good show in the shops and restaurants. A popular dish is Brathering (herring which is fried and then marinaded), Rollmops (sometimes called Bismarck Herring) which is pickled in vinegar and then rolled around a gherkin, and the luridly purple Heringssalat – herring salad with beetroot and mayonnaise.

This is also a coast for smokeries, such as Küsten-Räucherei Albrecht and Räucherei an der Schleuse in Harlesiel, northwest of Wilhelmshaven. Smoked mackerel is common, as is smoked halibut, and many families will make an expedition to the seaside and buy smoked fish for their picnic, eating it with their fingers. Smoked eels are big in these parts, although the eels themselves could as easily have been caught in Poland or in the UK as here.

In certain restaurants the eating of the eel can have a drinking ritual associated with it, the Ammerländer Löffeltrunk, where schnapps served in a spoon is drunk before, during and after eel consumption, often with the following exchange in Platt Deutsch (regional dialect) with the waiter/host.

Host: “Ick seh Di.” (I see you)
Guest: “Dat freit mi.” (I am glad about that)
Host: “Ick sup Di to” (I drink to your health.)
Guest: “Dat do.” (Please do.)
Host: “Ick heb Di tosapen.” (I have drunk to your health)
Guest: “Hest’n Recht’n drapen” (You found the right companion)

Find more information on the Hamburg Fishmarkt.

Getting There: International airports at Bremen, Hamburg, Hanover and Paderborn. International rail connections into Cologne from Brussels (Thalys), which connect with the Eurostar from London. See our Travel page for airlines, rail and tour operators.

Staying There: our recommended hotels are here for Niedersachsen, here for Bremen, and here for Hamburg.