There are many easy hiking trails in Germany
If you are looking for a reliable way to date cities, here is one clue: look at the churches: If the town centre is studded with churches that look somehow Gothic but not quite (“Neo-Gothic”: overcooked in parts, half-raw in others), then the city in question is mainly a child of the 19th century. If…
Rivalries between cities are always about more than mere topographical proximity, although physical closeness is of course a necessary ingredient. But so are envy and mutual resentment. Rivalries typically develop between cities when one of the two is bigger and the other just big enough to convince itself that it plays in the same league….
You may have come across urban art before (for example, here and here), but I bet you have never seen anything like the Kiefernstrasse in Düsseldorf. Where to find the Most Colourful Street in Germany Today, the Kiefernstrasse – located a few hundred meters to the east of Düsseldorf’s central station and just around the…
If you like forest hikes that are attractive and at the same time not overly strenuous, I bet you will like this one. It has, after all, everything that an Easy Forest Hiker could possibly expect. You will be entertained by glimpses of dense undergrowth that seem to come straight from the primeval woodlands of…
What are the must-have ingredients for an entertaining and enjoyable walk? Well, trees and plants, to begin with, … … then wide open spaces with scenic views into the far distance, … … and on top of that, some bright sunshine would help, if only to highlight the colours of the scenery with a radiantly…
The Altes Land, a few kilometres outside of Hamburg, is Europe’s largest fruit orchard. More than 10 million cherry and apple trees are growing here on the southern bank of the Elbe river, inviting you to stroll through a sea of colour and scenic beauty. That was what we had in mind when we boarded…
St Pauli is the oldest of Hamburg’s Szeneviertels, although you would not have called it a “trendy neighbourhood” when people began to settle here in the late Middle Ages. St Pauli started its life as Hamburg’s messy attic: everything that the municipal administration did not want inside the city walls but, for various reasons, did…
In Germany, more even than in other European countries, the most interesting parts of major cities can be located in the “trendy neighbourhoods”, the Szeneviertel as the Germans call them – a term which, perhaps inadvertently, references the world of the theatre. Inadvertently or not, however, the analogy feels appropriate because these quarters appear to…
Lake Constance – located on the Austro-German-Swiss triangle of borders – is one of central Europe’s great tourist attractions, but it is not perfectly suited for everybody’s taste. My personal problem with Lake Constance concerns its sheer size: should not a lake represent the idea of a confined space, with clearly discernible shorelines wherever you…
Some cities leave you a choice of where to go for an easy hike. You can pick between a walk alongside a lake or a river, a stroll through the gardens of an ancient castle and a journey to a beauty spot up a hill. But not all cities are quite so generous. Some cities,…