Magical Germany (2024)

08/02/2021

Who’s with me that snowy German woods are the place to be!? Though perhaps not for long as it’s -12 degrees C in some places in Central Germany at the moment! Still, there’s nothing better than having a snuggly small child to cuddle in a sling on a wintry walk like I had on this stroll through the forest!

Whenever I’m in the woods in Germany I always think of the children’s books The Gruffalo and The Gruffalo’s Child (the latter of which is set in a snowy forest). You might wonder why, given that the books were written by Julia Donaldson, a British author, but did you know the illustrator she teamed up with, Axel Scheffler, is German? His depiction of the forest in those books seems so quintessentially German to me, somehow steeped in the tradition of the German fairy tale (think of the Grimms brothers!) Donaldson and Scheffler have partnered on many books and theirs is one of my favourite examples of Anglo-German cooperation, which Brexit alas will make harder in future.

Hope you’re able to enjoy some wintry feels today, whether that’s indoors or out! 🥶 ❄️ 🧊

07/02/2021

Who else looks at live webcams and pretends they are in their favourite places?! I love this one of the Wernigerode market place, and often find myself loading it up to see what’s going on there! As soon as my 4 year old saw the snow ❄️ there today, he pointed at the screen and said “es schneit!” (‘It’s snowing’) (check out my stories 👆🏻 for an adorbs video of him saying it!)

It’s strange to see the market place so deserted, I’m not sure if that’s because of the blizzard or Covid, or a bit of both. It’s still beautiful though 😍

06/02/2021

Hands up who’s been to Wuppertal? 🙌🏻 I have a railway loving family and so this town has always been high on the list because ... it has a suspended monorail as its main form of public transport! Yes, really! For train lovers, Wuppertal is world famous, but for the rest of us, we can be forgiven for not having heard of it 🤣

The monorail (Schwebebahn), built in 1901, follows the river for lots of its length and connects up what used to be five separate areas which joined up to form Wuppertal in 1929. This was going to be the transport of the future ... but somehow it didn’t really catch on elsewhere!

Still, it is a lot of fun to ride on and just seems totally wacky to anyone who doesn’t live there. We enjoyed riding up and down the line with our children who felt like it was something out of a sci-fi movie!

02/02/2021

Hello dear social media fam, it’s been a while! I have had so many hopes and dreams for Magical Germany that have been hard to realise with Covid raging - it’s hard to pour in lots of effort when you don’t know how long the world won’t be able to travel for. So I’ve been sitting on it and wondering what I can do with this project and how I can grow it. Well the good news is I have big ideas 👍🏻, a fair dollop of motivation, and some scraps of time around home educating my two children full time! Watch out on my grid for updates - I hope to share stories and expand into talking about German books/literature, tips on learning the language, and maybe even venture into the politics and history of the German speaking world 😬, all of which fascinate me and all of which I hope to explain and share to English speakers who don’t know the country and culture well, especially those of us in the UK. Who’s with me? 🙌🏻

For now, I have enjoyed seeing so many shots of snowy trees recently that I thought I’d share one of mine, taken in Hahnenklee in December 2017, on a gloriously sunny day when practically no one else was on the Bocksberg. Traumhaft schön, was? 😍

16/06/2020

One place we always go back to in Aachen is this lovely bakery! Our friend Jenni introduced us to it, and it is always a treat to stop by there. Aachener Printen are a kind of Lebkuchen specific to the area that I can assure you are really delicious!! Sadly, on this occasion, I was unable to partake thereof, as I was breastfeeding a baby with a cow's milk protein allergy. Most restaurants and cafés were super at catering for me (and baby, who had just started solids), usually bringing out a massive folder with all the allergens in every recipe so I could go through it. It did, however, add to the stress of trying to entertain a bouncy three year old, order quickly so said three year old would eat and sit still, and juggle a baby who often wanted to nurse, all while explaining his allergy in a foreign language... Fun times!

At Nobis Printen, the only thing that they could be sure had no milk protein and no soya in was .... This pretzel. Still. It was German. And it tasted great.

13/06/2020

Most Brits have never heard of Aachen, but it's famous in Germany: it's the place where the German kings were crowned - the cathedral was built in 800AD - and also the burial place of Charlemagne, the most famous member of the Carolingian dynasty.

I first visited the town in 2004 on a German Christmas markets school trip and have been a fan ever since. It is not overrun with tourists, but has plenty to offer the visitor. I am lucky to have a friend who lives here, and she has shown us round on the several occasions we have visited.

As ever, children are often unwilling to pose for photographs, and this is evident in the last photo in this sequence! We would have coped a lot less well on the cobbled pedestrian area without the ring sling that we carried our 7 month old about in, too. Look out for later posts on a lovely local bakery and the thermal baths!

12/06/2020

OK, I'm back, and doing something a bit different this time. Since none of us can travel, I'm going to post over some weeks an epic holiday we went on in June 2017, in an attempt to relive it a little through pictures! Half of the holiday was in Austria, so I'm not sure whether I should include that bit since this page is supposed to be promoting Germany, so I'll have to have a think about that one!

In any case, we crossed the channel at Dover-Calais and drove to our first stop over in Aachen, a town that we keep returning to as it is so lovely. It's in the 'Dreiländereck' close to the border with both the Netherlands and Belgium and it really displays the advantages of the Schengen agreement as travel is so easy between the three countries (sometimes you can't even be sure which one you're in!) As my husband had some Arcor points to use up from business travel, we stayed at the Novotel, near to the city centre, and it was a winner in many respects, including in the room layout allowing our then three year old to make the most of hide and seek! The staff were brilliant and gave each of the children a toy as a gift on arrival, too!

03/05/2020

A whole month since I last posted on here and I feel I need to offer you all an apology for my absence! For two weeks I was taken ill, probably with Covid-19 (so suspected the doctor I spoke to), and was unable to do any kind of Germany-related posting at all. But for the last two weeks I haven't been able to bring myself to get back into it. Why? I started this project a few months ago, not long before we were all locked down, with no idea what 2020 would bring. I bought a domain name and got excited about blogging about all things German and sharing my passion with you all, particularly for those in the UK for whom one of their close European neighbours is almost wholly unknown. I wrote many articles in my head about places, food, stuff for families, history, culture and language.

And then Corona came. And none of us knows what travel after Corona is going to look like. Certainly it will be some time before things get back to 'normal', if indeed normal ever returns. Our new normal will involve limited travel, much social distancing, and many attractions will remain closed for the foreseeable future (possibly years). One of the most pressing concerns for the travel and tourism industry is that many companies will not survive this: I fear especially for small family-run businesses in the hotel and gastronomy industries. Visiting such establishments has really typified my travels to Germany up till this point, and I really don't know how many of them will come out the other side intact.

Is there any point sharing my travels from Germany pre-corona, given that travel post-corona could look entirely different? I don't know the answer to this question. Should I share the memories anyway? Possibly. Probably, even, as long doing so is not detrimental to my mental health. We are all grieving our own lost hopes and dreams for 2020, and we need to be kind to ourselves.

That's why we ordered 30 sausages, a load of Pretzels and real German ketchup and Currywurst sauce from a brilliant online shop called The Sausage Man (highly recommend). And my husband baked Amerikaners, a wonderful German cake that makes me feel a tiny little bit like Germany is not so far away.

03/04/2020

Germany doesn't always have to mean sausage, beer and 'traditional' food: when we were last in Ulm, most of the restaurants were having their 'Ruhetag' (day off from trading) and so we ended up in this lovely Asian fast food restaurant next to the minster. It was really fairly priced, very quick to serve and utterly delicious! In places like these our children devour prawn crackers at an alarming rate, but we didn't know the word for it, never having ordered them before in Germany. You learn a new thing every day, and Krabbenchips have since become part of my active vocabulary, ha!

The quick meal was just what we needed so that we could (try and...) get the children to sleep at a reasonable hour before our onward journey the next day. What kinds of restaurants do you visit abroad when travelling with children? Do you always eat traditional local food or are you more adventurous?

02/04/2020

The Minster in Ulm is without doubt the focal point of the city. There's a great word for this in German: Wahrzeichen. It is usually translated as landmark, but I always find myself struggling for a suitable rendering in English and usually just stick with the German! With the advent of the selfie, it seemed the thing to do to take one of all of us in front of the monster minster (see what I did there!?) to record our visit. It was a pretty sleepy Sunday evening in June that we passed through Ulm on this occasion, and we felt like we had the run of the city as not much was open. But that meant we could let the little ones run wild in the pedestrian zone and after a long day in the car that's just what they needed. For those of you with children, how do you get them to relax after a day of travelling? Tips welcome!

01/04/2020

Shall we go to Ulm next? On the edge of the Swabian Jura, Ulm is one of my favourite cities in southern Germany. It is large enough to have lots going on, while provincial enough to have its own character and flair. We liked it so much, we have been back to visit on numerous occasions.

Most impressively, Ulm boasts the tallest church in the world - honestly! Its Minster is a whopping 161.5 metres, it took over 500 years to build!

I'll be sharing lots from this city over the next few days, so stay tuned!

28/03/2020

This is a strange time, no question. No one knows when life will get back to 'normal', or even if the new 'normal' will be anything like the old one. At times like these, we need connections to the past more than ever, to help ground us and remind us that people have gone through similar before. It helps us to establish what really matters, and what definitely doesn't. But dreams matter too, and part of the loss we are all grieving is the loss of our hopes and dreams for 2020 and beyond. They are for most not a question of life and death, and they are perhaps not a top priority, but they still matter, and they still need to be grieved.

When I want to escape the stresses and anxieties of life, I try to get to a high place. Up a hill. On top of a mountain. Castles were, for strategic reasons, often built on high ground. Lichtenstein Castle is no different. What I would give to be able to escape there now! Although the castle often features on accounts and in travel literature showcasing Germany, very few seem to actually visit it - when we were there there were only about 10 people up there with us! It really was such a different experience from visiting that famous castle in Bavaria that everyone goes to (you all know which one I mean!)

There'll come a time when we can visit places again. Until then, let's travel digitally. And be patient. And focus on what really matters.

20/03/2020

You might have noticed that I've been a bit quiet on here in recent days. It's because, like lots of (wannabe) travel influencers, I have been struggling to work out how to share travel tips and places I've loved visiting in the era of Covid-19 when people are scared, many are ill and some are dying. Travel seems trivial and, in any case, almost none of us can do it and almost all of us should not be doing it.

But having thought about it for a while, and having realized that this state of (semi-)lockdown may well last many months, perhaps even longer, it occurs to me that this is really the only way we *can* travel, and goodness we could all do with some escapism. I've been delving into German fairy tales, inspired by my recent sharing of castles, and it has been good for my soul. There is often the theme of discovery or travel to far away lands, which strikes a chord with my love of exploration, especially in Germany. Though fairy tales can sometimes be morbid, they are also simplistic in ways that the world does not seem to be at the moment: the hero or heroine, often of humble origin, has a challenge to overcome against the odds, sets out on a mission to do so and once the mission has been completed, lives happily ever after. I might recoil as an emancipated woman at the many unhelpful gender stereotypes prevalent in fairy tales, but at least good things happen to good people, while bad things happen to bad people.

When we look squarely at life we know that people are not actually neatly divisible into good and bad people, and that the human character is much more complex. But at this time of complexity, let's not feel bad about longing for a simpler life where moral parameters seem less hard to navigate.

Lichtenstein castle has such an impressive tower. From this angle I can think of nothing other than the tale of Rapunzel, and can see her in my mind's eye with her hair tumbling down out of the window. While I definitely don't need a fairy tale prince to save me, I know I need a Saviour. We all do, if we're honest. Stay safe, all, and stay indoors!

12/03/2020

Have your travel plans been affected by Covid-19? With the prospect of many of us facing increasing social distancing methods and self-isolation, I find myself thinking that, since we have to be alone, I wouldn't mind retreating to a castle like this and pulling up the drawbridge (making sure to be well stocked with supplies first of course!)

Although Lichtenstein Castle is mostly a nineteenth century revamp in the Gothic Revival style, there was a castle here previously dating back to the medieval period, and I wonder how previous occupants coped with plagues and illnesses that spread across the land in times when medical knowledge and care was much less advanced. Sticking out so prominently on the rock face, its inhabitants would have been able to see anyone approaching for miles - one of the reasons of course why fortresses were built in such positions.

Still, there's nothing fairy-tale-like about Coronavirus and I hope all my followers are well and taking the necessary precautions to best help the most vulnerable in their midst who the virus will hit the hardest. Thinking of all, stay safe!

08/03/2020

Can you believe this is actually a real castle?! Visiting Lichtenstein castle was one of those times where I wasn't sure whether art is imitating life or life is imitating art. It looks like something out of a Disney film, and to be honest there's a reason for that: Germany had its own sort of 'Disney moment' in the nineteenth century, when many such castles were (re-)built as part of the German Romantic movement, which was also round about the same time in which collecting and publishing fairy tales became very popular. This castle was built in the Gothic revival style, which basically means it was designed to look a bit like a medieval castle. The building of it was actually inspired by a novel of the same name by Wilhelm Hauff, who, incidentally, is best known for his fairy tale collection.

I'll be sharing some insights from our visit here over the next few days, so get ready for more castle spam!

07/03/2020

Blaubeuren is so tucked away and quiet that it felt like we were the only tourists there when we visited in September. Yet it still felt like the village had put on its best display for its residents and occasional visitors, and I couldn't get enough of the window boxes! Down in the south of Germany, winters are less long and the weather is often a little warmer than in the north. There is a culture of sitting outside at restaurants and cafés, which I really love. This eatery looks very inviting, don't you think? When we passed by it was quite early in the morning, but I would have loved to drop in for lunch, especially with the sky so blue and the sun so warm. Next time!

06/03/2020

There is a gorgeous walk round the spring at the Blautopf in Blaubeuren. It's an accessible path and is well surfaced so all can enjoy it, and it doesn't take very long at all. I absolutely adore the little mill wheel you can see in the second picture and stood watching it for quite a while, listening to the water trickle over it. It was like being transported back in time!

05/03/2020

Can you believe that this lake is really *this* colour? Tucked away in the Swabian Jura is the village of Blaubeuren, which boasts this amazing spring, the source of the local Blau river. 'Blautopf' means 'blue pot', and you can definitely see why! I first came across Blaubeuren on a travel programme on German TV, and I couldn't believe that the colour of the lake was as bright as it seemed on screen, and figured they must have been using some clever filter. But when I saw it for myself, my jaw dropped. It reminded me a bit of the Hokitika gorge in New Zealand, and it made me realize how we really don't need to race around the world to find stunningly beautiful places, because they are right on our doorstep in Europe! The second picture shows a sign with a Bible verse reminding visitors of the glory of creation, and I felt a real sense of inner peace and a need to slow down and marvel at this creation (and indeed its creator!) rather than rush off to another attraction.

Although the Blautopf is fairly well known in the area and can get a bit busier in the summer months, we were pretty much the only visitors on a weekday in September. I think it's a gem that is not very well known outside the region and that makes it extra special for me. The building you can see is a restaurant and bar, and you can sit outside by the spring to enjoy your meal - heavenly.

03/03/2020

I couldn't move on from Sigmaringen without sharing a picture of its fabulous Rathaus, or town hall, situated as always on the town's market square. In front of it is the 'Marktbrunnen' or Market Fountain, depicting one of the Counts of Hohenzollern-Sigmaringen of yore, Johann. Town halls in Germany are often a focal point architecturally and Sigmaringen is no different.

Have you noticed the beautiful window boxes, too? This is something I also really associate with Germany (and Austria and Switzerland too, for that matter). I love how sometimes even the lowliest of dwellings is brightened up with window boxes full of colourful flowers. Germans really seem to take pride in their gardening habits and I so love walking round towns and villages admiring all the flowers underneath the windows or on balconies. Keep an eye out next time you're there in the warmer months!

02/03/2020

Something that I was not expecting when we visited the Swabian Jura was that the region doesn't really 'do' sausage. To my knowledge it has no special sausage variety of its own, and I really struggled to find one on the menu in a lot of places. That's not to say the region doesn't have its own culinary specialities - it absolutely does, the most famous of which are called 'Maultaschen', which are a bit like ravioli and utterly delicious. Rather sadly we don't appear to have taken a picture of any, and we'll have to rectify this next time we visit!

On this occasion in one of Sigmaringen's local family run pubs I opted for an old classic - Schnitzel and chips. I was pregnant, avoiding strong flavours, and sometimes it's really better just to go with what you know! The eatery is called 'zum alten Fritz', a not uncommon name for a German pub: the name pays homage to the notable Prussian king Frederick the Great. What kinds of restaurants do you like to visit when you travel to Germany?

01/03/2020

Wouldn't you like to walk up these steps as a guest to this castle? The Swabian Jura is full of castles, such as this one in Sigmaringen, many of which are still in the possession of the nobility. After the abdication of the Kaiser in 1918, the German nobility were allowed to keep their titles. Latterly, a branch of the famous Hohenzollern family was the ruling class in Swabia, and many of the castles and palaces have a connection to or are in the possession of its descendants.

I am a big castle fan, and Germany is full of them, so prepare yourself for many more to come. We loved visiting Schloss Sigmaringen, which was the main residency of the Sigmaringen branch of the Hohenzollerns from 1576 until 1850 and is now owned by the management for the business interests of the current Fürst (sort of like a prince), Karl Friedrich. Although you can only visit as part of a tour, and although the tours are only given in German, you are expertly and relatively swiftly guided round and it was such an informative and enjoyable experience for us. This is not always so in similar attractions (and, having been a tour guide myself, I know how easily it can go wrong!) For those who have few German skills, there are information sheets you could read as you go round. When we visit castles with our children, they are usually enchanted by them and pretend that they are in a living fairy tale. I mean, can you blame them!? If I'm honest I pretty much do the same ...

Second picture source https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sigmaringen_Castle

27/02/2020

It's easy to get carried away by the beauty of perspectives like this in towns like Sigmaringen, with onion domed towers and spires so typical of southern Germany, and feel like you can barely climb out of the fairy tale. But every town has more to its history and I feel it is important to share some lesser known, and often less pleasant, current and historical insights on this page too. The tourist boards might want to keep us all in fairy tale mode, but the truth is you don't get to know a country properly unless you understand all its facets, positive and negative. And I recognize that the idealization of Germany as a unified fairy tale country is highly correlative with nineteenth century nationalism, which as we all know sporned much worse in the twentieth. I take this to mean I have a responsibility to portray Germany truthfully, whether or not that's the kind of content followers wish to see.

Sigmaringen, for instance, was the centre of multiple forced sterilizations as part of the Nazi's T4 euthenasia program. Later, dozens were deported to local locations and murdered just because they had been designated 'lebensunwert' (not worthy of life).

Towards the end of the war, Sigmaringen was the seat of the exiled Vichy France government which had fled the allied invasion of France in 1944. The town was eventually evacuated by free French troops and Pétain, the former leader of Vichy France, was captured after escaping and tried for treason after the war.

Most Germans recognize the need to engage critically with their history, and are way ahead of Anglo countries in that regard. When we travel there, I try to share this aspect of the country, age-appropriately, with the children too, so that it is never forgotten.

26/02/2020

Sigmaringen, situated on the upper Danube, was the centre of our trip round the Swabian Jura, and is a small and quaint town with much charm. We stayed in the half timbered building you can see here, the Hotel Restaurant Traube. Whenever we travel to smaller places in Germany, we tend to seek out a 'Pension'.
These are smaller, family run hotels (a bit like B&Bs in the UK, but often they have restaurants too) because not only is the quality of hospitality guests receive usually exceptionally high, but you really do dive head first into the local culture by avoiding international hotel chains. It also appeals to my ideal of slow travel. It does often require some German skills, but not many, and just a willingness to try is often all that's needed to get by.

We were not disappointed with the Traube (which, incidentally, means 'grape'), and we were cared and cooked for expertly under our half board booking. The food was wonderfully Swabian - more on that in a subsequent post - and the service full of local charm.

Have you stayed in family run hotels in Germany before?

24/02/2020

Autumn is a wonderful time to visit anywhere in Germany, because the country is so full of low mountain ranges and forests, and one area we loved visiting in autumn a few years ago is known in English as the Swabian Jura (the German is die Schwäbische Alb) in southern Germany. It's made up of a moderately high forested plateau, along with the towns that lie at the foot of it, such as the famous university town of Tübingen. Most of the forest is filled with deciduous trees, and it is a simply gorgeous place on a sunny day when the leaves are just turning.

The many regional distinctions and cultures in Germany generally reflect the fact that the country unified later than many European nations (1871 to be precise!), and Swabia has a long and noble history as well as its own cultural heritage and dialect, all of which it has retained even in modern times. The Swabian Jura specifically is replete with ruined and rebuilt castles, and it is a wonderful place to go walking. Given that it's only about an hour's drive from Stuttgart, it is a popular destination for city dwellers at the weekend, but it didn't feel full when we visited. Have you visited the Swabian Jura before?

23/02/2020

Do you take time to seek out the detail when you're travelling? It's definitely one of the hardest things to do with children in tow, but it is well worth doing and for me is a real part of slow travel. I get nothing out of a visit if I feel like I am having to race around to the next thing, and that kind of travel rarely allows me to get a real feel for the place I'm visiting.
This detail shows the clock on the Hamburg city hall or Rathaus, the whole of which you can see in the second picture. I love the way the sun is catching it, and it makes me think of all the many times in history when people have looked up to the clock when gathering in that square. Like elsewhere, the Rathaus in Germany is a focal point of a town or city, set usually in a square where thousands pass through daily and gather for historic occasions, be they protest or celebration. Hamburg has seen a lot of both in its long history. Officially it is called the Freie und Hansestadt Hamburg, or Free and Hanseatic City of Hamburg, which points to its membership of the medieval Hanseatic League (a confederation of merchant guilds and market towns in northern Europe which went on to dominate Baltic maritime trade) and its later status as a free imperial city of the Holy Roman Empire. It is this aspect of Hamburg which has so captivated me when I've been there: it's a bit different from elsewhere, doing things its own way, because historically it had always been a free town with loose links to the rest of what is now Germany. And Hamburg dwellers are so proud of that, and I like that.
This is the last in my current series about Hamburg. I hope you've enjoyed it! Next I'll be taking you round the beautiful Swabian Jura, so be sure to follow if you like the sound of that!

22/02/2020

Another wonderful attraction that's free of charge is Hamburg's elegant botanical gardens, called Planten un Blomen. The German speakers among you (or anyone else who pays attention to how languages are used) will notice that its name doesn't look like "normal" (i.e. standard) German, in fact, Planten looks a lot like the English (the Standard German is Pflanzen). Why is that? Well, allow me to share with you a little of my linguistic knowledge (the PhD has got to be useful for something, right!?) German and English are related languages, because they (along with several others) share a common 'ancestor' language called (West) Germanic. Hamburg is part of an area of Germany that has traditionally been referred to as Low Germany, which was historically the home of (several) non-standard German varieties referred to under the umbrella term of Plattdeutsch or Platt (or, indeed, Low German). In particular, these areas were unaffected by the Second or High German Sound Shift, in which (among other things) Germanic /p/ shifted to /pf/ in initial position, hence the difference between the High German Pflanzen and Low German Planten (Old English was not affected by this sound shift at all, hence "plants"). Almost no one speaks Platt today, as it has been almost totally ousted by High German, but some Platt-like relics hang on in northern Germans' phonology (sound system), in odd phrases like 'moin' as a morning greeting, and in place names, such as this one!

Magical Germany