Blogging about Germany

[feuervogel]

Because people ask me a lot where they should go when they go to Germany (I'm apparently the local expert for many of my friends), I decided to write a blog series to answer the question. Unfortunately, my experience is confined to the southern third and Berlin, with brief excursions to Potsdam and Leipzig, so when I get to the northeastern third, I'll just be making things up or listing the major cities and saying "read the wikipedia entry." (I did visit Köln one day. All I remember is the Dom, and that's not hard to find at all. Exit train station. Look up. If you don't see it, turn around.)

I've always wanted to visit Dresden, but I've never managed to make it there, and there's not much that I know of in the eastern third. (Ossis, please correct me.) There's the cities I mentioned already, Cottbus, Chemnitz, the Baltic coast, and ... what else? Jena, I suppose, and the Erzgebirge (mountains are cool).

And if anyone has awesome things to say about NRW, Bremen, Hannover, Hamburg, Schleswig-Holstein, or Niedersachsen, chime in! You can see what I've talked about already here.

Comments

[yvi]

Heh, well, I grew up in NRW and now live in Niedersachsen und they both have prettyness to offer!

But first of all, Dresden is a wonderful city and certainly worth two or three days if someone were to tour Germany for a while. I was really rather astonished by just how much I liked it there.

Bremen is a great city and I suppose very representative of cities in Northern Germany. It's been a few years since I've been there, though, so I very fuzzy on the details. It had a sceience museum which I loved and the houses are pretty and the inner city is very nice, especially for going out in the evenings.

Braunschweig, where I live now, is an excellent city to visit. Lots of history to explore, a big historical inner city, and bordering the Hartz for people who want to see some mountains. You can also easily go to Hannover from there, which isn't that intersting for tourists, I suppose, but has the one of the largest zoos in Germany :)

As for NRW, the previous two cities I lived in are also very good for people touring Germany: Münster and Aachen. Both are medium-sized cities (well, for German standards...), with lots to see in terms of historical sites, a nice nightlife due to having so many students, and pretty regions right besides them (the Münsterland if you can stand the flatness, and the Eiffel). Münster has a wonderful cathedral and lots of other churches, if one is into such things. Both have big non-centralized universities which reside in historical buildings (I partially studied in the castle in Münster :))

Düsseldorf and the Ruhrpott... well, I have mixed feelings towards those :D Certainly worth visiting, more so than Cologne, I think. But then, I am biased, having gone to school in Düsseldorf :D There's certainly lots of shopping one can do in that region, and against popular opinion, the Ruhrgebiet actually has a lot of very pretty parks and sights to see.