101 places Rick Steves doesn't know
 

I'm browsing this board for a while now, and like others I noticed a preference for southern Germany (Bavaria, Rhine). The questions usually center around the same places again and again. Don't get me wrong, Bavaria is very nice, Munich is a interesting town, and Rothenburg o.d.T. is charming, but there are lots of other places which are equally interesting, nice and charming. Sadly they are quite unknown... even to alleged experts like Rick Steves. His Germany looks like this:

http://www.amazon.com/Rick-Steves-Ge.../dp/1598802941
Click on "look inside" to see the table on contents. 420 pages for Bavaria and the Rhine, 70 pages for Berlin, 50(!) for the rest of Germany.

So, this thread is about places Rick Steves doesn't know. Everyone can participate, but the places should be *notable*. There are lots of unmentioned sights of national importance. A few words and pics about the sights would be nice. Hidden gems are OK too, when they are close to a bigger sight.

Lets start with:

Quedlinburg
Quedlinburg is the Rothenburg o.d.T. of Eastern Germany. It's more than 1.000 years old, completely preserved, a World Heritage Site with more than 1.200 half-timbered houses, a castle and a Romanic church, which is the burial place of Henry the Fowler, first king of Germany.
The first pic shows the Finkenherd", the place where Henry the Fowler allegedly fixed his birding net (in 919) when messengers told him he would be king:
http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/3076/qdlbrg005.jpg
One of the oldest half-timbered houses in Germany, from 1346:
http://img151.imageshack.us/img151/1051/qdlbrg025.jpg
Market square:
http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/641/qdlbrg032.jpg
http://img202.imageshack.us/img202/6092/qdlbrg037.jpg
And some half-timbered houses:
http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/5093/qdlbrg038.jpg
http://img683.imageshack.us/img683/8092/qdlbrg040.jpg

Maybe you allow an "advertisment" for my birth town, Hameln or Hamelin in English.

It's a picture-perfect example for the Weser renaissance architecture, plus has an old old town with many half-timber houses.
The river Weser valley is quite popular with Dutch, Scandinavian, and UK tourists, but does not see too many US visitors.

You can leisurely drive the River valley road from Hannoversch Münden (near Kassel) to Rinteln and spend each night in a castle or manor.
It's also part of the Fairy Tale road, so you will see many places that should sound familiar if you are familiar with the Bros. Grimm tales.
Highlights would be Hann. Münden, the Sababurg (castle/hotel), Bad Karlshafen, Fürstenberg (porcelain manufactury), Hämelschenburg, Bad Pyrmont (spa), Hameln (obviously, unless you never heard of the Pied Piper), Rinteln, Bückeburg.
The Weser renaissance road goes on until Bremen, but the sights between Bückeburg and Bremen are a bit less by numbers.

YOu can get a first idea what the area looks like here:
http://www.weserbergland-tourismus.de/en/

And here:
http://www.hameln.com/tourism/index.htm

The closest airport is Hannover/Hanover, which has no direct flights to the US, but you usually get cheap airfares on BA via London or KLM via AMS or Lufthansa via FRA.

If you plan to drive the Fairy Tale road, you can start near Frankfurt and go North, drop car in Hannover and take the train back to FRA or add a few days in Berlin, which is just a 90 min train ride from Hannover.

Thanks for some more places to add to my list of wish fors.

what a wonderful idea for a thread. Hope we get many more responses. Quedlinburg is on my list. Looks terrific.

Wernigerode
Wernigerode is a small town close to Quedlinburg, and also known as the "the colourful town in the Harz foothills". Visitors can enjoy a town center full of colorful timber-framed houses, a romantic castle high above the town, the largest narrow gauge railway network in Europe, the highest mountain range in northern Germany... and Hasseröder, a pretty well known beer.

Colorful houses everywhere:
http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/290/wrngrd001.jpg
http://img440.imageshack.us/img440/7933/wrngrd006.jpg
Market square with the beautiful town hall from 1500:
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/3773/wrngrd009.jpg
http://img256.imageshack.us/img256/5609/wrngrd011.jpg
Narrow streets:
http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/1827/wrngrd023.jpg
The smallest house of Wenigerode:
http://img221.imageshack.us/img221/1473/wrngrd026.jpg
The castle:
http://img259.imageshack.us/img259/619/wrngrd027.jpg
Steam train in the Harz mountains:
http://meinfritz.de/contents/5/5/1/7...ure/153323.jpg

I do not knock Rick; he fills a niche.

My favorites outside his book are Regensburg and Goslar.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Regensburg

http://www.goslar.de/

We will be in Regensburg in a bit over a week. I am most smitten with its Dom, the Danube water front and the many plazas connected by alleyways. My wife likes the Thurn and Taxis palace.

In Goslar I just enjoyed the lay of the city with its half-timbered houses and a series of ponds. When my daughter was about 1, I remember taking her for a walk through the town very early one morning while my wife got a bit more rest. It was almost a magical morning in a most inviting place. BTW, the webcams in Goslar show snow on their Christmas Market.

Regards, Gary

I have some favorites around the Taunus Mountain area and also along the Main.

Büdingen is a true gem, a medieval walled city, never been destroyed, and still posseses the charm that Rothenburg has lost.
http://www.buedingen-touristik.de/re...ingen-der-film

Kronberg, pretty little town, way up in the Taunus Mountains, great Staufen castle, the Johannes church is beautiful and unusual.
http://www.burgkronberg.de/rundgang.html

Bad Homburg, Residence of Kaiser Wilhelm 2 and Empress Augusta Victoria with a church next door that will surprise you when you walk in. Gorgeous park, casino, thermal spas, the Saalburg reconstructed Roman fort, Hessen Park - an open air museum for kids and adults. Plenty of hiking, walking the Limes.
http://www.bad-homburg.de/sc/Tourism...re/1616034.asp

Idstein, has some of the most unusual fachwerk houses, a Hexen Turm, and the Union Church.http://en.idstein.de/tourism/

Seligenstadt, home of one of the oldest and largest abbeys, dating from the 800's. http://www.seligenstadt.de/index_2.phtml

Mainz. Rick simply writes it off, so I think he has never been here. If he entered the 1000 year old Dom or St. Stephens, I think he might change his mind.

Frankfurt. Rick really needs to give this city a better look. In fact, I wish all the guidebooks would come give Frankfurt a better look. Most of the gems that are here, seem to have escaped whoever was writing the books or they just had crappy tour guides. If he visited Höchst and the Justinus church, gone into St. Leonhards or the Deutsche Ordens church or even learned any of the Jewish history of Frankfurt, his attitude to the city might change.

Halberstadt
Halberstadt itself, close to Quedlinburg and Wernigerode, isn't noteworthy. Once it was one of the most beautiful towns of the Harz area, but after a carpet bombing in WW2 80% of the old town are gone. Preserved however is the huge cathedral, one of only a few in Germany modeled after churches in northern France, and probably one of the most beautiful Gothic churches in Germany. The interior is completely preserved, and the treasury of the Church is one of the richest in Germany.

General view:
http://www.halberstadt.de/media/bild...dom_gesamt.jpg
Nave:
http://www.ace-online.de/fileadmin/u...6c-800x600.jpg
Treasury:
http://www.thessaloniki.diplo.de/__Z...ild__gross.jpg

This thread is great. A question since we are planning a Germany trip next summer - our theme for the trip is beer, so do any of these towns have an interesting local brew and/or neat brewery that can be toured? We have a general itinerary for the trip, but since it is not until August, there is definitely time to switch things around :)

Every town has it's local brew. Most locals are pleasantly surprised when tourists ask about the favorite local brew.

Don't expect the Bavarian "Mass" type beer glasses. The most common beer serving is between .2 and .25 liter in stemmed glasses or tall thin glasses.

Germany also has great wines. The dry, or trocken, white wines are worth a try.

One of Rick Steve's overlooks is Mittenwald even though many Fodorites have sound it and cherish it.

I have never looked at a Rick Steve's guidebook before but that Table of Contents is truly sad...and a bit of a head-scratcher. No Hamburg????

I am partial to Baden-Wuerttemberg because that's where I lived for 2+ years and as far as I can tell it is excluded from the book except for the Black Forest. I'll just list a few favs:

Tuebingen - beautiful college town with a well-preserved historic district, great outdoor market and shopping

Burg Hohenzollern - awesome perfectly-restored castle south of Tuebingen

Schloss Lichtenstein - another spectacular castle (more of a "hunting lodge") perched on a cliff south of Tuebingen

Kloster Bebenhausen - lovely preserved monastery just outside Tuebingen

Bad Wimpfen - picturesque village overlooking the Neckar Valley

Schwaebisch Hall - mid-sized town with incredible half-timbered houses and a river running through it; great for fine weather strolling

Stuttgart - for anyone who loves cars, the Mercedes and Porsche museums alone are worthy of a visit

And in the north:
Hamburg - a bustling city with great shopping, dining and a fascinating harbor district; the harbor tour is not to be missed!

Luebeck - a fine Hanseatic city with the famous Holstentor and beautifully restored old town

Ruegen - Baltic island off the coast of East Germany, a perfect getaway if you enjoy beaches and hiking - a . It was once a Nazi holiday destination of choice; some of the grand resort towns and hotels have been restored (e.g. Binz).

I could go on and on but I am out of time!

OK...I'll be coming back to this thread for future trips.

Not to be a spoil sport, but Rick Steves doesn't know 1,000,001 places in Europe, and that's not the half of it.

Does it not occur to anyone going traveling anymore to go .... travel????

If you want tourist sights pre-selected for you, fine. Follow a Fodor's thread instead of a Rick Steves book. But Europe is filled with fascinating places, 99 percent of which never appear on lists anywhere, all of which are in easy reach of good lodgings and restaurants.

Take a chance on yourself sometime. Take a chance on Europe without the interface of a tourist guide.

I've got to add three places in Lower Saxony:

Wolfenbuettel - township of half-timbered houses and home to Schloss Wolfenbuettel and the remarkable Duke August Library. It also has some significant churches (Hauptkirche and Trinitaetskirche). It is partly medieval, partly baroque in its architecture.

Celle - another city of beautifully maintained half-timbered houses and seat of the Guelph princes. Some of the facades are painted. It also has a tower you can climb to get an aerial view of the city. Buildings are 16th-18th C.

Duderstadt - near Goettingen. Small township with a really superb half-timbered town hall, a restored medieval wall around the town and a church with twisted spires, something I've never seen before. The picture in this link is of the town hall:

http://www.google.com.au/imgres?imgu...t:429,r:15,s:0

Oops, that's a really long link. Sorry!

I would also like to submit Weimar, in Thuringia. Weimar was where the writers Goethe and Schiller were active (Goethe is the German Shakespeare), and many locations in the city are now UNESCO world heritage sites. It's also home to the Bauhaus movement in art. When Germany was a republic between the two wars the country's constitution was drafted here (the Weimar Republic). Plus the buildings are pretty, although it's not a Fachwerk city. I really like Thuringia and there are others I'd like to add which are historically significant or very pretty (I like Jena myself) but I'll leave them for someone else.

Lavandula

@ November Moon - it used to be the case (and maybe someone in Germany can comment here) that there was a 'cult' beer in the north, Flensburger Pilsner, or 'Flens'. It comes in brown glass bottles with a ceramic flip-top lid. Hopefully you won't have to travel to Flensburg to get one (i.e. the Danish border). But there are heaps of nice beers - Germany has the Reinheitsgebot, special purity laws to ensure that no adulterations are permitted when brewing beer. It makes for less interesting beers than Belgium (no "kriek" or "framboise"), but fab beers anyhow.

Lavandula

We have already visited a number of the places mentioned and several were on my "wish list."

I think the good thing about Rick Steves is he gives some people the confidence to travel when they might not otherwise do so.

bookmarking

I had never heard of this Rick Steves character until a few days ago. No good, huh?

The only place I spent a good chunk of time in was Leipzig. The zoo there is pretty neat, and their Christmas Market was a lot of fun. :)

Thanks for mentioning Büdingen, Mainhatten Girl! I'm going to be staying in Rheinland-Pfalz next April and knew there was a walled city closer than Rothenberg!

I wish other posters were not so quick to put down Rick Steves. At some point, every traveler was a first timer who needed the kind of information a first timer needs. No one can take it all in on the first trip. At least he gives the first timers the courage to get going. Then they learn as they go. No traveler started out knowing everything. And starting out with the places he suggests (in Germany and in other countries) is not really such a bad start.

Thanks for mentioning Weimar, lavandula. Weimar is immensely significant for Germans, maybe even the spiritual heart of Germany. Luther, the Cranachs, Goethe, Schiller, Liszt, Nietzsche, Bach, Herder, Kandinsky, Gropius and many others lived and worked there. The Bauhaus and the first German parliamentary republic were founded in Weimar. The town moreover was the capital of a small Saxon duchy. Today it is a small, quite town with a preserved old town, several castles and summer residences, parks and sadly, we shouldn't forget it, also Buchenwald concentration camp. The best and worst of Germany in a small town.

Old + new casle:
http://img585.imageshack.us/img585/8504/weimar006.jpg
Market square:
http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/134/weimar018.jpg
Street in the old towns:
http://img832.imageshack.us/img832/1579/weimar024.jpg
Epitaph of some Saxon dukes in the so called Herder church. Herder and Luther preached, Bach played here, and Cranach painted the altar:
http://img340.imageshack.us/img340/679/weimar030.jpg
In the old town:
http://img252.imageshack.us/img252/8986/weimar036.jpg
Belvedere, the summer residence of the dukes:
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...re_weimar1.jpg

cynthia, I completely agree with your post. My husband and I took our first train ride in Italy a couple weeks ago. His guide book made it so easy, he took us from point A to point B,C and D. We couldn't afford to make a mistake, our schedule was very tight.

I wonder what a "mistake" means. Not ticking off all the places on the top star list? Seeing the 'wrong' places? As long as you enjoy them, what could be wrong?
There are at least 10,000 other places in Italy (Germany, France, insert any other country of your choice) that are just as interesting and worth visiting as the top-rated ones. There is no such thing as "must sees" - no one will question you at the airport and not let you depart because you have not seen A, B, or C. Some places are still famous although their past glamour is long lost, some because of heavy promotion by some famous author, while the place next-door which is just as nice goes unnoticed.

I agree with Cynthia - I would have liked this thread a lot better without the condescending "we're so much better than you" attitude. Why didn't the OP simply call it Undiscovered Gems in Germany?

No one on Fodors has said Rick Steves is the be-all and end-all travel guide for Americans (even if certain posters have decided to twist it that way). And he does serve a purpose - if he makes novice travelers more confident about traveling independently, then they will be more likely to do it again and venture farther afield on subsequent journeys.

My brother is using FF miles to make a short (five day) trip to Amsterdam from the U.S. next month, his first visit there. He called me for advice and told me he had bought the Rick Steves guide. I may have inwardly rolled my eyes but told him to have a great time and offered a few day-trip suggestions. If the RS guide helps him enjoy his trip, then it's done its job.

The suggestions here are greatly appreciated; the attitude isn't.

" If the RS guide helps him enjoy his trip, then it's done its job."
Good point.

Very few people have the time (or means ) spend weeks bopping around from one "hidden gem " to another without "interference " of some planing or a tourist guide.
In addition, everyone has their own interests which may not be "exploring" 1001 small towns.
Europeans might be able to enjoy such luxury, but most overseas travelers have to spend several thousand dollars before they even touch down in Europe.
If RS or another guide enables them to take that step , so be it.

I agree that RS guides serve a purpose. His guides give specific information for finding sights so you don't go wandering around lost. When you are limited to say 5 days, you will not enjoy yourself if you spend half your time lost and are too tired to actually enjoy the monument when you finally find it. While I may not be interested in seeing the things he recommends, many are. Several years ago a friend and I went to Paris. I lent her several travel guides, including RS and Fodors. When she was planning a trip to London, she chose RS guide because it suited her.

I guess if it makes you feel more sophisticated to put RS and his followers down, go for it. But I agree that the Fodors forum is my go-to planning guide for European travel. Far better than even the Fodors books.

I don't have a problem with Rick Steves in general - in fact I enjoyed reading his "Postcards from Europe" book a while back - but to leave a major city like Hamburg out of a Germany guidebook is perplexing. As far as I can tell, he ignores northern Germany entirely except for Berlin. You can offer good basic advice to first-time travelers while still doing justice to all the major regions of a country.

To me Rick Steves serves the same purpose as guided tours - it's a nice introduction and overview to new vistas. It's like a Chinese buffet - you sample a little of everything than return for what you really like best.

His books are awful. His omissions and revlations are not helpful even to a new traveler. His writing is often lazy. In fact, he may create a greater disservice to a new traveler since they are inexperienced and could benefit from a broader and deeper perspective, as could we all.

I have a lot of good feelings about Rick Steves show and guide books. They are what got my wife and I into independent travel, a huge passion for us now. Thank you Rick.

As a comparison I think about writigs a travel guidebook on the US. Wouldn't we all start with NY, LA, Boston and Las Vegas and then start filling in with the other cities like New Orleans, Chicago, San Francisco, Dallas, Seattle and Denver (sorry if I didn't inclued your city).

I don't like travel guides with a strong personal bias, regardless who the author is.
Browsing through the index of the Rick Steves "Germany" guide, I'd say that the proper title should be "Southern Germany's Most Visited Destination And A Bit Of The Rest Of The Country".
I'd also not waste my money on a California travel guide that had 90 percent information on SF, LA, Yosemite NP, Hwy 1 - and a few pages on 80 pct of the "rest" of the state. Even if I come to the conclusion that Lassen Volcanic NP, Death Valley, or Bakersfield are not my cup of tea, I'd prefer to reach that conclusion myself.

Another "merci" to Rick Steeves - I watched his shows long before I went to Europe for the first time some 14 years ago. He serves a purpose, encourages independent travel, and shows respect for the culture, history, and people in the countries he visits.

Hey, is this a Rick Steves thread -or- a 101 places thread? Is it preferred to restrict the posts to Germany? What about France or Italy, very popular destinations but I'm sure many great places are overlooked or not known to foreign travelers. This thread had a great start but got derailed - can we get it back on track please?

I do hope someone starts a thread on 101 places not usually in guide books for France, England etc. Sorry, have only been to an airport in Germany so nothing to contribute.

I’m a fan of guide books, and I think they serve a good purpose. Most books tell more than what is worth seeing – stuff like how to use a European phone, protocols for tipping, how trains operate, generally some language. Most people would have a more enjoyable trip to anywhere if they were informed, if for no other reason than that it saves time, and often money.

After that, it comes down to the “tone’ of the book, and some are better than others, or more informed than others. Rick Steves writes for a market, an American market (I’ve never seen his books for sale in Aus), and the most common American visit to Europe is for two or three weeks, and moving around a fair bit. I guess that his rather brisk style suits some people, people who are often taking a brisk tour.

It takes a lot of time to get off the beaten track, a few visits, and being a peripatetic tourist is not for everyone.

lavandula:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=A_Rx2c7WIHU

Great brew indeed.

bookmarking

OK enough Rick Steves, how about more suggestions?

This BBC Radio 4 programme inspired me to visit Germany's lesser known areas.


http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/console...age_30_01_2010

Yes, I'm rather sad about the turn this thread has taken. Earlier posts inspired me to start planning a trip in and out of Berlin with a secondary stop in Eastern Germany to see some of the lovely 101 places being touted there. I'm up for less emphasis pro or con on Rick and more on these wonderful options to inspire travelers.