With almost 40 million foreign overnight guests every year, Germany is one of the seven most visited countries in the world. There are 6,135 museums, 366 theatres, 34 leisure and adventure parks, 45,000 tennis courts, 648 golf courses, 190,000 km of hiking trails, 40,000 kilometres of long-distance cycle paths as well as holiday and theme routes available for use in tourism.
Business and congress tourism is of outstanding importance; Germany is the most important international trade fair location with several world-leading trade fairs: Caravan Salon Düsseldorf, CMT Stuttgart, etc. The Internationale Tourism-Börse Berlin is the world's leading tourism trade fair. Germany also has the highest density of festivals like Wacken, Rock am Ring,
Outstanding sights: Sanssouci Castle - Brandenburg Gate - Cologne Cathedral - Saxon Switzerland National Park - Wadden Sea - Hamburg Harbor - Brocken - Old Town of Hameln - Externsteine - Wartburg - Neuschwanstein Castle - Zugspitze near Garmisch-Partenkirchen - Rothenburg ob der Tauber - Königsee in Berchtesgadener Land - Old town of Bamberg - Imperial castle in Nuremberg - Mainau Island in Lake Constance - Lichtenstein Castle - Meersburg - Ulm Minster - etc.
This year the Finnelauf will not be stopped by the corona virus. For a long time, the organizers of the SG Finne Billroda advised ideas on how the traditional and nationally known run, which is so popular with athletes, can be set up even in pandemic times.
We are more fan of hiking up to the Brocken, but lot of people use the trains go up even in winter with six pairs of trains a day, if there are no Corona-related breaks.
The place Zscheiplitz is located on the elevated left bank of the Unstrut within sight of the Neuchâtel / Neuenburg about two kilometers west of Freyburg in southern Saxony-Anhalt.
The red sandstone mountains Hohe Schrecke, a striking ridge between Saxony Anhalt and Thuringia, lies, in a broader sense, between Bretleben and Reinsdorf in the north, Gehofen, Nausitz and Donndorf in the northeast, Langenroda, Garnbach, Wiehe and Allerstedt in the east, Lossa in the southeast, Hauteroda, Oberheldrungen and Heldrungen in the west and Braunsroda in the northwest.
Once again on our hiking shoes, we noticed a new sign board in the forest above Billroda, the inscription of which referred to a boundary stone of the Kingdom of Prussia.
The dark gray clouds on the way to Freyburg to Neuenburg Castle indicated snowfall, but it had stayed dry until our arrival at the Unstrut Bridge.
When it comes to hiking, the Harz region really offers something for everyone. Even those who associate hiking more with the term “walking” will find a network of easy-to-use terrain paths in most tourist locations, which can often be varied as desired.
The Saale-Unstrut-Elster-Rad-Eight (Acht) is a 178 km long regional tourist cycle route in Saxony-Anhalt and Thuringia, which connects the cycle routes along the Saale, Unstrut and White Elster.
And now they shine and turn again, the often-handcrafted wooden light roundabouts, which are meant to warm hearts outdoors or at home as pre-Christmas decorations.
Visible from afar and therefore attractive for visitors, the Wendelstein castle ruins are located between 30 and 50 meters above the Unstrut river on a gypsum rock that slopes steeply towards the shore.
The thriller about the Nebra Sky Disc still never ends. It was initially the tense story about the professional robbery of the artefacts after the sky disc was found on July 4th, 1999 on the Mittelberg in the former municipality of Ziegelroda near the city of Nebra in Saxony-Anhalt, now it's the analyses of the actual age the sky disc that excite the mind.
The small town of Bad Bibra is in the Saale-Unstrut tourist region and in the Saale-Unstrut-Triasland nature park, a destination for us that we have already visited several times with the HNF bikes.
Autumn sunshine and the desire for exercise, once again the most important reasons to get on our bikes and explore the still new surroundings. Our motto, which is confirmed again and again: there is still so much to discover, you just have to do it.
Located just a few kilometers below the well-known Rudelsburg, the historically valuable Saale bridge connects the older part of Bad Kösen on the right of the Saale with the newer part on the left bank of the river and has long been an important Saale crossing in the course of the medieval Via Regia, the course of which in big parts is the modern federal highway 87.
Visit from our friend Philipp and his girlfriend Jule, with whom we had undertaken countless hikes and discovery excursions during the project work on the Balkans and here especially in Greece.
The view out of the window on Sunday morning was good enough to collect our backpack and go on another hike to explore the region around Billroda.
In our blog article "Ghost beech in Bad Kösen" we had already described a section of the hiking trail network that ultimately leads to the Rudelsburg, partly through wonderful shady deciduous forest and partly within sight of the Saale river.
On the way to our authors' meeting in Halle, we wanted to visit the Harz town of Stolberg again, which we could only pass by during our last excursion in the spring due to lack of time, but which we had still had in mind due to the wonderful half-timbered buildings.
The research for an ATM machine led us into the city centre of Naumburg in southern Saxony-Anhalt for the first time, whose landmark, the early Gothic cathedral of St. Peter and Paul, is one of the most valuable European monuments today.
Brilliant sunshine in April had motivated us to take another walk, far away from large numbers of people despite Corona, so in choosing our destination we were sure not to meet anyone, which should also prove to be correct since all of the so-called local attractions were closed anyway.