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.
If you are traveling in different regions of Germany, you will occasionally come across interesting buildings of bygone eras, which, sometimes surprisingly, will be given high priority again due to changing use and changed tourist interests.
The Eckartsburg with its 36-metre-high tower can be seen from afar, because it is located on the Finne, a high ridge on the state border of Saxony-Anhalt to Thuringia.
Another walk has taken us along the Lossa creek, where we came across an almost heavenly piece of land, beginning at the end of village Billroda.
The next day was to be followed by another tour of downtown Halle, so Detlef did not just have the Old Market with its donkey well in mind, but also the only existing Museum of music history of the Beatles.
Stendal is located in the north of Saxony-Anhalt, is the largest city of the Altmark and is one of the oldest cities in the old Mark Brandenburg. Thus one finds the first documentary mentioning of the place already from the year 1022.
Who of us has not heard the name Nebra at least once? Since the discovery of the ancient Nebra Sky Disc, which has long been legendary already, the name has surely been known to many.
Already from afar we had spotted the striking main eye view of the city at the castle church during the journey to Wittenberg, nevertheless little unusual to be called church tower.
On the way to the south, we were meeting with our Co-author Detlef in Halle, who surprised again with an interesting city hike in the sense of our common activities regarding tourist destinations which can be interesting for our readers.
Our visit to the city of Koblenz also took us to the Balduin Bridge, a stone arch bridge over the Moselle that is considered the oldest surviving bridge in the city. The first construction of the Baldwin Bridge began under Elector Baldwin of Luxembourg around 1342/1343.
Our days in Koblenz were, as is unfortunately so often the case, far too short, because we had actually intended the climb to Ehrenbreitstein Fortress to be a hike that would also allow us to see other sights along the way.
A meeting with friends brought us to the Koblenz area again, and it was clear that we wanted to take the opportunity to visit the Koblenz Christmas market or, better yet, some of the Advent markets spread across the city.
Deutsches Eck is actually an artificially raised tongue of land in Koblenz at the mouth of the Moselle and the Rhine.
The Basilica of St. Castor is located in the middle of a green area just behind the Deutsches Eck, probably the most famous sight in Koblenz, apart from where the Moselle meets the Rhine.
We have been friends with Frank and his wife for a number of years, who, in addition to the vineyards, also run a small guesthouse in Dernau and have been producing really fine wine in Turkey for several years with great success.
When planning the Federal Garden Show 2011, Koblenz faced a problem that also had to be overcome in Cologne in 1957 for the Federal Garden Show there, because how could the core areas of the show on the left bank of the Rhine, which are far apart, be connected with those on the Ehrenbreitstein.
The history of today's city of Koblenz was very changeable and is characterized by armed conflicts in numerous border conflicts and the associated major structural changes, also due to war damage.
Appointments in Koblenz and near Frankfurt brought us to Lahnstein for the overnight stay, high above the Rhine and the Lahn, which we were to admire the next morning with a view of the moving clouds over the Rhine.
The journey through the Ahr valley via Altenahr in the direction of Adenau also gave us the opportunity to get to know the town of Hönningen. At first we noticed the many tractors while driving, some really old vehicles, which slowed down the very heavy leisure traffic on the weekend badly on the winding route.
Coming from Dernau, we had passed the Ahr Valley, then entered the lively little Eifel town of Adenau, which is worth seeing and continued on Trierer Straße to the parking lot next to the bridge right at the entrance to the Nordschleife.
Summer time – vacation time, also in Brita's house in Albertshofen. And since the basic idea of driving further north in Germany had been in our heads for a long time anyway, concrete common goals were quickly defined, which we want to find out in the coming days.