Germany Motorhome tour- 15 EPIC places to visit

I need to tell you a secret. I never really wanted to go to Germany. I kind of got dragged there kicking and screaming, mainly when we were homeschooling our daughter and she was doing history. I'm like right fine, it's an important part of the world, you need to learn about this stuff. I was wrong. It was epic. Absolutely epic. So much so that I'm doing it at the February 2023 Campi Carvana Modem Show I'm talking all about, touring in Germany, especially around the Black Forest and Bavaria. So this is this talk. Imagine that you are at the Inspirations Theatre in the NEC and let us dive right in. How many people here have been to Germany? No. Do you know what? You're the first to travel a lot of the lot. How many people here would like to go to Germany with your motorhome, caravan, campervan? Excellent. You are in the right place. And how many people are here under duress or just wanted somewhere to sit down in the first 20 minutes? Not a problem. I ask that little bit tongue in cheek and well done for being honest with a few of you actually. This corner is a trouble corner, I can tell. But I actually never wanted to go to Germany. It wasn't on my bucket list. I was like, yeah, there's so many other places I want to explore. But my husband has lived there for a couple of years and my daughter was studying history for her GCSEs. So they were like, let's go to Germany. But I have to say I was wrong. And it is now one of my favourite places in Europe that I have explored. So give me 20 minutes. Let me see if I can change your mind. And I will start with a little teaser. Hi, I'm Kat, author of several books and owner of the motorhome touring website Wandering Bird. In 2018, I quit my job as an air traffic controller and set out to explore Europe in a motorhome with my husband and our teenage daughter. One of my favourite places so far has been Germany, especially the southern regions of Bavaria and the Black Forest. Join me in adventure through this region, filled with incredible castles, beautiful waterfalls, pretty villages, epic biking roads, more castles, mountains we didn't mean to climb, pristine lakes, historical marvels and one of the best bog and runs we've ever found. Oh, and castles. Did I mention the castles? It is an incredible, incredible place. Right, let us start at the beginning. If you are planning a road trip, where do you start? Someone like Germany can start from many places. And the place that I tend to start when I'm planning my own road trips is I start with specific places I want to visit or things that I want to do. So in this example, we have a map here with Germany, certainly southwestern Germany, and there are places on there that I very much want to go and visit. For example, I want to ride the B500 road. I want to visit Hohenzollern Castle and Neuschwanstein Castle. I want to go Zugspitz, Germany's highest mountain. And these are all the points that I have put in before we've even visited the country just by doing some research. And I find those out by blogs like Wandering Bird. And also by watching YouTube videos and also on Pinterest. Pinterest is amazing for finding places to visit. And I use Google Maps and I just put all the points in. And again, when you've got these points in, you know, you could tackle that in a million different ways. But if you look at it a little bit closely, one route idea is kind of a circle. We are going to tackle that circle in an anti-clockwise direction and that will just give us a little bit of structure to this chat. Now, of course, you can go clockwise, you could just go zigzag, you could go as far away as possibly can to start all the way down at that point down to the southeast. That is the Eagle's Nest. So you could start as far away as possible and then wend your way back. That's definitely another way of doing it and an option that we've done with several of our road trips. But for this one, let us go in an anti-clockwise direction, which means that we get to start at one of my favourite spots and that is the Black Forest right down there in southwestern Germany. Now, before I dive in, there are a couple of things to consider. Firstly, you need to think about whether you're going to take the ferry or the tunnel. Now, to get to Germany, I'd probably take the tunnel unless you live somewhere like right down in Cornwall. But either way, you've got to do that drive and the tunnel is a lot more flexible and often a little bit cheaper at the moment, especially if you use your Tesco club card vouchers. You also need to think about things that you must take with you. So Europe has some very strict laws about what you have to carry with you in your motorhome or your campervan, things that we don't have to worry about here in the UK. So make sure that you have got all of those with you and also make sure your van is prepared for such a long trip. So check your tyres, maybe take it in for service, all of the things just to make sure that you have an enjoyable trip. If you want a checklist on those things and also the things that you legally need to carry with you in Europe, there's a link in the notes you can just go and click that. Right, let's start with our tour in the Black Forest and it is one of my favourite, favourite places. There are so many things, I've put a few of the highlights up here, but there are so many places to explore and even just driving around. Now admittedly, we've done a lot of our exploring around here on a motorbike and I will get to that shortly, but even if you've got a motorhome or campervan, there are so many places that you can visit in this area. So I'm going to dive into a few of them. First is Treiberg. Now Treiberg is home to one of the highest waterfalls in Germany and it's a really pretty waterfall. If you are going to visit, it does get quite busy, so I would suggest you go either quite early in the morning or sort of towards dusk. I believe they shut around dusk, so make sure that you check the timings because they do vary throughout the year. But it is a really pretty waterfall. However, for me the best part about Treiberg is actually the centre of the town and it is home to thousands and thousands of cuckoo clocks. Indeed this is actually the house of a thousand clocks and every half hour it itself turns into one of the world's largest cuckoo clocks and things chime and the bears go up and down and it's just you're just standing there going, what is going on here? But it's really fun and they've got a couple of these around the Black Forest but Treiberg's got one of the biggest ones. As you can see it's a three-story, in fact four-story building there. So yeah, it's just quite fun that the whole thing comes alive. They've also apparently got the world's smallest cuckoo clock but we couldn't find it and I don't know if that was a joke or not because we did try to look but we couldn't couldn't find it. So if you do go, that might be something to hunt for. Another one of my favourite places in the Black Forest is Tottenham. Now Tottenham also had its own waterfalls, not quite as spectacular as Treiberg but it's still pretty. But the best thing about Tottenham, apart from the air which is really nice and it was £10 a night and you just pay cash in a little envelope and it was really easy, but the best thing about Tottenham is the toboggan run. Now I thought toboggan run would be you know like one of those little mats like a helter-skelter kind of thing. No no no this is Germany, it's insane. It's on rails, you have your own brake. This is my husband and daughter. We have been back, we very rarely go back to places twice and we have been back to Tottenham twice just to do this Rodelbahn which is the German name for toboggan run. It's just epic, really epic. Now any motorcyclists in here, raise your hand, make yourself known, you have to ride the B500. It's one of the best roads certainly in Europe but probably in the world. It is flat, it is smooth, it is well tarmac, the views are insane, the corners are just magic and the German drivers know how to deal with motorcyclists. I don't know whether it's something that they're taught in their driving schools or whether they just pick it up from each other but they pull over, they look out for you. It's brilliant, it's absolutely brilliant and there are quite a few speed checks though, so be careful when you ride it. But the B500 is just magic and it runs from Baden-Baden which is a beautiful spa town and well worth visiting for a day if you get a chance. And it goes all the way south from there right into the heart of the Black Forest, it's magic. You can absolutely drive it with a motorhome or a campervan as well because it's a proper road and the views are stunning. There aren't many places to pull over, certainly aren't many laybys like the one that you can see pictured there, there are very few of those. But there are several cafes and rest stops so you can stop and enjoy a coffee on your way. But it's just a really, really fun road. Hohenzollern Castle, the first of our castles of which there are many in this talk. And I'll be honest, this is not my picture because to get this picture you need a really high-powered drone and you need permission to fly it in that particular area and so that was never going to happen. But it is, this picture sums up the beauty of this castle. It's perched on the top of a hill, the stone, especially at sunset, it just glows. It's really, really golden and pretty and you can walk all the way around it. They've also got these really cool catacombs. It's actually where the legend of the woman who haunts the castles came from and it was a story about a woman who apparently killed her children because she wanted to marry the lord of the castle. He was so disgusted by the fact that she'd killed her children that he refused to marry her so she killed herself. It's quite a tragic story really but apparently she wanders the halls looking for somebody, either the lord or the kids, one of the two. But it is a really, really fun castle to visit. One thing you can actually do, which we didn't find out until we got there, is you can actually stay. You can pay to stay overnight on the car park of the castle. Now obviously there are no facilities but you can pay to stay in their car park. I believe it was 10 euros when we visited and that would have been a really good fun because I think you get a bit of an early entry or certainly get on the first entry as well. Like with most of the castles, make sure you buy your tickets before you go in the bus up the top. But yeah, definitely add that one to your bucket list. Talking about places to stay, there are plenty of places all around the Black Forest, plenty of campsites. Now we don't tend to use campsites when we're touring because we don't really know where we're going. We make it up as we go along but there are two that we have used on our various journeys to this area. One was right in the middle of the Black Forest, this is the first one on the left and I'm not going to try to pronounce that name because I will embarrass myself and anybody else who speaks vaguely passable German. But it was a really, really pretty campsite right in the middle of the Black Forest. So if you are going with a motorcycle or with bikes and you want a base, definitely recommend that one. And then the other one was down near Neuschwanstein Castle, which we will get to shortly, but there are very few airs around that area and they want you to stay in campsites. So that was one that we stayed when we were camping, Bunvolgsee and that was beautiful. You could see the mountains in the background, really, really pretty. But the option that we tend to do whilst we are touring are airs. So an air is an approved motorhome parking stopover and it is basically, it can be several different options. It could be a big car park, it could be a big gravel pitch, it could be grass. They tend to have very few facilities, very few of them have electric. Some of them have a sort of a waste disposal area and a place that you can get fresh water. You have to pay an additional fee most of the time for that. Prop tip, keep your one and two euro coins because you'll need them all the time when you're using the services at airs. Some of them are free, they tend to be in the smaller villages, the free ones, to encourage people to go and visit the village. But many of them in the more built up towns are, they have a small fee, so five euros to 15 euros for a night. So it's a lot, lot cheaper than a campsite. And the best bit about them is nobody can book them in advance. Not even, I want to make a joke here about Germans and towels on sunbeds, but nobody can book them in advance. So you have got just as much chance of getting a spot as anybody else who's coming. So it's really, really brilliant system and we tend to use them. The way that we find them is using the Park4Night app. They've also got a website as well and that's a really good way of searching out places to stay and just finding out what's around the area that you want to visit. Now that's how we tend to tour without booking everything up months in advance. Right, back to our journey. So we are now leaving the Black Forest and we're travelling eastbound down along the German-Swiss and then becomes the Austrian border. And the thing that you'll notice down there is Lake Constance. Now we didn't spend a lot of time exploring Lake Constance, which is a shame because you can see how beautiful it is, but we were in a hurry to get to more castles actually. But there are so many things you can do on that area. You can hire boats or canoes or paddleboards or you can just sit and they've got some fantastic campsites with views. The nice thing about being on the German side is you've got the views across the Swiss and the Austrian Alps. As you can see they're pretty spectacular. So if you've got time definitely add in Lake Constance to your journey. But we were in a hurry to get here. This is Neuschwanstein Castle and this is the castle that inspired the legend that is Walt Disney. He apparently visited here with his wife and he was like this castle is incredible. This is what I want to base my Cinderella Disney castle, the one that Tinkerbell flies over in front of every Disney movie, is on this. Now again, disclaimer, this is not my photo because again you needed a proper drone and the license. But also when we visited the front had scaffolding all over the place, so it didn't look quite like that which was a shame. Now a couple of quick tips for Neuschwanstein. There is parking for motorhomes before it was when we visited. I would suggest that you get there quite early in the morning to make sure that you get a spot, especially like we had. We had quite a long motorhome with a trailer, so we wanted to make sure that we could get a really big space and there was space to accommodate us. It was fine and they've actually got really good parking attendants on to direct you to the appropriate spot because it is one of the most visited places in all of Europe. I believe millions of people turn up there every single year. Once you are parked up you have to buy your tickets from the bottom of the hill. So many people go up the hill then realize that they can't buy tickets there and then have to come all the way back down again and buy tickets. They've got tours scheduled I think is every 10 or 15 minutes but in different languages, so make sure that you buy the time in the appropriate language for whatever you want to to listen to it in and then you need to make sure that you allow yourself enough time to get from the bottom to the top of the hill. So don't buy a tour that's going to start in five or ten minutes because you're not going to make it. Now normally there are several options to get up to the top of the hill. They've got the buses that just run constantly but they weren't running when we were there, so there were two options of walking which trying to drag our teenage daughter up this hill didn't appeal to me. So we took the horse and cart and we were so excited because we got to go right on the front of the cart and the three of us was perched up there and it was all beautiful and idyllic except for the fact that these horses um it was quite early in the morning and all they did the whole journey was they they passed wind and they passed um poop the whole way up it was disgusting it put us off horse and cart rides for life but that is it is a magical way to get up there. Now when you are up there one thing I suggest you do if you've got time before your tour is walk a little bit further up from when you get dropped off and you will see the signs to Marienbrook bridge and Marienbrook bridge is a suspension bridge that goes across the gorge. This is where you get these incredible views of the castle going down the valley behind it. That is my footage and we went obviously it was a beautiful beautiful day and um yeah it was just stunning we really enjoyed being able to go up there and see the view of the castle itself. You can also do that after your tour of course. Now we weren't allowed to take photos inside the castle but has anyone been? The fairy grotto was amazing, really worth doing. The throne room was a bit bleak and there's not a huge amount of decor inside but just just being there was was quite good fun and seeing what the king Ludwig was trying to achieve with his creation. There's also another castle right there which is Hohenschranger now we were a bit castled out so we took photos but we didn't actually go inside but I believe you can buy a ticket that allows you entrance to the two if you want to. Now if you want to go for a meal after Nusselstein don't go to the restaurants at the bottom of the hill because they are really touristy which means that the service isn't brilliant and the prices are like hugely inflated. If you go to Fusen which is gorgeous, got these beautiful German painted buildings and there's so many restaurants there where you can pass a very pleasant evening or lunch if you are going at that sort of time but yeah Fusen is well worth visiting. Now the Nusselstein castle is the bottom of the romantic road so if you wanted to you could now start heading that northbound and that could be your circle. If you've got time there are a couple of other places that I recommend you add to your itinerary. So the first of those is Zugspitz. Now Zugspitz is Germany's highest mountain and I love this quote because Germany's all like oh yeah Zugspitz is our biggest mountain but half of it is actually Austrian so half's German half Austrian and it's like I think it's 15th biggest in Austria so the Austrians are like meh it's not even that exciting but the Germans are all like yay I've climbed this. They've got a gold post on the top and you can actually watch people climbing up there and getting all excited. Now there is plenty of parking and there are a car which was my vote but I was outvoted and we went up on the cog railway which was quite cool so you're literally just a little little train that takes you up takes you up the mountain all the way to what nearly all the way to the top. They've got a little restaurant up there so you could just visit for the day so that was really good fun. Another place that I recommend you visit and it's really close to Nusselstein is Weisskirche. Now Weisskirche it actually means white church and again I'm so sorry if anyone speaks German I am probably butchering this but I'm doing my best and this is a UNESCO world heritage site it's actually a pilgrimage site after tears were seen on a statue of Christ and it's unclear whether they built this church or whether it became a pilgrimage site after that but what is clear is when you walk in it's quite a plain looking church on the outside when you walk in it is breathtaking absolutely stunning and again if you can go earlier in the day you'll get it more to yourself and it's just the atmosphere is beautiful so I really really recommend that you visit that one now the last place on my extra bit is the eagle's nest and this is a little bit more of a commitment this is about a three hour drive east of Nusselstein it's quite a long way so you're probably going to add about two days to your tour but if you've got the time it's well worth visiting not just because of the connection to Hitler but just the sheer scale of what they built and the gold lift if anyone's been this incredible gold lift that you just walk through in the tunnel to get there it's really cool don't worry about driving your motorhome up to it because you don't what you do is you park at the bottom and then you get on a bus and the bus takes you all the way up there it's quite straightforward there's not a huge amount of memorabilia there and they're certainly the Germans have got this really difficult task between you don't want to celebrate what happened but they also don't want to pretend that it didn't happen so as you can see it's quite barren but they've got sort of plaques and signs around telling you about the history of the place and how it was built and what happened there and when Hitler and he was born and stuff but honestly just as a piece of architecture it's worth visiting. So let us move back to Nusselstein and start on the Romantic Road. So the Romantic Road was created by the Germans in the 50s and it was designed purely like most of these roads are or routes are to invite people to come to the area so they needed obviously money to come in from tourism so that they could rebuild. It's about 250 miles and you can actually drive it in a day. It covers 14 places and if I'm honest with you I think a few of them are a stretch having done the Black Forest and places like Fussen and Nusselstein you're going to find a few of them are just like yeah all right it's a town but some of them are incredible. Rothenburg I would highly highly recommend you visit just for a few hours. It's a really pretty village town small town maybe it's got these medieval walls that you can walk around which is really quite good fun. It's also got a Christmas shop that's open all year. I was quite excited by this and it is definitely you just walk in it's really cool but the best bit about it is the Schneeballen which are basically snowballs they're fried pastry and then you drop them in either a sugar or chocolate they're just fried deliciousness so you need to go and sample one of them and then the other place that I would recommend on the route is Wurzburg. Now Wurzburg is the other end of the romantic road obviously it's a road you can drive it in either direction but Wurzburg has got a couple of really impressive things they've got the Marienburg fortress which is a museum which was the home of the prince bishops for about five centuries and it's also got the Wurzburg residence which is a unesco world heritage site it's a really impressive palace dating back to the 18th century so both of those are worth at least looking at even if you don't want to go around there if you're all all toured out by this point they are worth seeing and then one more just to add on to our itinerary that kind of closes the circle a little bit is Heidelberg. I loved Heidelberg it's got this incredible castle back from the 15th century and it's also home to Germany's oldest university so it's just got a load of history it's got this really really fun atmosphere it's a really nice place one thing that I would say is that parking was not good when you are almost an eight meter motorhome with a two meter trailer we really struggled to park there are airs and there were some parking spots but we were too long so if you have got a bigger vehicle just be careful with that but we did find somewhere that we could get off and have a little wander around and we had a nice pizza there was a really good pizza there right I have thrown a ridiculous amount of information at you there don't forget if you want to get your free york checklist you can do that at the link and also our book is on sale at the moment our your motorhoming book we've also got that as an ebook and also as a full toolkit with videos I will leave all the links below for you and if you do want to see more of our adventures then you can absolutely follow us on instagram and on facebook and of course here on youtube I hope you found that useful thank you very much for your time and I'll see you soon take care bye