Last Friday, I set off alone for a German road trip adventure. I had a rough start: I’d scoured the car rental sites looking for an automatic (I know–I’ve tried to learn how to drive a stick…someday, I hope) and thought that I’d found the perfect deal with Sixt. But when I got there, they told me that I couldn’t rent the car I’d reserved because my license was issued less than two years ago. They were baffled by my explanation of moving states and having to get a new license; I was baffled by this ridiculous rule. It took nearly two hours and a lot of yelling, but I finally hit the road…in a far shittier car than I’d anticipated, but oh well.
ON THE AUTOBAHN
The Autobahn is the German highway, and it’s achieved mythic status for many in the States. I have to admit I was a little disappointed–there are in fact speed limits on much of the highway. A friend of mine has the mailed traffic ticket to prove it (I may get one soon as well, who knows). But moreover, there’s just a shit ton of road construction. It felt like every few miles, the lanes were reduced and narrowed to the point where I was gripping the wheel in a panic. The fact that there were two sets of lines on the road didn’t help matters; many people straddled lanes as they drove. It also poured rain on half of my driving days, making speed impossible.
Yet there were a few stretches where it lived up to my expectations. I couldn’t do much in my go-kart of a car–there were times when I was in the far right lane going 150 kmh (about 93 mph) while other cars whipped by me. It’s a far more active sort of driving overall. If someone is moving faster than you, you’d best get over.
BREMEN
Because of the delay, I didn’t arrive in Bremen until around 4 pm. But that was just enough time to do what I wanted to, and I was pleasantly surprised by the town. My hotel, the Atlantic Grand, was perfectly situated just steps from the main square, which was completely adorable.
I started off with a visit to a small museum. Bremen houses the first museum dedicated to the work of a female painter, the Paula Modersohn-Becker Museum. While I enjoyed her expressionist works, I really loved the temporary exhibition of Slawomir Elsner, his works featuring subtle crosshatching and a blurred, vague effect, as seen at right.
I then wandered through the Schnoor, the oldest part of Bremen and very picturesque. There are a ton of shops and galleries; I had to seriously resist temptation. I settled on ice cream instead, in the Schnoorkuller flavor–it’s traditionally a cake, but it worked nicely in a cone.
I wandered back through the main square and snapped the obligatory pic of the Bremen Town Musicians statue. I kept wandering into the less pretty, but more functional, part of town, and since I had a little time to kill before dinner, I read on the grass for a while beneath the Kaffee Muhle, a windmill turned cafe. I also took my favorite photo of the trip there:
I had dinner at Grashoff, a little bistro that was perfectly fine. Then I watched the sun set over the river and went to bed to prepare for the next day’s drive.
KASSEL
Kassel is the main reason I embarked on this trip. Every five years, the city hosts Documenta, a massive, month-long art exhibition spread out over many venues across town. 2017 brought Documenta 14, and with it, the Parthenon of Books: a life-sized replica of the Parthenon in Athens, constructed from 100,000 copies of banned books and built on a former Nazi book burning site. I came across an article about it on Facebook, noticed it wasn’t far from Berlin, and decided I had to go. And so here it is, in all its glory:
My visit to Documenta 14 suffered a bit from my lack of time to plan. I really needed a couple of days to see more of the exhibition. But it was early afternoon when I arrived, the booklet describing the various exhibits was 50 pages long, and every venue I saw had a line wrapped around the block. So I decided to be satisfied with getting to see what I most wanted to, and my only other touristy stop in town was the Grimmwelt.
The Grimmwelt is a museum dedicated to the Brothers Grimm, and it’s nearly as magical as the stories. The building itself is lovely, as you can see, and they have exhibits set up from Z-A, many of which are interactive. In addition to seeing some old documents and household objects, you can talk to a magic mirror on the wall and walk through a forest of trees that whisper at you.
The town was a little overrun with art lovers, so I wasn’t able to get dinner reservations. I wound up at a pizzeria (pizza is never a bad idea), notable only for its giant portions, and walked some of it off on the mile and a half trek back to my hotel. I wouldn’t stay at the Grand La Strada unless I had to. It’s allegedly four stars, but it’s stifling, and my room had crimson shag carpeting that I was reluctant to walk on.
I almost had a very quick stay there indeed. My final stop on the trip was supposed to be the famed Neuschwanstein Castle. The night before I set out, the forecast was clear. By evening in Bremen, the forecast was for nonstop rain when I was supposed to go but spotty the day before. I contemplated leaving Kassel at 3 AM to get there by opening hours, a day earlier than I’d planned. But by dinnertime in Kassel, the forecast was fairly wretched for both days, and I decided I had to abandon my castle dreams. It was incredibly frustrating to come so close, but I thought it was better to let it lie than spend hours of effort when it would likely end up disappointing me. So I went ahead and slept in, then drove on to my final town.
ROTHENBURG OB DER TAUBER
Rothenburg odT is a tiny tourist trap of a medieval town–but it is, admittedly, very cute. The Burg-Hotel, where I stayed, was absolute perfection, from the exterior, to the sweet elderly man who insisted on carrying my suitcase up three flights of stairs (not pictured, sorry, haha), to the view from my window.
There isn’t much to do in the town except wander. There’s a small Christmas museum and a preserved medieval home-turned-museum, but neither seemed worth the price of admission. Instead, I simply wandered, through the park that gives you an outside view on the walled city…
through the center of town…
and through a narrow walkway on the walls themselves for a rooftop-level view:
Dinner that night was the best of the trip, at the Hernschlosschen restaurant (part of a hotel). Popcorn soup, a perfectly (not) cooked steak, and truffle fries with actual shavings of truffle. The dream, basically.
And with the perfect meal, my road trip came to an end. Though I didn’t get to see everything I wanted to, I did thoroughly enjoy all that I saw. And just the road trip itself was an accomplishment for me. I travel by myself frequently, but there are still many things I’ve been hesitant to do solo–renting a car in a foreign country was one of them. As this trip progresses, I’m slowly expanding the boundaries of my comfort zone.
