Our Blog - Germany 2023 - Part 1

After 6 years in France, we finally planned a trip to drive through Germany. Mind you ... as we got into the planning, we are only doing a very SMALL portion of Germany! You can see below a general routing. We "based" ourselves in a few different places (Gutach, Stuttgart, and Überlingen) for a few days each and went to places around each of those. We did quite long drives on the first day (all the way to Lausanne) and the last day (from Besançon all the way back to Toulouse). While I'm not always a big fan of this, Lucy did great just sleeping while we were on the autoroute (like the US Interstate highways) and we tried to trade off driving responsibilities every 2 hours or so.

On the way, we stopped in Lausanne, Switzerland for a couple nights, adding another country to Lucy's list (France, Spain, Italy, Andorra, and now Switzerland). We did a nice tour around the old city and then took the metro down to Lake Geneva and walked to the Olympic Museum (which is closed on Mondays). A green sticker is required on the windshield of the car to drive in Switzerland (it seems) which we had to buy at the border. They made it quite easy ... they noticed we didn't have a sticker so we were waved to the side and they took the credit card right there.

Of course we had to try fondue while we were in Switzerland!

Then we headed north towards the German border, stopping for a Lucy walk before crossing over into Germany (another country for Lucy!). This walk took us over the river, through the woods, and to a small waterfall.

We needed to stop on the German side of the border to try to get another sticker, this time for "low car emissions" (like the CritAir sticker in France) to be able to drive into some of the larger cities in Germany. Unfortunately for us, it was "German Unity Day" and everything was closed ... except for a McDonalds that allows dogs! Lucy's first time visiting a MickeyD's, and she seemed to be interested in that KitKat McFlurry.

Then we stopped for a short walking tour around Breisach before a final hour or so to our hotel. We are staying for 4 nights in the middle of nowhere (almost literally) but it is a really nice hotel with a restaurant and TONS of space. We have a nice view of the grounds from our balcony.

First night dinner in Germany was a bit interesting, as they spoke very little English and the menu was all in German. We picked out a couple words that we knew (we could tell pork from beef, spätzle from potatoes). We picked 2 dishes, a bratwurst with potatoes and then a pork schnitzel with a paprika sauce and spätzle, both paired with a local white wine.

Morning walk with Lucy ... what a great view ... we keep singing "the hills are alive, with the Sound of Music" (although that is Austria, not Germany).

We did tours of two small towns that were nearby our hotel. We first stopped by Triberg, home to German cuckoo clocks before popping over to the little town of Alpirsbach, home to the local brewery “Alpirsbacher Klosterbräu“ and a monastery.

More traditional German food for our second dinner ... pork schnitzel with fries and trout with potato cakes. An interesting note on the trout ... when we were in Triberg earlier in the day, the tourist information mentioned that Ernest Hemingway would come to Triberg for the trout, so we decided we needed to try it.

After another morning walk nearby, we went to the Black Forest Open-air Museum at Gutach to look at some old buildings typical of the Black Forest area, and then to the nearby town of Hornberg.

We continued our quest for traditional German food ... another pork schnitzel but this time with a nice sauce with spätzle, and then a pork roast with caramelized onions and potato croquettes.

Continue to Part 2 of the Germany 2023 blog.