Larry on the Romantic Road
Map
The Romantic Road was created by German tourism after WWII to attract people to travel in Bavaria. They basically put together a route using secondary roads connecting some towns that had once been part of a medieval trade route. Today, many people say they plan to drive from Rothenburg to F�ssen (or vice versa) along the Romantic Road. In my opinion, that is a mistake. It is one thing to tour the road, staying for a while at significant towns along the way. However, if you just drive straight through, without stopping for anything, you will be spending at least 4� hours, and the driver won�t get to see anything else but the road and the traffic in front of him. It might be worthwhile taking the road if you want to spend some time seeing what's there, but to just use it as because it's a way to get from a town on one end to a town on the other seems pointless. There are other, faster, connections, by rail or by highway.
I�ve decided to check out the road myself, so I will be flying to Munich in early October and spending five days on the road between Wieskirche and W�rzburg.
Click here to see a map of the Romantic Road taken from the official website.
This trip is a radical departure from my normal "modus travel". On each of my five previous trips this century, I have spent an entire week in at least one spot, using it as a base for short trips. I rarely spend only one night at any location. On my last trip, I spent 12 nights in Germany in only two places. For this trip, although most travel days are short, I am staying 13 nights in 10 different places.
Most significantly though, consistent with past trips, I am staying in small towns, out of the normal flow (I hope) of American tourists, in hotels that I have found on the Internet and booked using emails in German. All of the hotels have responded in German. I expect to be immersed in the language and in the culture, and that, to me, is the most important thing.
To start with, I made a list of the towns on the Road, as you go through them south to north. I�ve already seen F�ssen (3 times) and Rothenburg (2 times), so I decided not to stop there. Augsburg might have enough to warrant a stop, but it is easily accessible by train, so I decided to pass it by, saving it possibly for another day. Most of the places where I am stopping have a castle, city walls, gate towers, etc. I am most interested in those features. As far as churches, I have seen so many ornate Bararian churches � I don�t need to see any more. I did make one exception, for Wieskirche, because everyone puts it on their "must see" list, and it is on my way and would otherwise be difficult to get to.
The towns in bold are ones at which I decided to stop. The others I decided did not have enough of interest to warrant an extended stop.
Steingaden
Wieskirche
Wildsteig
Rottenbuch
Peiting
Wallerstein
Dinkelsb�hl
Feuchtwangen
Rothenburg o.d.T.
Hohenfurch
Landsberg
Augsburg
Donauw�rth
Harburg
R�ttingen
Weikersheim
Bad Mergentheim
W�rzburg
When I made my flight reservations, it picked the first two full weeks of October because the fares had dropped from the high summer fares. I wanted to try to avoid less than desirable late fall weather and fares in late October were no lower. It was only after making my reservations that I realized that I was arriving the Thursday before the last weekend of Octoberfest. Am I going to Octoberfest? No. As I said earlier, I try to avoid the flow of tourists, particularly Americans. Octoberfest is just too "touristy" for me. However, at the end of my trip, in Munich, I will probably drop into the Hofbr�uhaus for a meal. That is about as touristy as I get.
Click here to start a detailed description of my planned trip. Click here to see some of the places where I will be staying.
Click here for the schedule of my trip.
Klicken Sie hier f�r meinen Reiseplan.
Click here to read about the actual trip and my thoughts about the Romantic Road.
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