Heidelberg and Marburg, Germany

As part of our Easter trip to Germany, a day trip to the university city of Heidelberg was on the agenda. Heidelberg is famous for the ruined castle, picturesque scenery by the River Neckar and the world's largest wine barrel. However we chose to visit Heidelberg as it shares a connection with a suburb in our home-town of Melbourne; where the Heidelberg School of artists flourished during the 19th century, painting famous landscapes of the Australian bush. This blog post covers a second day trip to the city of Marburg, also home to a university, a preserved old town and connection with the Brothers Grimm of fairytale fame.

Frankfurt and Koblenz, Germany

Throughout our travels in the UK and Europe, we have enjoyed some beautiful river-side scenery along the Danube, Seine, Thames to name a few. During the Easter long weekend , we organised to cruise down another of Europe's famous waterways - the Rhine. Initially, Mei wanted to stay in a proper river boat but the package tours were expensive and had itineraries with cities that we had already visited. Instead we built our own travel plans, starting from Frankfurt and travelling to Koblenz (this post), Heidelberg and Marburg (next blog post).

Regensburg and Nuremberg, Germany

Bavaria was the first German state we visited, with Munich and the famous Oktoberfest festival initiating us into the culture of beer, sausages and pork knuckle in 2011. Since then, we have traveled to Munich on two occasions, the most recent trip including stops at two of Bavaria's largest cities - the UNESCO listed medieval center of Regensburg and the home of Germany's most famous Christmas market - Nuremberg. Although to avoid the crowds, we arrived the week before Christmas market season began - a wise move to avoid peak season costs and thick tourist crowds.

Hamburg, Germany

Selecting Hamburg as a weekend travel destination was based on two criteria - flights were relatively cheap over the Valentine's Day weekend; and it was a historic port city that very few of our friends or colleagues had visited. With little background in terms of what to expect from the city, we booked our hotel, did some TripAdvisor research and pretty much took the attitude of 'see what happens'.
As a result, we had an enjoyable time exploring, eating and venturing out to the neighbouring UNESCO town of Lubeck - a worthwhile side trip that we would recommend to future travellers.

Munich, Germany

Our second trip to Munich focused on visiting the city's attractions that we had completely missed out on the first time around when we were preoccupied with attending the Oktoberfest beer festival. 

We also used this trip to tick off a number of other 'to do list' items - including the castle of Neuschwanstein - the inspiration for Walt Disney's Sleeping Beauty castle; and the Munich Residenz - former royal palace that has a treasury of jewels and artwork that rivals anything we have seen in Europe.

Cologne, Germany

Cologne is one of the 'hottest' Christmas Market destinations amongst our expat friends. Our flight was shared with a number of London based Melbournians that we bumped into at the immigration line - picking out the Aussie accents and navy passports. Cologne plays host to 7 separate Christmas Market locations. And when we booked this trip many months earlier, we hoped that our travel weekend would include snow to give us a true Continental white Christmas. We were not disappointed. Lucky we had brought along the snow boots!

Berlin, Germany

Our Berlin trip was the last of three weekends of consecutive travel. We were quite tired by this stage, even looking forward to a quiet Sunday based in London where it meant that we didn't have to sort out logistics for the airport and we could just get the week's washing done.
Constant city break travelling does feel a bit rushed at times, particularly when it means a pre-dawn start on a Saturday and an almost midnight arrival back home on Sunday. Our energy levels in Berlin were not helped by a late night indulging at work drinks the night before and then an early start packing bags.

Oktoberfest - Munich

Munich Oktoberfest 2011 was quite an experience, made better because we had a group of friends to enjoy the festival with.
Great beer, yummy food, awesome drinking companions, party atmosphere  - this trip was memorable in many ways.
But some 'interesting' times on the plane both to and from London, witnessing some 'hard-line' police tactics on the streets of Munich and standing for a good 5 hours early on a Saturday morning to mind a table just to get access to beer - well at least all the good points counterbalanced the bad.