No Kids Allowed in Germany
October 3-13, 2024
It’s much easier to travel when you don’t have kids. We didn’t make any babies, so we get to travel all the time, as evidenced by this blog. But Scott and Kristine, Kirb’s brother and brotherwife, had two children, and because of this, never came to visit us in Germany. We tried - and mostly succeeded - not to resent our niece and nephew Nate and Anna for this discourtesy. When Scott and Kristine came to Europe in 2018, we met them in Norway for a big family trip in the country they wanted to visit most. We did not recommend bringing the children to Germany; all the “fun” stuff here is mostly geared toward adults. Children do not like walking in the alps for leisure, learning about the Holocaust or the Cold War, drinking natural wine at chic bistros, or beer in great wooden halls, or any of the other things one does as a tourist in this country. A family vacation was surely better spent elsewhere.
But by the fall of 2024, Nate and Anna were old enough to grasp that not everything in their parents’ lives needed to be focused on mollifying the wants and desires of their children. It was finally time for Scott and Kristine to enjoy an adult vacation, sans kids. To our delight, brother and brotherwife decided to spend that hard-earned adult vacation with us in Germany. Both sets of grandparents were utilized to supervise Nate as he played endless hours of Fortnite and Anna as she refused to eat food. With the babies safe and comfortable at home, Scott and Kristine set off on their first child-free international adventure in over 15 years.
Berlin
There are so many things to do in Berlin that choosing an itinerary for a couple of days can be daunting. Thankfully, we’ve hosted plenty of friends and family members over the years, so we have a pretty good understanding of how to best utilize time in the city. We helped create a daily schedule that we felt represented the real Berlin experience: World-class food, unique cultural oddities, and enough history to feel like you learned something without it feeling boring or forced.
Because we were the tour guides, the activities largely revolved around eating. Perhaps our favorite activity when loved ones come to visit is riding bicycles around the city, visiting enormous parks like Tempelhof Field between visits to markets selling French bread, butter, and cheese. We’re always looking for an excuse to get a fancy dinner at Barra, our favorite restaurant in Berlin, where we can force skeptical family members to eat raw beef for the first time in their lives. At the end of the meal, Scott said the beef tartare was probably the tastiest dish of the evening, though the act of eating it made him feel thoroughly uncomfortable.
We bring just about everyone who visits to Teufelsberg, an abandoned Cold War spy tower built on top of an artificial mountain made from the rubble of post-WWII Berlin. Now a mecca for graffiti artists, the ruins are unlike any other place on Earth. Vibrant murals cover the decaying post-modernist architecture, sitting above a sprawling forest, with clear views of the city in the distance. It’s a cultural experience you simply can’t get in a traditional museum.
Other Berlin highlights included an underground tour of decommissioned war bunkers built into the subway station in Gesundbrunnen (no pictures allowed, unfortunately), checking out flea markets and buskers in Mauer Park, and taking in the imposing Soviet War Memorial in Treptower Park en route to our favorite beer garden, Zenner. Scott is a huge soccer fan and wanted nothing more on his trip than to see a Bundesliga match in person. Unfortunately, due to scheduling, there was no possibility of making this particular dream a reality. As a consolation, we watched Berlin FC Union beat Borussia Dortmund while drinking cheap beers in a Neukölln dive bar. If you can’t be physically present at a German fußball match, watching one in a smoky Berlin kneipe is surely the next-best thing.
Bavaria
After a long weekend in Berlin, Scott and Kristine left us behind and started the trip southward to check out Dresden and the sandstone rock structures near the border of the Czech Republic. The plan was for all four of us to meet up in Bavaria later in the week. Unfortunately, Mazz’s back had recently developed an extreme aversion to sitting that made it impossible for her to ride the train for six hours. Sadly, Kirb was forced to make the journey alone.
We’d booked a cute chalet-style apartment in Garmisch-Partenkirchen, one of the first places we visited in Bavaria and still one of our favorites. Garmisch is situated right at the base of the alps on the Austrian border, with plenty of trails leaving from town and a wide variety of classic German restaurants and beer halls. Even in the fall, outside of the summer high season, Garmisch-Partenkirchen is a popular tourist destination, and we heard lots of American English being spoken in the streets. The landlord of our rental had warned us that virtually every restaurant in town was going to require a reservation for dinner, and we quickly learned he was not wrong. One peek inside Gasthaus zur Schranne was enough for Kirb to know that the restaurant was the real deal and exactly the sort of place he wanted to eat in Bavaria, but there was no chance of getting a table at a reasonable time that evening as a walk-in. We made a reservation for the following night and tried another restaurant called Fischer's Mohrenplatz, where the maître d’ skeptically asked, “Spontaneous?” when we inquired about an available table. They seated us in the back and served up a particularly good version of käse spatzle - the German version of macaroni and cheese.
Rain was forecast on and off for most of the next day, so we decided to make the already-wet Partnach Gorge our main priority. A bus conveniently went from outside our apartment to the base of the hiking area for the gorge, letting us leave Scott and Kristine’s rental car behind. The Partnachklamm had been closed for repairs on all of our previous trips to Bavaria, but recently reopened to the public. The walk is short but sweet: A 30-minute path carved into the cliffside along a raging river, with waterfalls spraying all over from above.
The day was still young when we emerged on the other side, so we decided to hike directly uphill to the Partnach-Alm hut for lunch. When the waiter came for our drink orders, Kristine ordered a coke, and Scott, panicking, decided to order one as well. Instead of being served a small bottle of soda as they expected, they were each given towering glasses of brown, slightly-chilled sugary liquid, making them feel entirely conspicuous as American tourists. To eat, they ordered traditional pancake soup, a specialty of the region that they both found delightfully odd.
Cosy vibes inside of Partnach-Alm
Another hut down the mountain specialized in a different kind of pancake, so we made our way to Kaiserschmarrn-Alm next for their signature namesake dish. Kaiserschmarrn is a large, crispy-on-the-outside, soft-on-the-inside pancake ripped into pieces, dusted with powdered sugar, and served with a side of applesauce. It is delicious. Our dinner at Gasthaus zur Schranne that night was also just as good as Kirb had hoped, with fantastic Schweinshaxe, schnitzel, and Augustiner beer on tap. Scott and Kristine weren’t quite as enchanted with Bavarian food as Kirb (few are), but they enjoyed it nonetheless.
The sky was bright and clear the next morning as we hopped into the rental car and cut across the edge of Austria to get to Neuschwanstein Castle. Famously the inspiration for the Disney logo, Kirb had surprisingly never visited this extremely-popular Bavarian tourist destination. There’s a nice hiking loop that leads from the parking area up the edge of the castle, along the side for an unimpeded view from a bridge, and then down to Hohenschwangau Castle and the lakes that surround it. The autumn leaves were in full splendor and the crowds were bustling-but-manageable on a sunny Saturday, and we all agreed there likely wasn’t a better time of year to see the area. Hiking through red and orange forests to gaze at real-life fairy tale castles is hard to beat. Bavaria exudes some real, old European magic; it was lovely to bask in that magic with loved ones from abroad.
Summer Camp, in Autumn
Kirb was scheduled to work a camp in Thüringen the next week, so he spent his entire Sunday riding on trains and waiting on rides to get to work in another part of the country. It was decidedly no longer summer at the “summer camp” where he was employed, but the autumn splendor in Bavaria was equally splendorous in Central Germany as well. Leaning into the season, he gave the campers fall-themed names like “Soup,” “Pumpkin,” and “The Darkness.” The lead counselor that week came to camp fighting off an illness, but thought she was coming out on the other end. Turns out, she was not, and Kirb picked up several additional leadership duties throughout the week as his coworker rested and recuperated. His reward for this camaraderie and extra effort was catching the sickness himself right as the camp ended.
It was Covid; his coworker hadn’t bothered to test herself before coming to camp that week. Kirb tested positive as soon as he got home and was swiftly quarantined to the couch. Mazz would live in the bedroom and we would both wear masks whenever she came out to the kitchen or bathroom. Kirb was supposed to fill multiple roles at another camp the following week, but instead he laid on the couch for four days straight, dead to the world. He lost a significant chunk of change not being able to work that second camp, and just like that, his first season as a camp counselor came to an unceremonious end. The only silver lining in this Covid debacle was that we successfully kept Mazz from catching the virus. Eventually, Kirb came back to life, but as of this writing, one week after beginning to test negative, he still has brain fog.
At the end of 2024, Covid is still a problem with unclear, possibly-long-reaching repercussions. For the love of god, quit acting like it’s a just cold, test yourself when you get sick, and try not to spread it to other people.