The German Tourism industry and the federal train system (Deutsches Bundesbahn," but just "DB" or Die Bahn) have cooperated in making the entire country “bicycle friendly.” In Germany, individuals, groups, and entire families take bicycling vacations for a week or more. Some camp out in a Campingplatz but others use the local hotels, guesthouses (Gasthaus and Gästehaus), bed and breakfast establishments like Pensions and, our favorite, Zimmer. See "Want to find a hotel below."

Bikeline Guidebook

BVA Guidebook

Spree Path Sign

Zimmer Frei sign

Look closely,

sometimes signs are

hard to see

Zimmer Frei signs

Another

Zimmer sign

Wood Path

Gravel Path

Plattenweg Path

Sandy Path

KellyComingRoundTheMountain.jpg (395638 bytes)

Kelly climbing

a steep pitch

Schloss Prunn on

Altmühl River

Photo by Gilbert Hanson

Breakfast Buffet

Drive Safely -

Bikers Ahead too

The country is well suited for this type of recreation for the following reasons: much of Germany is flat, river valleys and canals are plentiful, bike routes are signed, and marked hiking paths are everywhere. It is easy to find your way around in Germany. In addition to the maps for automobile travel, there are also maps for hiking and biking. They vary in resolutions from 1:125,000 to 1:75,000 and they can be purchased at any bookstore or train station. A friend once told me of his negative experience bicycling in Germany 30 years ago. He complained it was like a “blood sport.” But he rode on the roads with the cars for two reasons; he didn't have a map showing the bike paths and there were few signed bicycle routes back then. We almost never ride on high-traffic roads. Most of the time we are on some type of bike path or at least a low-traffic road.

Currently, according to ADAC Motorwelt, July, 2004 issue, there are over 40,000 kilometers of signed bike routes - that's almost 25,000 miles. At this revision, (also in July, 2004) we have ridden only about 10,000 km of this. Obviously, we have a way to go before we run out of material. By the way, if you hike, there are over 190,000 kilometers of signed and mapped hiking trails (118,000 miles).

Maps: Every community has established their own signed bike routes. You can obtain maps from these community or at many of the hotels. In addition to the plethora of community bike routes, long distance routes have been mapped and signed. Information on these can be found by contacting the German bicycle club, the ADFC (Allgemeiner Deutscher Fahrrad Club). See the Links page for a direct link. The beauty of maps is they seem to be an international sign that you are lost and may need help. It seems that whenever we pull one out, someone will stop and ask us where we want to go. They will then give you advice. Unfortunately, sometimes it isn't 100% accurate advice especially if the giver hasn't ridden a bicycle in years. On the Kocker River, we were told to take a route that involved long steep hills when if we had stuck to our map, we would have avoided the hills. But, on the Lahn, we were offered direction by the driver of a big black Mercedes Benz, he said to follow him and he led us driving at our speed for half a mile to our destination.

Want to find a hotel? Go the travel office at the train station in larger towns. In addition, you can frequently find information about rooms at the Information kiosks or offices. These are located either near the train station or in the center of the town. They sometimes use a sign with a blue, lower case, italicized “i.” There you will get a nearly complete list of all the options with details on costs, bathing facilities, beds, etc. Another option is to access the town on the Internet and check the list of overnight accommodations. Although in German, they are fairly easy to understand with a little study. The syntax for the address block on your browser is: http://www.nameoftown.de. Once you find the town's homepage, look for the word Unterkünfte or something easier like "Hotels, Pensionen und Gasthäuser." Also, check your favorite search engine for "Germany, hotels" or Germany Bed and Breakfasts." There are several great sites. We normally use either the list found in the back of the guidebooks or wait until we get to our destination that day and use the information offices. Then of course, there is our own Hotels in Germany page.

A Zimmer or Privat Zimmer are rooms in private houses rented to travelers. Usually they are advertised as Zimmer Frei (room available). Two or three decades ago, most of the Zimmer were simply the rooms vacated by grown children and the traveler had to share the bathroom with the family as had the children when they lived there. Today, however, many have their own aftermarket bathroom built into the bedroom. There are also Ferienwohnungen or vacation apartments abbreviated as FeWo. They are frequently suites of rooms including a kitchen, living room, bath, and at least one bedroom. One usually rents a FeWo for several days or weeks, seldom for only one day. Sometimes a sign will say something like FeWo / Zimmer Frei which may mean that both are available or simply that they have a suite and it can be rented for one night or several nights. The one night rate will be slightly more expensive - laundry and cleanup is more labor intensive. However, if there are no Zimmer available, don't be shy about asking if a FeWo can be rented for just one night. If the stars are aligned, there is no reservation, the owners do not mind the extra work, and they want the extra income that one night will bring, then you are in luck.

What do the abbreviations Du/WC mean? Du. stands for Dusche, which is shower in English while WC is a Wassercloset - or water closet in English.

If you are like me, you are confused between the term Gasthaus, Gasthof, and Gästehaus. All three are singular nouns but the first is usually just a restaurant while the other two are small hotels also sometimes called a Pension. Unfortunately, some Gasthaus owners became successful enough to afford a house apart from the building their Gasthaus is in so when they moved out from above the restaurant, they discovered they could rent the rooms of their former home and now they have a Gasthaus that rents rooms just like a Gästehaus. What to do? Change the name of their long established restaurant? or just put out a Zimmer Frei sign and continue calling it a Gasthaus?

Bicycling is ingrained in the German culture. According to the Grosser Fahrrad-Atlas Deutschland by Mair Geographischer Verlag, Karl von Drais invented bicycling over 175 years ago. (Of course, the first bicycle didn't have pedals or a chain: you had to push it along with your feet like a scooter except that you sat on it so one could use both feet to push.) It is rare to find an adult German who did not grow up riding a bike and whose children, parents, and even grandparents probably still ride bikes. This fact makes drivers and pedestrians understanding and accommodating to bicycle riders (unlike here in the US).

The only drawbacks are a slight shortage of campgrounds in some areas and some of the castles are on top of steep hills (darn it). You can solve the campground problem by getting a good guidebook listing them. Sorry, we can't solve the castles-on-the-hilltops problem.

During a typical day, a rider will encounter many different surfaces including pavement, gravel, cobblestone, and even dirt footpaths. Until I discovered deep sand, I used to think that Cobblestone was the worst of all road conditions if you don’t have any suspension systems on your bike. Cobblestone roads are dangerously slippery when they are wet. Narrow tires (1 1/4 inch or narrower) make all but the best paved surfaces dangerous. Routes may take riders though small villages and larger population centers.

In towns and cities, the paths will cross railroad and streetcar tracks that can be dangerous, especially to narrow tires. When riding on cobblestone, the gap between one row of stones and the transition to the sidewalk or a streetcar lane could be wide enough to grab a tire. Only recently has Germany passed laws similar to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) that mandates curb cuts and other accommodations for the physically challenged segment of the society. If you ride on the sidewalk, be prepared to go off the curb at the end of the block. Even when there are curb cuts they are bumpy. The marked bike paths may take riders to what seems like the wrong side of the road at times but that is normal.

One solution to some of the problems endemic in large towns and cities is to take public transportation like a bus or streetcar through town. You can bring your bike right into the bus or streetcar if there are no bike racks on the conveyance. Normally the bikes ride for free but you have to buy a ticket for yourself. Just don’t try to do it during the rush hour; during rush hour, bikes may be prohibited on busses and streetcars. Another tip, don't do with more that two riders - you'll overwhelm the capacity to handle bikes and the driver will refuse to let some on board.

Fortunately, many of the planned routes, whether in this publication or others available in quantity at any good book store in Germany, are designed to stay off heavy traffic highways and arterials as much as possible. Most of the riding for our tours are on bike paths where there is light or no automobile traffic. In large book stores, you may even find a couple bike guidebooks in English, like the Austrian Danube. They are rare I will warn you.

In the countryside, the routes are likely to use paths that designed for farm vehicles and/or hikers. You can expect a variety of surfaces as described above. In addition, mopeds and low power motorcycles (such as are sold in most bicycle stores) may be able to use some of the bicycle paths.

Hills are common on many routes but the steep ones are marked on most good bicycle maps and guidebooks. Pushing your bike up hill is not an embarrassment – it may be a necessity. If, like us, you belong to the Over-Fifty-with- Bad-Knees Club, you will push up a few hills. One will rarely encounter stairs or steps (except in train stations where steps are common - but sometimes there are elevators too).

There is an interesting cross section of the society on any given weekend on the bike paths. There are many young people doing exercise rides in tight spandex. I have observed that good tight spandex is very interesting but darn hard to keep up with. There are also a few long distance riders. You can spot the long distance riders easily because their bikes are loaded with panniers, tents, sleeping bags, etc. (We carry a few bike clothes, cash and a credit card.) I sometimes think the largest population on the bike paths is the over 60 crowd. Bicycle clubs with people (of all ages) wearing some type of uniform are also a common sight. Adults will frequently combine a bike ride with a social outing. Getting together with friends and riding a few miles to a restaurant for Kaffee and Kuchen is a frequent form of socialization. You will see sixty-something women wearing dresses and sporting earrings and bracelets riding happily along at 7 mph. Chances are the seventy-something men just behind them are trying to think of opening lines to use to meet these young chicks. We have met several seventy-something people with fully loaded bikes on bike tour vacations too. There is no age limit.

And just how friendly is bike riding in Germany? In parts of the US, red necks driving pick-up trucks try to force bikers off the road. (I hate them for their arrogance and ignorance.) In Germany by contrast, nearly every vehicle will cross the centerline to give bikers a wide berth. I cannot count the times cars and trucks have slowed to my speed for a block or more when passing me would have crowded me to the side of a street or road. This is because the streets are narrow and drivers are used to sharing the road with bikers, parked cars, pedestrians, or people on in-line skates. Yes, you will have to ride on some streets in Germany - but it is much safer than riding on streets in the States.

Getting around Germany by rent-a-car is easy too. If you brought your own bike and plan to rent a car, you will have to solve the problem of how to carry the bike on or in the car. There I can't help you much except to say that very few rental agencies, if any, rent bike racks. I believe the laws concerning bike racks in Germany require the tail lights to be clearly visible. Thus, most bike racks are car top racks. Those racks that do hang off the back of the car, have a second set of lights outboard from the bikes. These need a trailer hitch to mount on and can cost about €450 - that's expensive.

Getting to the start of the trail is very simple but what do you do with the car while you are on the road? I suggest you work out an arrangement with your first overnight accommodation. You may be able to leave it in the hotel parking lot, or on the street in an appropriately signed area - but check first. Another option is long term parking at the train station. Again, you will have to confirm this option before leaving your car. The last option (which I don't recommend) is to take it to the place the police will have it towed to when you park inappropriately. At least you will know where to find in when you return.

Revised: April 23, 2008

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