Traveling – Northern Germany

This is part of the on-going discussion about food and travels during our fall 2007 trip to Europe.  In Milan Italy, I transitioned from vacation to work and visited customer for a few days.  Now my wife and I have to get to Northern Germany over the weekend for my next set of meetings.

We drove our rental car from Milan to Verona (think Romeo and Juliet), then over the Brenner pass into Austria.  Navigating around Innsbruck, we headed back to Oberammergau Germany to pick up some pictures we had left behind.  As we entered the Alps in Austria, it had started to snow.  When we reached Germany, it was really snowing.  By the time, we returned to Oberammergau, there were several inches of snow on the ground but driving was fine.

Heading North from Oberammergau we drove along the autobahn to Munich.  During the drive we transitioned from snow to sun and a beautiful fall day.  We dropped off the car at the Munich airport (No, that’s not our car, it is an advertisement, I managed not damage the rental this time).

In Munich we caught a flight to Hannover Germany.  From Hannover, we took the train to Bad Salzdetfurth where we walked the quaint town to our accommodations the Hotel Kronprinz.  My colleague told me what town to stay in, so I looked on the internet for hotels and I really liked the looks of the Kronprinz with it’s white walls and natural wood decks and fortunately, we were able to get reservations.

The Kronprinz was a great place to stay.  The rooms were very light, clean, and comfortable.  We had a nice balcony overlooking the main street of town where we enjoyed sitting and looking at the buildings.  Bad Salzdetfurth is an old salt mining town and has a museum detailing the history of the area and the mines. 

The night we arrived, we traveled to the nearby town of Bad Gandersheim and met with some friends to have dinner at their house.  After touring the town, we had a wonderful dinner consisting of a German soup (noodles, vegetables with small meatballs) accompanied by smoked fish, wheat bread, white cheese slices, and olives.

Then next morning we met my colleague Stefan for a typical buffet breakfast at the hotel: cereal, eggs, cold cuts and cheeses.  When my wife turned her coffee cup over, she was very surprised to find a white candy molded mouse under her coffee cup.  It is intended as the sugar/creamer for the coffee (but they were also good to eat).

While I traveled to a nearby customer, my wife walked around the town and took quite a few  beautiful pictures.  I have included a couple of them in this post.  Once my meetings were completed, we packed up and Stefan drove very quickly to Wuppertal Germany.  When I say quickly, I mean 130 miles an hour!  We didn’t drive that speed the entire time, but when we did it was fast.

We had a quick fast food lunch in Wuppertal followed by some Apple Kuchen from a bakery near one of the local transit stations.  The local transit system is unique as it is a suspended monorail.  It runs suspended over the middle of the river and is quite a site.  We would have liked to have time to travel along it, but business called.

After the business was over, we quickly drove to Maintal Germany, which is near Frankfurt.  That was just a day of 400 miles worth of driving as well as several customer visits.  We settled into our hotel Zum Schiffchen that is on the banks of the Main River that flows on to Frankfurt.

Dinner that night was pork knuckle and spaetzle that we enjoyed at al local restaurant as we visited with Stefan and has son Daniel.  Then it was back to the hotel to get some sleep for another day of traveling and customer visits.

Adventures In Food: Author: Kerry Howell