Alpine & Central Europe
Germany
Sixteen states that were separate countries within living memory, and still behave like it.
- Capital
- City
- Destination
- Germany
Germany has no single centre because it was assembled from kingdoms and free cities in 1871, and every one of them kept its own capital, cathedral and beer. That is the country's real pleasure: Bavaria and Hamburg have less in common than France and Spain. Berlin is a city of the twentieth century, still visibly working through it; the Rhine, the Black Forest and the Baltic coast are all quieter than they deserve.
Getting around
ICE trains link the big cities fast, and the Deutschlandticket gives a month of unlimited regional transport nationwide for a flat fee — the best transport deal in Europe. Regional trains reach almost every valley.
When to come
May and September are the best of it. December is Christmas market season and genuinely worth the cold — the markets are civic events, not tourist ones. Oktoberfest is in September, which catches people out annually.
Worth knowing
- Cash is still king in a surprising number of bakeries, bars and taxis.
- Sunday closing is near-total; buy food on Saturday.
- Jaywalking against a red man is genuinely disapproved of, especially with children present.
At the table
- Bread: 3,000 registered varieties, and the bakery is the first thing to find
- Wurst, which is regional and non-negotiable — Currywurst in Berlin, Weisswurst before noon only in Munich
- Riesling from the Mosel, which is dry now whatever your grandmother thought
Travel regions
4 editorial regions, each opening onto its cities.
Region
Berlin & the East
The capital, Saxony's baroque cities, and the landscape of a country that was two countries.
Region
Bavaria & the Alps
Beer halls, baroque churches, mountain lakes and a mad king's castles.
Region
The Rhine & the West
Castles on a gorge, Riesling on impossible slopes, and cathedral cities strung along the river.
Region
The North
Hanseatic brick, harbour cities and a Baltic coast of white cliffs and beach chairs.
Popular destinations
The destinations we have written most about, which is not the same as the ones most people go to — and is the only ranking we can honestly compute.
Berlin
Poor, sexy, enormous and unfinished — five museums on one island and a wall memorial that refuses to be comfortable.
Munich
A wealthy southern capital with the Alps an hour away and a river you can surf in the middle of a park.
Hamburg
A merchant republic and Europe's third port, with more bridges than Venice and Amsterdam together.
Dresden
A baroque royal capital burned in 1945 and rebuilt stone by numbered stone, on a river bend.
Cologne
A Roman city with a Gothic cathedral that took 632 years and dominates everything.
Lübeck
The queen of the Hanseatic League, on an island, in brick gothic, and the home of marzipan.
Experiences here
A sample of what is listed across Germany.
The Wall, where it stood
Bernauer Straße preserves the death strip, the tunnels and the names — an hour that does what no film manages.
Cycle the runways at Tempelhof
Two 2,000-metre runways, open to anyone, kept deliberately empty by referendum.
A beer garden, done correctly
Buy the beer, bring the food, sit at the unmarked communal tables — the marked ones are for served customers and the distinction matters.
The trumpet on the Königssee
The boatman stops mid-lake and plays into the cliff; the echo comes back a full phrase later.
Above the vineyards on the Rheinsteig
The high path gives you the whole gorge; the trains and boats below give you the way back.
The 62 ferry, not the tour boat
A public transport ferry down the Elbe past the container terminals; same view, a fraction of the price.
Journeys through Germany
The Journey Planner holds all 9 of these destinations and the real distances between them. It opens on 14 days, which is the shortest stay this atlas records for each of them added up — change the length, the month, the budget or the pace and build it again.
Stories set here
Fixed points in the year
The record
What we hold about Germany, where each figure came from, and when it was last checked. The score says what this country is for, not how good it is — it is useful once you are already interested and is not a reason to be.
- Capital
- Berlin
- Currency
- EUR — euro
- Languages
- German
- Population
- 83,132,799 (2019) — Natural Earth 1:50m admin 0 countries
- ISO codes
- DE · DEU
- Time zone
- CET/CEST (UTC+1/+2)
- Membership
- European Union, Schengen area, Uses the euro, European Economic Area
- Typical day
- €70–165 per person
- Best months
- May, June, July, August, September
- Quieter months
- April, October
- Facts checked
- not verified why this matters
Europe Experience Score
How this is calculated — derived from our own tagging, not from measurement. It says what a place is for, not how good it is. The tick on each bar is the median across the whole Atlas, so a bar short of it is a dimension this place is not for.