In Praise of a German Weekend
And how the US could replicate it.
Whenever Easter comes around, I often need reminded if this is the one where Jesus was coming or going. (Turns out… a little bit of both!)
In Germany, it’s celebrated by most as a sure-fired four-day weekend. Ethically, I don’t love the idea of a religion getting public holidays. But few will, well, die on that cross and are happy to get the extra time off.
Over the past few years, we’ve used the long weekend to take the train to some charming German village as a base for a few days of running in the surrounding forests. We’d drink comically large German beers, perk up with some Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee and cake), and enjoy a hearty dinner in a delightfully kitschy restaurant.
Last year, it was Stadt Wehlen and the surrounding Saxon Switzerland mountains. This year, we used the long weekend to celebrate the true hero of this season, Melanie. (Jesus’ coming and going was timed this year nicely with her birthday.) I booked ourselves a three-night stay at a castle hotel in Blankenburg where we could relax along the foothills of the Harz mountains and hit the trails to our hearts’ content.
These are the trips that solidify my love for living in Germany. When people ask about why I wanted to move to Europe, I tell them it was precisely for this reason: to have the freedom to travel around by train. What I try to convey to my friends back in the US is that it’s not just that we can take a train from, say, Berlin to Hamburg. We can take a train from Berlin to a tiny village like Blankenburg. Not only that, but there are several options throughout the day. We don’t need to force ourselves into the financially Faustian relationship of car ownership. Because in Germany, there’s always an option by public transportation.
That, to me, is true freedom of movement.
Speaking of: You can find these off-the-beaten-path destinations in my e-book.
Of course, this reality also makes me a bit sad. It used to be the case that you could travel this way in the United States, even in my home state of Ohio. I’ve often said that if Ohio had even a quarter of Germany’s public transportation infrastructure, it would make it infinitely easier for me to imagine living there once again. (Then again, current affairs are doing their damnedest to make a return to the US seem like a masochistic task, period.)
Some assume that I left Ohio for all sorts of reasons that couldn’t be further from the truth. In reality, I’d love to have an opportunity to travel (or because I hate myself, run) around the state. I want to cycle the Ohio-To-Erie Trail, run around Hocking Hills, and spend a summer’s night at the Rockmill Brewery. But to do any of that, you’re forced into a car one way or another. (Unless, like I did, you take Greyhound and can put up with the classicist guffaws.)
I hear all kinds of excuses for why this can’t happen in Ohio or other places in the US. In the end, they all just boil down to excuses. The US can’t be both the most powerful, wealthy country in the world and yet unable to crack the code of widespread public transportation.
Now that I live in Germany with access to public transportation, I’ve eased up a bit on my former intense loathing of cars. By that I mean, I simply accept places for how they are and try not to overly lament what they aren’t. So when I go back to Ohio, I might quietly kvetch to Melanie about having to get in a car to do anything. But for the most part, I just accept that that’s the way it is. And it’s an easier to pill to swallow because we’ve made a life where reliance on a car isn’t our everyday reality.
Still, a part of me will always dream of hopping on a train in Cleveland and winding down the countryside to a place like Hocking Hills just as we often do in Germany. Until then, I’ll take what we can get. And at the moment, that means fairy tale forests book-ended by medieval castles with charming cobblestone villages lined with colorful half-timbered homes where you can get a delicious tall one after a day out on the trails.
Suffice it to say, it could be worse.
Check out Japan’s Ninja City: In my first piece with ShermansTravel, I wrote about Iga––a city about an hour’s train ride east of Kyoto and Osaka where you can learn all about the region’s connection to historical ninjas.
Coming soon: I’ve finished a first draft of my piece for Xterra on fastpacking the Via degli Dei in Italy. That means I’ll soon turn towards editing the video. I’m also working on my piece covering the Mustang Trail Race in Nepal. Stay tuned for a teaser of a newsletter on that adventure.
What’s next?: I’m running a 50K (Melanie’s first!) in Alsace, France on May 18th. And it’s looking like I’ll hop right on a bike right afterwards to cycle from Orléans to Saint-Brevin-les-Pins for yet another story, my first with this particular publication.