Two weeks ago today we were woke up in our apartment in East Germany, ready to explore this unknown world. East Germany has a pretty bad reputation because a lot of places have become desolate and dilapidated in the past 10 years. We were near the Thüringer Wald (Forest of Thuring) in a tiny town called Schmiedfeld am Rennsteig (near Oberhof). We selected this location because Stefan has recently become interested in cross-country skiing…and this area is one of the best places for cross-country skiing in Germany. In fact, most of the profession cross-country skiers from Germany practice there…and apparently so do most of the people who live around there. For those who like to cross-country ski, this is essentially the best place possible for luxury skiing holidays or low-key getaways.
Finding a place to stay with a big dog and a small child is not all that easy, regardless of the location. We looked online for quite a few hours until we found a place that we thought would work. Our first instinct was to go to a nice hotel that allowed dogs and really pamper ourselves. But most of the places only offered one room accomodations, or perhaps a suite with a pull-out couch and one bedroom — which meant Stefan and I would have also needed to pipe down at 7pm and consider going to bed so we didn’t wake Mackenzie once she’d passed out for the evening.
Then we started to think that a guest house or apartment might be better for us but the selection out there is pretty limited. Most of the places are not very cheap and pretty “old fashioned” (which translates to “run down” in Realtor-speak). But we did happen to find family who has several vacation apartments to choose from in the area. The apartment we ended up staying in was actually the basement of their family home, but we had our own entrance, a carport to park under just a short distance down the road and barely heard anything from them above us…despite the fact that they have 3 small children!
The houses are all fairly new and are broken down into several apartments (each floor is its own apartment). And the prices were very reasonable compared to other places we’d seen. We had two bedrooms, bath, nice little kitchen & living room and big entry hall for all your winter junk for €55 a night (more photos on their websites below). And the guest house itself was really cute outside, tastefully decorated inside, had everything we needed (except paper towels and extra toilet paper — reminder for next time to bring plenty ourselves just in case), included sheets and towels (which many do not) and was really very comfortable. A tiny TV with satellite was also available, which reminded us why we no longer have our TV hooked up either. Thirty channels of nothing but crap during prime time. But it’s the kind of area that you have so much to do and see during the day that you just crash in the evening anyway and don’t really care too much about the TV. We especially loved the drawer in the living room coffee table that was full of brochures about the area. It’s actually how we found the aquarium that we went to the next day when the weather wasn’t so great.
The bottom floor of this house was our apartment
Family Eckardt (Tel. 036782/70797), who actually owns three houses on the same street (the “Landhaus” just down the street from where we stayed with two apartments and another called the “Villa” with slightly nicer furnishings) for a total of 5 apartments, was waiting for us to arrive on Thursday night. But what they didn’t tell us was that they were actually really anticipating our arrival because the wife was IN LABOR with their fourth child, a little girl (congratulations again!!) The husband showed us around and never mentioned a thing. I guess he was fairly used to the events…but wow, was he calm. We only found they’d had a new addition when we were leaving because we thought we’d heard a newborn crying the night before and happened to ask. Turns out she had just brought the baby home and that’s when they told us they had gone straight to the hospital after we’d checked in!
If you want to do some winter sports in this area, you need to book really early. They actually told us that most of their apartments are fully booked for winter 2010 already. But if we wanted to come back with our dog and so on, they would find a way to fit us in. I had serious concerns that they would freak out when they say the size of our pony-dog…but apparently we did a really good job of cleaning up after Ayla because they sent us an email after we checked out that thanked us for cleaning up so well. Their cleaning lady didn’t even notice we’d had a dog there! Thanks for not really starting to shed until we got home, Ayla! 😉
We’re already talking about going back there this winter. Stefan adored their cross-country tracks and apparently when there is lots of snow (there was only about a foot on the ground when we were there and it was melting fast) they have immaculately prepared trails (loipen). Oh, did I mention it was literally about 50 meters from our apartment to the tracks? Yes, uphill and kinda rough, but you can’t get much closer than that! At the information office when Stefan was picking up a few brochures about the area, the women working there actually gasped that we were there for him to ski then. “But all the snow is gone already,” she exclaimed. Little did she know that the snow they had at that moment was still more than we’d gotten in the Frankfurt area all winter.
If you’re not interested in winter sports, there are many, many kilometers worth of paths to hike and walk in the Thüringer Wald. In fact, this area is part of the infamous Rennsteig and you can literally hike until your feet fall off there. Many of the cities are connected with hiking paths…which during the winter become cross-country and skating paths, so the hardcore athletes can really go wild there. You can even trek up and down a gold panning trail, with a tour guide for several days if you wish, who will tell you all you need to know about panning for gold. I seriously want to do that! Or you can rent a canoe and hike by water around the area. There’s even rock climbing around there which I’m sure is beautiful. And if you’d like to try out cross-country skiing in the summer too, you can always visit the indoor track in Oberhof. I’m telling you, they are really serious about sports there.
Overall we had an awesome time while there and kinda felt bad for making fun of East Germany in the past. Yes, the houses are mostly covered in drab, icky slate tile exteriors because it was cheap back then when they were built…and there are some buildings that just really need to be torn down…but the people were extremely friendly, the food was fantastic and we just had a wonderful time exploring. The area is really pretty, lots of incredible forests and rolling hills. But I’ll go into that in future posts. So stay tuned for more photos of our walks in the forest and our trip to the aquarium in Zella Mehlis! Thank God for digital cameras because I took 250 photos in the aquarium alone…450 on the whole trip. 🙂
Trackbacks/Pingbacks