Autostadt & Goslar, Germany

On my driving days between Airbnbs I’ll route through places I can stop and visit along the way. Between Lauenburg and my next place in Goslar, I came through Wolfsburg which is HQ for the Volkswagen Group.

Volkswagen is a massive global brand, one of the world’s largest automakers. The company owns Audi, Lamborghini, Bentley, Skoda and Porsche along with its mainstream VW line. It was founded in 1937 by the German Labor Front under the Nazi Party and revived post-World War II by the British who occupied the zone.

In the 1930s, Adolf Hitler demanded a car every family could afford, a “people’s car” that could travel Germany’s burgeoning Autobahn system. Thus, the Volks (folk) wagen (car) company was established with the first automobile planned on Ferdinand Porsche’s design.

Volkswagen produced only a few cars before the outbreak of war in 1939 forced a switch to military vehicle production. In April 1945, its heavily bombed factory was captured by the United States armed forces and subsequently handed over to the British (which would occupy the zone). In 1948, the British offered Volkswagen to Ford, free of charge, but the American company passed.

Of course, Volkswagen eventually flourished with its iconic Beetle (Kafer in German) and the rest is history. VW opened a massive park called Autostadt (literally, auto city) in 2000. It was like a Disneyland for car people with pavilions for each of the brands, a history museum, restaurants and of course the vast manufacturing plants. Volkswagen employs nearly 60,000 workers in Wolfsburg.

In the history museum, the company displayed the oldest surviving Beetle in the world, an early test version from 1938. More than 21.5 million would be built over its entire production run that finally ended in 2003. The Beetle is the longest-running and most-manufactured car of a single platform ever made.

After the history museum, I quickly hiked over to the Porsche pavilion. It was unmistakable among the other buildings on the Autostadt campus with its sleek curved roof recalling the brand’s diving hoods.

I took my time inside inspecting the shiny vehicles on display, eventually finding myself in a discussion with one of the German representatives on hand. He enthusiastically pointed to one model sporting an engine that generated 1,200 horsepower.

I even watched a short movie in the attached theater which was dripping with German-style nostalgia. Of course, who wouldn’t recognize the Porsche look first established with the iconic 356 in 1948?

The next day, I set out to explore the town of Goslar in the Harz mountains region of north-central Germany. The weather was perfect. I immediately noticed a vast change in architecture from the brick cities I’d visited in the north. This was traditional Fachwerk, partially wood beam buildings with squared-off and carefully fitted timbers secured in joints by large wooden pegs.

This was looking much more like the Germany I was used to from my time down south in Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria. The surrounding hills and forests framing villages in valleys felt more familiar.

I first climbed the Marktkirche to get a birds-eye view of the town’s layout. The wind was intense and the bells deafened me for a few minutes but the views were worth it.

Nearby ore mining brought wealth and importance to the Goslar region, elevating the town during its time in the Holy Roman Empire. Despite a nearby Luftwaffe airbase, Goslar escaped strategic bombing during the war.

I hiked out to inspect the Gustav Adolf Stave Church which looked like it had been dropped here from somewhere in Scandinavia. It was actually built in 1907 as a copy of the medieval Borgund Stave Church in Norway.

The all-wood interior was a cathedral of craftsmanship. I stopped for a time to admire the massive beam ceiling and intricately carved walls.

Back in the center of Goslar, I hiked around until I found a restaurant that had plenty of seating in a sunny courtyard and promptly ordered a plate of schnitzel paired with a tall hefeweizen.

By late in the afternoon, I was ready to head back to the apartment. Along the drive, I crossed the old Cold War border between what was then East and West Germany.

I pulled off the road and inspected a small memorial at the remains of the former East German security wall that ran along a neighborhood in Stapelburg. The homes just beyond the walls had been cut off from the West for 40 years. Imagine if your family lived on opposite sides of this line.

I was impressed with the modest memorial. You could stand in front of one panel and line up the metal framework with the house in the background to see where the former security tower once stood. Only its concrete base remained today.

Back in the car, I thought about how much history I’d experienced in this one day. Stopped at a light, a group of bikers out enjoying the curvy mountain roads on this sunny Friday afternoon brought me back to modern times.

Life in Germany today is so much different for them than it was for their parents and grandparents.

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