Feuchtwangen & Dinkelsbühl, Germany

6 min readApr 23, 2022

Mom safely arrived in Munich Thursday morning after her flight over the Atlantic. I’d taken trains from Landsberg am Lech to the airport to meet her. We collected her bags and headed for the rental car counter.

I’d done my homework and reserved a car six weeks ago when I was still back in the States. With the travel industry in flux from the pandemic and war in Ukraine, prices and availability were all over the place.

Typically I get the smallest stick available to save on gas. This time I asked the guy at the counter for a German car instead of the typical Italian Fiat or French Renault. He obliged and hooked us up with a diesel Volkswagen Golf. It had integrated navigation and automatic transmission which is a rarity here. It even came in my favorite color.

We loaded luggage and adjusted our seats and mirrors. I was able to get our destination of Feuchtwangen set on the navigation system but couldn’t figure out the climate controls. No matter, I punched the accelerator and we took the highway entry ramp up to join traffic flowing north of Munich.

One thing you immediately learn while driving in Germany is to stay in the far right lane unless passing. You’ll soon have a big Audi or Mercedes grill filling up your rearview mirror if you linger too long in the left lane.

Through Airbnb back in the States, I’d reserved a stay right on the Markplatz in the historic town of Feuchtwangen in western Bavaria. The date of construction on the side of our green house at the corner of Kirchplatz & Hindenburgstraße read 1503!

The owners had already messaged me the entry code so we quickly brought in our bags and explored the house. Even though we were right on a corner where cars occasionally drove by over the cobblestone street, the walls were so thick we couldn’t hear much of anything inside. Even the chiming bells from the adjacent church steeples were muted.

Most importantly, the beds were unusually soft for Europe. For whatever reason, hard mattresses are preferred here (maybe because they buy cheaper furnishings for rental properties). Regardless, our house was quiet and the bedding was extremely comfortable. The only downside? The lone toilet was downstairs from the bedrooms. You do make a few compromises when renovating a 500-year-old house.

Feuchtwangen was situated along Germany’s “Romantic Road” which was developed as a tourist route back in the 1950s. Historic towns were linked on a nearly 300-mile road from Würzburg in the north to Füssen in the south. This scenery is what most Americans envision when they think of Germany.

I picked this town because it was small, quiet and not as busy as neighboring towns with bigger tourist profiles. It would be our home base for day trips. Our “hub and spoke” method of travel has served us well over the years. You stay in one place for a longer period of time, gain familiarity with your immediate surroundings and aren’t packing and unpacking numerous times.

Within a radius of a few miles, Feuchtwangen provided us with quick access to several interesting destinations. After visiting local grocery stores to stock our fridge, we headed out in the afternoon to visit one of my favorite German towns, Dinkelsbühl. In addition to its fantastic name, this historic town was nearly completely preserved with interesting buildings around every corner.

Surrounded by 15th-century architecture, we found a table in an outdoor cafe in front of the town’s centerpiece, St. George’s Minster. As we waited for our beer and coffee, we admired the renaissance-era wooden carvings on the ornate Deutsches Haus across the street.

A quick word about ordering beer in Germany: when visiting a town, always order the local brew. Nearly every place of any stature proudly serves beer adorned with its name. I picked a tall glass of Weisse from Dinkelsbühler Hauf and it was delicious.