While in Berlin I plan to travel and visit various places east of the city. Does anyone know of a good English-language guide book that adequately covers eastern Brandenburg, including for example Frankfurt-Oder, etc. ?
Thanks for any help.
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As you%26#39;ll have realised there%26#39;s a hole in Trip Advisor%26#39;s coverage when it comes to Brandenburg. I know, because i%26#39;ve been looking too (whereas Mecklenburg actually has good coverage).
I%26#39;ve got Lonely Planet Germany and Rough Guide Germany, both of which do cover the main cities/sights of Brandenburg, which wd get you started.
For places in Germany the official website is normally place-name.de; some sites will have an English verion though looking now www.frankfurt-oder.de doesn%26#39;t offer much inEnglish.
Have a look too at Wikipedia which has quite a detailed entry, with links.
I suspect they don%26#39;t get many English-speaking tourists around there, so do take a phrase-book or dictionary with you. Russian was the first foreign language taught in that part of Germany until the early 90%26#39;s and so English is not spoken as widely as in western Germany even now.
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Lynda,
thanks much for your help. I appreciate it.
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I don%26#39;t know how much time you have to explore beyond Berlin, but just to tell you that I%26#39;ve been investigating more for our trip and a bit further south (in Saxony) Bautzen and Görlitz look a lot prettier than Frankfurt (Oder). Not bombed in the war and now being restored (pictures from 1990 were heartbreaking).
Lonely Planet and Rough Guide both cover them in detail (obviously think they are worth it).
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Lynda,
I never rely on guidebooks for visiing places in more rural Germany. The trilingual picture books of various areas of Germany will have nice pictures of the top tourist attractions and is what I usually use to choose places to visit because if you like the picture you should like the place. Those, coupled with maps in %26quot;Die Shell Regional Karte%26quot; series of large scale maps of Germany from any Shell gas station (over 18 in all) should be all that is necessary to have an excellent trip. For example, their map #9 covers the area southeast of Berlin. The four maps I use around the Stuttgart area indicate months%26#39; or years%26#39; worth of excellent places to visit. The maps will show All rural roads, interesting churches, monasteries, palaces and castles, vista points, scenic rivers and valleys, waterfalls, etc. The better cultural features are highlighted in yellow and the scenic ones in green. The best places also have a box around them.
We%26#39;ve spent many an enjoyable day stopping to visit places indicated on the map while going to and from a more specific goal. For instance, one day we drove from Biberach an der Riss to nearby Schloss Mochental stopping at all the indicated churches and monasteries on the way there and on the way back by another route, also including a few other types of sights, some quite lovely. In this manner we found a real hidden gem in the church at Oberstadion (not even highlighted) that had the unbelievable number of nine Gothic altars plus three or more Baroque ones. It%26#39;s a fun thing just visiting places from the map as what you find can be a very pleasant unexpected surprise, and you probably will be the only, or one of a few, tourists there.
The only problems with the maps are that if you stopped to see all the places indicated along your route, you would never get to where you%26#39;re going.
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The point is that if you are visiting from a long way away you do want to see some of the major sights, and guide books can help you plan (you may need to book hotels for a start). Obviously Germany has so many gems in all areas, it%26#39;s impossible to see them all. Lonely Planet and Rough Guide are good in that their coverage goes beyond the obvious big names but inevitably they have to be selective.
I discovered Polyglott guides when working in Germany years ago and I still think the series is excellent. I have quite a few covering different areas and this year the ones on trips around Berlin and on Saxony will come in useful.Their suggested routes are really good as they include things you might otherwise not know about. I%26#39;ve used Polyglott guides to different areas of Austria, Italy and Spain and they are just as good. Unfortunately I don%26#39;t think hey are translated into English so i couldn%26#39;t suggest them to the poster here.
I also have the Marco Polo Generalkarten for all the Länder and will have those with us too. To get ideas I also go through my collection of Merians: those photos of Görlitz were from the Merian-Hefter on the neue Bundesländer published in 1990 or 1991. I am a BIG fan of Merian esp.the older ones which included quirky stuff (newer ones are more straightforward tourist info.)
When our son was younger we tended to stay in one place for a week or two and explore the major and minor sights around there(Schwarzwald, Bayerischer Wald). It helped then to be able to find out from guide books and tourist brochures what might interest a small boy ; that%26#39;s not information that you can get just from maps.
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Lynda,
I forgot to mention tourist information offices, I know the one in Stuttgart is excellent with all kinds of free information about Stuttgart and its surroundings, including some very unusual and quite detailed things. Also, when visiting places in Baden-Wuerttemberg they will have brochures of other great places to visit as in their Staatliche Schlösser und Garten series of pamphlets.
As to guide books, I have looked at many for places that I%26#39;m familiar with to see how they are treated in them. Some excellent places to visit that are better than most of the places mentioned are never mentioned, and some places that are not really even worthy of a visit are overhyped. Therefore, I have really given up on guidebooks for Germany. A real German guide book would probably be at least a meter thick!!!! The Shell map series to me is perfect, lots of places to visit, all will be nice, with a few unexpected great gems.
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