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14 4 G ERM A N Y

GERMANY
ERMANY HAS plenty of settings, and Gast im Schloss,
family-run hotels of a group of converted
Gcharacter and style, but castles, some still run by
the successful ones tend to their ancestral owners.
grow in size. The really Our selection offers places
small hotel (say, five to ten to suit all tastes, from
rooms) is uncommon – as simple country inns,
are hotel chains; some picturesque Gasthöfe
hotels group together for (guesthouses) and town
joint promotion, such as the hotels to palatial mansions
Romantik chain, Silencehotels, and Kur-hotels (located in
renowned for their secluded spas or health resorts).

Schloss Hugenpoet at Essen-Kettwig, page 172, has style on a grand scale
GERMANY REGION In Mecklenburg-West Thuringia, Brandenburg and
BY REGION Pomerania, a low-lying, rural Saxony, and the newly-
region of lakes, meadows, fashionable, one-time eastern
N THIS GUIDE, we have forests and beaches, are cities of Dresden and Leipzig.
Idivided the country into hidden country guesthouses Most hotels in the former
three areas: Northern and small family-run hotels. German Democratic Republic
Germany, Central Germany Alternatively, log-cabin-style (GDR, or East Germany) are
and Southern Germany. inns and hunting lodges in now moving closer to
the picturesque Harz standards of service, food and
Northern Germany mountains make for a perfect comfort found in the rest of
This comprises the states of year-round sporting getaway, Germany, although their
Lower Saxony, Schleswig- with plenty of opportunities prices tend to be marginally
Holstein and Mecklenburg- for skiing, cycling and hiking. cheaper. The city hotels tend
West Pomerania. It also to be efficient but sometimes
includes the two great Baltic Central Germany rather large and impersonal.
seaports of Hamburg and The region stretches from the Look out for the smaller,
Bremen (each is almost a sprawling cityscapes of family-run hotels, called
semi-autonomous state on its Düsseldorf, Dortmund and Pensionen, friendlier in
own), and numerous historic Frankfurt in the west, to the character but usually lacking
towns and seaside resorts new capital, Berlin, in the full hotel facilities.
where the handsome and east. It includes the former Alternatively, head to the
spacious mansions of wealthy capital, Bonn, many of vineyard Gasthöfe of the
merchants and seafarers now Germany’s best wine-growing Rhine and its various
make magnificent hotels. regions, the states of Hesse, tributaries, or splash out on