Germany
From half-timbered medieval towns to cosmopolitan cities, Germany offers a thoroughly engaging mix of tradition and modernity. You can explore Bavaria’s magnificent baroque palaces one day, and immerse yourself in Hamburg’s cool, redeveloped Hafen City the next. In hip Berlin, historic sites such as the Brandenburg Gate and contemporary art galleries create exciting contrasts. Throughout the country, discovering world-class museums and cutting-edge design is as quintessentially German as grabbing a stein of beer at a centuries-old biergarten.
Berlin is at the forefront of new culinary trends! Going vegan and sustainable is taking off.
We’re not saying you can’t follow your normal diet but be open-minded to alternative eating trends. Whether you want to eat burgers, steaks, sausages or desserts – you can find everything vegan and vegetarian here. Most of the restaurants are sustainable and use local products, and some grow their own vegetables and herbs. If you’re looking for unusual places to eat, try Germany’s first Michelin-starred dessert fine dining restaurant Coda. To mingle with the locals, head to a brewery in winter or a beer garden in summer.Karlovy Vary
Berlin is notoriously more inexpensive than other German cities. Make the most of it.
Fresh fruit and vegetables, flowers, and delicacies from all over the world, plus a little chat: Berlin’s weekly markets are not just for shopping but also a popular meeting place. The large market halls with their sumptuous offerings are particularly popular. Alternatively, you can, of course, go to the biggest and most famous department store KaDeWe or shop till you drop in local designer and vintage shops or at a flea market like a true Berliner. And during advent, you should definitely visit one of the many Christmas markets.
The Rhineland
The banks of the Rhine are crowned by magnificent castle after castle and by breathtaking, vine-terraced hills that provide the livelihood for many of the villages hugging the shores. In the words of French poet Victor Hugo, “The Rhine combines everything. The Rhine is swift as the Rhône, wide as the Loire, winding as the Seine . . . royal as the Danube and covered with fables and phantoms like a river in Asia.”
The importance of the Rhine can hardly be overestimated. Although not the longest river in Europe (the Danube is more than twice as long), the Rhine has been the main river-trade artery between the heart of the continent and the North Sea (and Atlantic Ocean) throughout recorded history. The Rhine runs 1,230 km (764 miles) from the Bodensee (Lake Constance) west to Basel, then north through Germany, and, finally, west through the Netherlands to Rotterdam.
Vineyards, a legacy of the Romans, are an inherent part of the Rhine landscape from Wiesbaden to Bonn. The Rhine tempers the climate sufficiently for grapes to ripen this far north, and the world’s finest Rieslings come from the Rheingau and from the Rhine’s most important tributary, the Mosel. Thanks to the river, these wines were shipped far beyond the borders of Germany, giving rise to the wine trade that shaped the fortune of many riverside towns. Rüdesheim, Bingen, Koblenz, and Köln (Cologne) remain important commercial wine centers to this day.
The river is steeped in legend and myth. The Loreley, a jutting sheer slate cliff, was once believed to be the home of a beautiful and bewitching maiden who lured boatmen to a watery end in the swift currents. Heinrich Heine’s poem Song of Loreley (1827), inspired by Clemens Brentano’s Legend of Loreley (1812) and set to music in 1837 by Friedrich Silcher, has been the theme song of the landmark ever since. The Nibelungen, a legendary Burgundian people said to have lived on the banks of the Rhine, serve as subjects for Wagner’s epic opera cycle Der Ring des Nibelungen (1852–72).
William Turner captured misty Rhine sunsets on canvas. Famous literary works, such as Goethe’s Sankt-Rochus-Fest zu Bingen (The Feast of St. Roch; 1814), Lord Byron’s Childe Harold’s Pilgrimage (1816), and Mark Twain’s A Tramp Abroad (1880), captured the spirit of Rhine Romanticism on paper, encouraging others to follow in their footsteps.
Switzerland
Whether on snow-capped mountains or in glitzy resort towns, you can experience the high life in Switzerland. Visitors are elated by its soaring outdoor recreation, riding cable cars up peaks near the Matterhorn, sipping Swiss wine while cruising on a crystalline alpine lake, and skiing the immaculate slopes of St. Moritz. At the end of the day, lavish spas beckon, along with lively après ski scenes and pots of fondue. Sophisticated cities like Zurich and Geneva take luxury to new heights, with posh boutiques and upscale restaurants lining their cobblestoned streets.
Zurich is a design haven for art-lovers and culture-seekers.
There are a lot of things for art lovers to enjoy. You can’t miss Kunsthaus which hosts works by Henri Matisse and Vincent van Gogh. There is also a gallery mile which includes the national museum and private art galleries.
It’s true that most Swiss cities are expensive, but Zurich’s free art walks provide a reprieve from all the spending.
There’s nothing better than free activities around a city – especially in Zurich where things do not come cheaply. There’s the memorial hall designed by Carsten Holler, a floating angel by Niki de Saint Phalle in a train station, a slingshot “Y” by Sislej Xhafa and the sculpture “Anne-Sophie” by Alex Hanimann.
Luxury is the word and Zurich lives up to the hype.
The latest opening of the Mandarin Oriental Zurich adds a whole new luxury portfolio to Zurich which already has some exceptional luxury hideaways, including the prestigious Widder Hotel (apartments for the uber-rich), the historical Baur au lac and the iconic hilltop hotel, the Dolder Grand.
Geneva
Long known for its watches, chocolate, and banks, Geneva is a postcard-perfect city with a rich history as a haven for cultural freethinkers and a modern-day reputation as a hub of international cooperation. It’s nestled in a valley on the southwestern end of Lac Léman and ringed by the snowcapped Alps, and the dazzling surroundings are a playground for skiers, snowboarders, hikers, and sailors. In the city, cobblestone streets lined with cafés, luxury boutiques, grand monuments, and museums beckon to foodies, shoppers, history buffs, and art fiends.
The Rhône River cuts through Geneva, and its strategic importance as a crossing ground had a lasting effect on the city. The Genevois controlled the only bridge over the Rhône north of Lyon when Julius Caesar breezed through in 58 BC; the early Burgundians and bishop-princes who succeeded the Romans were careful to maintain this control. The wealthy city-state fell to the French in 1798, then made overtures to Bern as Napoléon’s star waned. Geneva finally joined the Swiss Confederation as a canton in 1815. Throughout this turbulent history, the city served as a place of refuge for the religious reformers Jean Calvin and John Knox; sheltered Voltaire, Victor Hugo, Alexandre Dumas, Lord Byron, and Mary Shelley; and expelled its native son Jean-Jacques Rousseau for being liberal way before his time.
Geneva’s museums have drawn particular benefit from the city’s unique perspective on history and cultural exchange: you can visit a military exhibit up the hill from the Red Cross’s examination of humanitarian efforts; weigh the extremes of ancient and contemporary ceramics; browse archaeological finds from Egypt and the Far East; compare pre-Christian primitive art with its modern incarnation; relive the Reformation; or explore the fruits of human thought and creativity as expressed on paper, in science, and inside the case of a tiny pocket watch. The Palais des Nations forms the ultimate living (and working) museum of 20th-century history.
Today, Switzerland’s famous neutrality has made it a hotbed of international activity with a thriving community of expatriates from around the world. The result is a bustling city filled with busy shops and lively cafés during the week and a more serene lakeside retreat on the weekends as many use this gateway city to explore the natural beauty of the region.
Hiking or skiing the nearby Alps and Jura are popular weekend activities, and there are options for newbies, extreme adventurists, day-trippers, and those lucky enough to extend their holiday. From meandering through the wine trails to hiking and skiing, Geneva provides a great home base for exploring the surrounding countryside.
Who put the ritz in St. Moritz? Undoubtedly, St. Moritz’s reputation was made by the people who go there and who have been going there, generation after generation, since 1864, when hotelier Johannes Badrutt dared a group of English tourists—already summer regulars—to brave the Alpine winter as his guests. They loved it, delighted in the novelty of snowy mountain beauty—until then considered unappealing—and told their friends. By the turn of the century St. Moritz, Switzerland, and snow were all the rage.
The first historical reference to the town dates from 1139, and in 1537 Paracelsus, the great Renaissance physician and alchemist, described the health-giving properties of the St. Moritz springs. St. Moritz gets busy with celebs and socialites around the winter holidays—some New Year’s Eve events have guest lists closed a year in advance—but the glitter fades by spring. Very ordinary people fill the streets come summer—the same hikers you might meet in any resort—and hotel prices plummet.
Then visitors see St. Moritz for what it really is: a busy, built-up old resort city that sprawls across a hillside above an aquamarine lake, the St. Moritzersee, surrounded by forested hills and by graceful, though not the region’s most dramatic, peaks. Piz Rosatsch, with its glacier, dominates the view, with Piz Languard (10,699 feet) on the east and Piz Güglia (7,492 feet) on the west.
St. Moritz-Dorf is the most like a downtown, with busy traffic, but outlawing cars in the center of town and building the Serletta parking lot near the train station has alleviated competitive parking. Other than that, don’t expect a picturesque village.
Even a hundred years of hype have not exaggerated its attraction as a winter sports center. The place that twice hosted the Olympic games (1928 and 1948)—and trademarked the shining sun as its logo—is still well set up for sports, with excellent facilities for ice-skating, bobsledding, ski jumping, and horseback riding. But it hardly has a lock on fine skiing: St. Moritz shares a broad complex of trails and facilities with Sils, Silvaplana, Celerina, and Pontresina; only the slopes of Corviglia, Marguns, and Piz Nair are directly accessible from town.
Despite its fame—which stems from the iconic Matterhorn and its excellent ski facilities—Zermatt is a resort with its feet on the ground. It protects its regional quirks along with the wildlife and tumbledown mazots, which crowd between glass-and-concrete chalets like old tenements between skyscrapers. Streets twist past weathered-wood walls, flower boxes, and haphazard stone roofs until they break into open country that inevitably slopes uphill. Despite the throngs of tourists, you’re never far from the wild roar of a silty river or vertiginous mountain path.
In the mid-19th century Zermatt was virtually unheard of; the few visitors who came to town stayed at the vicarage. The vicar and a chaplain named Joseph Seiler persuaded Seiler’s younger brother Alexander to start an inn. Opened in 1854 and named the Hotel Monte Rosa, it’s still one of five Seiler hotels in Zermatt. In 1891 the cog railway between Visp and Zermatt took its first summer run and began disgorging tourists with profitable regularity—though it didn’t plow through in wintertime until 1927. Today the town remains a car-free resort (though electric carts run by the hotels clog the streets). If you’re traveling primarily by car, park it in the multistory terminal connected to the station in Täsch, where you catch the train into Zermatt.
A “blast from the past” is how one recent visitor described her journey through Austria. It remains, she explained, a place where children laugh at marionette shows in the parks, couples linger for hours over pastries at gilt-ceiling cafés, and Lipizzan stallions dance to Mozart minuets—in other words, Austria is a country that has not forgotten the elegance of a time gone by.
