TRAVEL AWAITS: Why This Quaint German Town Was A Perfect Base For Our European Adventure

The original article was published in Travel Awaits on May 21, 2022

We have been fortunate in our travels. One of the factors that make it so is that we have stumbled upon surprising places as a perfect base for our explorations. When we were RVing, for example, our campground network gave us many towns from which to make day trips. Now that we have shifted to three timeshares to travel the world, the luck has stayed.

We usually decide on a destination based on the availabilities of the properties in the companies’ inventories. When we needed a location in Germany to cut the long train trip between Innsbruck and Paris, we were presented with Oberstaufen in Germany as an option. How I wished it had been Munich or Berlin or a popular tourist spot like that. But let me tell you how lucky that choice turned out to be!

Oberstaufen, Germany

The small town is host to many lodging options, including a hidden gem of the Mondi-Holiday Hotel, a frequently awarded resort and spa chain in Europe. Our “chalet” was a one-bedroom unit that felt very much like home so we were motivated to shop at the local grocer and cook some hot meals. Between day trips, we also spent a lot of time at the Wellness Center for fitness routines, spa therapies (dry or infrared sauna, steam or dampfbath, and swims and soaks at the heated pools and tubs. There were also table tennis, billiards, and bowling facilities. We even dined at the exclusive Italian restaurant on site.

We soon learned that Oberstaufen was a haven for German hikers in summer and skiers in winter. Only 2,595 feet in average elevation, it features a unique topography of undulating hills that create bowls of lush greenery punctuated by clusters of homes. The 7,000 residents and the seasonal tourists are served by a small and quaint downtown area where we were able to explore lovely shops, admire the charming homes, and worship at the yellow and white church. There was a convenient bus depot and a cute train station that connected the town to elsewhere. So from this wonderful restorative base, we discovered four  off-the-beaten-path towns in Switzerland, Lichtenstein, and Germany.

St. Gallen, Switzerland

It took us about two hours on the train to get to St. Gallen, Switzerland, close to the German-Swiss border. We had very low expectations. We just wanted to tick off Switzerland as another country we had visited together. But, walking on the way to the Old Town, we stumbled upon a few blocks that were all carpeted red. It was called Red Square. Soon I was asking my husband to photograph this aging “model” beside a red car, sitting on a red bench, and going up some red stairs.

At the Old Town Center, the Tourist Information Center told us that there are 111 exquisite balconies that adorn the buildings around the city of over 75,000. Just outside and around the Center, we readily chanced upon six of them. But they said that we should not miss the entire Abbey of St. Gallen since it is a UNESCO World Heritage Site!

The Abbey's Cathedral is downright gorgeous but it is the Abbey Library that took our breath away. It put us back in pre-medieval times when books were treated like gold. The ceiling is one of a kind, not just painted, but a three-dimensional work of art. The shelves are of heavy wood and they open up to reveal more secrets behind. And the lovely old floor had to be protected by soft cloth booties we had to wear!  We found out that St. Gallen was from Ireland, a true cultural and spiritual leader in the 900s. He was credited with spreading his influence into what was considered the “heathen” Germany of the time.

Vaduz, Lichtenstein

And we were so happy to discover that Lichtenstein, another country that we could add to our roster of visited nations, is only two hours and a half hours away, first by train to Feldkirch, Austria, and then by Bus 11 to Vaduz, the capital of under 6,000 in population. In fact, the whole country has only 35,000 people, the 6th smallest country in the world.

Vaduz has a lively tourist industry, however, despite being one of the very few capital cities in the world without an airport or railway station. The Old Town Square is a pedestrian area walkable in slow exploratory fashion in just an afternoon, from the Cathedral just off the Government Building, the small but gorgeous Parliament edifice, on one end, and the Rathaus (City Hall) at the other. The whole walk is strewn with interesting sculptures that will capture your fancy, including giant ladies’ strappy shoes. The ruler of the country, a young prince, lives up in the castle on the hill that looks over the entire city but we didn’t have the time to hike up there. Just outside the tourist area, we found an excellent restaurant patronized by locals. Their cuisine is an interesting fine mix of German and French food.

Steibus, Germany

On our return trip from Vaduz, we missed the bus going to Mondi-Holiday and got stranded at the bus station for an hour, stressed and hungry. A friendly German couple read every German poster to find us alternative routes, to no avail. The following day we took the bus to Steibis, a smaller town up another hill across from downtown Oberstaufen. We were told that there was quite a popular ski hotel, Hotel Ludwig, with unique and artsy windows.

Just behind the hotel is a Wonmobile (RV) campground.  And that’s where we found, at a condominium building across the street, the same helpful couple we met at the bus depot. It turned out that Dieter and Inge owned a unit there. Equally surprised by the happenstance, they invited us in for drinks and pretzels. During the merriment that ensued, despite my husband’s broken German, Dieter’s broken English, and the ladies’ inability to participate, they extended to us an invitation to see their other resort home in Uberlingen, Germany.

Uberlingen, Germany

The next day was our last in the country and we had planned on packing and going to the Wellness Center again. Instead, we decided to accept the couple’s  invitation and took a two-hour train ride to Uberlingen. The city is on the northern shore of Lake Constance otherwise known locally as Bodensee (see headline photo). With a population of 22,000, the city is the second largest, after Friedrichshafen, in the Bodensee district. The lake is huge and the city is a resort town that has attracted many retirees and tourists. In fact, when we were there, preparations were on the way for the 2020 Garden Show.

Dieter and Inge treated us to a hearty brunch of German sausages, liverwurst, cheeses, and bread at their lovely maisonette’s open deck overlooking the lake. Then they walked us through the City Garden, past the hot springs, and up to the Gazebo where we had a great view of the city and the lake. We continued walking to see the oldest section of town, including parts of the Wall that protected the city when the Swedish invaded. Much of the city was spared because of treaties previously signed.

Then Dieter took one of his two Jaguars and drove us up a hill to the beautiful Basilica of the Fourteen Holy Helpers situated among the vineyards. And that was not the end of it. He also drove us up another hill to the Meersburg Castle, the oldest inhabited fortress in Germany whose construction started in pre-medieval times, 630 AD. From both these vantage points there are even more beautiful views of Bodensee, the grand lake.

We belatedly found out that Zurich was less than three hours from Oberstaufen, Munich two hours, and even the magical Neuschwanstein Castle, less than an hour. In fact, Innsbruck, Austria, our base for the previous week, was only two and a half hours away. If we had made Oberstaufen our base for two weeks, we could have made a total of eight exciting day trips, with alternating days of cooking, rest, and spa, from this part of Bavarian Germany.

There are many treasures one can find in places that are truly off the beaten path like the ones we discovered from our German base. And, if you are extremely lucky, sometimes you will even meet generous and helpful people with whom language barriers cannot pose even the tiniest hindrance to a great friendship. That is why we say we are extremely lucky in our travels.

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