I haven´t shared too much on my blog lately, but there is a lot to come in the next days and weeks, summarizing a fantastic year of travel - in and outside Germany. Among other things, this year I was able to slowly explore Mosel Valley, a destination I had on my radar for a very long time, finally visit Zwickau, a destination in Saxony which is another craddle of the German automotive industry, as well as to return to Poland for a long wellness weekend. By far, it was my best year of travel in half a decade - post Corona and other personal episodes that kept me mostly grounded in Berlin - which is not as bad as it may sound, but for someone used to be on the road at least every few weeks, was a bit frustrating.
And the year still has more months and there is much travel in the cards for the next weeks!
While my blog was a bit quiet, my YouTube channel was my favorite social media tool to share my travel adventures. And as I do wear many more hats than travel - teaching, relocation, translation - and my technical skills and knowledge definitely need an update, it was relatively hard to update my blog as often as I used to do. But there is still time and I cannot wait to add more travel stories.
One of the main reasons I love to travel in Germany in addition to gathering content for my social media channels is the chance of getting to know the society and talking to people from different walks of life. Compared to many other countries I had to chance to know better, Germany is very special as compared to the capital city, its parts are by far extremely different from the chore: different dialects, different customs, different communication skills.
Sometimes, as I noticed this year visiting the town of Bacharach, it looked like time stopped and I was invited to visit a wide open air museum with fragments of the past decades exposed to see. Among ruins and stores that seemed to never had a client in long years, I felt so far away from the busy life of a Frankfurt or München - where I´ve been earlier this summer as well - but also from the year we are in: for reference 2025.
Cochem an der Mosel, the city of choice for our summer family vacation, was no different, but it did have an active number of tourists, mostly from France, Luxembourg or the Netherlands. There is a high demand of accommodation and restaurants - displaying a good choice of local German cuisine washed with typical white wines from the region - are very often full during the usual lunch hours.
As we decided to spend more than a week in the region, we decided for a relatively modest accommodation, but with good transport connections. No need for breakfast, just a place to rest and refill the batteries in-between intesive travel. Based on some wise research - thanks check24 for the suggestions! - we decided for a small pension, Pension Regina, which was not so easy to find from the train station, due to some GoogleMaps inaccuracies, but was actually minutes away from the Mosel river, where we spent couple of nice evenings waiting for the sun to set, or raise, or jogging along the way.
It is a small family pension, with small and clean rooms, pet-friendly and with resourceful owner who is happy to share tips about where to eat authentic local food and taste the best wines. From the design or aesthetics point of view, it wasn´t my usual choice of accommodation, but both the location and the friendliness of the owners convinced me that it was a happier choice than any other stay in a chain-like fancy hotel.
And if I wasn´t 100% convinced that it was the right choice, this changed during the last few days of our stay. One evening, we arrived tired from a long cruise along the Rhine from Koblenz, only to be welcomed by a basket literally full to the brine, accompanied by a hand-written postcard. The basket included, among others, locally-sourced products: two bottles of wine, biscuits, chocolate, some fruits.
It was such an awesome great surprise that made me appreciate this place more than any other luxury attraction I´ve been before. There was no fancy reception or room service, but this basket melted my heart and put on hold my usual critical mind. What else can make you feel more appreciated as a customer?
Actually, I arrived as a customer and left as a friend! If you are visiting Mosel soon, I can only recommend this friendly place! I am sure thare are many more such places in Germany that would be more than happy to discover soon!
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