A Journey through Germany

Backroads did it again for us as smaller tour group works out to see unique places with a smaller tour group. Marree our guide was excellent and the driver Dodo was incredible driver.

Small groups was the way to go, Our tour guide was amazing, She kept us on track and organized things for us and many suggestions when we were on our own for an afternoon. Loved seeing the small towns, tasiting the beer, going to the market and tasting food and having enterances to the site already for us, Anticipated bathroom breaks in the am (after coffee) when the drive was long. Bavaria was beautiful. So glad we went. 8 days was perfect also.

The first night was scary as there was no hotel room for us. The tour guide, Maare, gave us her room ( along with another room they found both singles) but she had to go stay elsewhere. Not a great way to start the trip.

This was a wonderful tour of Bavarian towns. We had delicious meals planned for us, lots of sightseeing spots, and extra time to explore on our own. I would definitely recommend this tour.

Excellent small group tour

My husband and I really enjoyed our recent Journey Through Germany tour. It is certainly a beautiful part of the world. Just when we thought we had had enough of castles, cathedrals and gorgeous towns we visited the Black Forest. We would have liked a little more time in the area. Apart from the first hotel all the accommodation was very good. I wouldn’t recommend staying before or after the tour in this hotel. The included town tours were very good - long enough to be informative but still giving us time to persue our own interests. Our tour leader, Gigi was very organised and very considerate of our individual needs and comfort.

Astrid was a wonderful tour guide the best you would ever get
The places we saw were wonderful but too many towns in one day
Very tiring for older people

Our tour leader was outgoing and knowledgeable. The driver was also very good. The excursions were interesting and informative.

This tour was very enjoyable with a very knowledgable & attentive tour leader as well as an excellent bus driver.
The hotels were comfortable & clean with very good breakfasts.
The places visited & activities included were most interesting & worth visiting. I would like to have spent more time in Baden Baden & Fussen & less in Freiburg.

great tour. Astrid was great at organising each day and modifying the program when issues arose. Our driver Dodo was excellent at ensuring that he parked as close as possible to the hotels / venues. the small tour was great at getting into the smaller cities.

Overall, the tour met our expectations. However, as I had done 3 previous tours with BR, this one fell short in a number of ways. Comments in no particular order were
* Backroads seem to be cutting costs by eliminating luggage tags for example. a silly saving. It leaves the guests with no "connection" to the company after the tour. I still use mine from past tours.
* There were 18 guests on the tour. While introductions were made on the first evening, names are soon forgotten. Name tags for each guest to wear for at least some of the tour would help to recognise fellow guests.
* The tour leader began the tour without the use of the microphone. This only changed when she was prompted to use it. Otherwise, her announcements were hard to follow.
* When leaving Munich, some commentary about major buildings of importance that we were passing would have been interesting. This did not happen. The same would have been helpful about Germany in general. This could have been added to during the days especially regarding the areas were visiting on that day. Economy, industry, agriculture and history for example.
* We thought it a failure to not provide some detailed maps of where we were traveling. There was the original brochure with a brief outline but who brings that along? A simple one-page laminated map for daily reference would be welcome.
* The first night's dinner was clearly provided at a price and had no connection to German cuisine. French onion soup is not German nor is a dessert of Tiramisu. There is a huge choice of representative food that would make a wonderful introduction. The joint meal on the last night was salty beyond description. There were many complaints.
* Bamberg all day with a short, guided tour was far too long.
* We were not advised that Bamberg hotel did not include room cleaning. When I asked reception at the end of the day the reply was "is your room so dirty that it needs cleaning?" This of course overlooked the need to provide clean towels and prepare the beds. It was a cheeky reply. This is not an economy tour. Room service was then provided.
* Initially travel was via major highways and only changed when the group asked. That is directly opposite of what is promised.
* It's unreasonable to provide hotels that are distant from the main town. Freiburg was a 30 minutes' walk and very unpleasant in the rain. As we were there for a whole day this walk had to be done several times. There were little available eating places on the days were there.
* Before the tour I wrote to the hotels to ask for a king bed or two beds together. I need this so I can comfortably use my CPAP machine. One hotel charged Euros 20 extra for that service because they said I was provided with a large room due to my request. That's nonsense as the room was a standard room with two beds.
* Individual guides were good. We felt that our tour guide on the bus was more of tour leader, having not done this tour before and often reading details from her iPhone. While she was very helpful and enthusiastic, it fell short of our expectations.
* I believe that the bus was equipped with a video projector. How much better would the tour have been if short videos were provided to the way to each town and its attractions were shown to the guests as introductions of what was coming.
* Some of the hotels had steps over which we were left to carry luggage. There was no help as the driver left to park the bus as soon as he had unloaded the trailer. Stairs in the tour hotels should be avoided.
* A particular disappointment was at the Neuschwanstein Castle. When out tickets were handed out it was clearly noted that the tour we would be attending was to be in German. Our tour leader, who presumably did not buy the tickets and was not at fault, told us it would be an audio guided tour and the device would be adjusted to English. When the units were distributed at the Castle, we were told that they were NOT an audio guide but a transmitter from the guide who would only present to tour in German with no English inclusion. This spoilt the tour for which we had clearly paid and should have been the highlight of our last day. Very poor organisation!

Please accept these comments as suggestions to improve future tours. This was my 4th tour and I doubt very much that I'll do more in future.

Dear Back-Roads,

Yay! We were in Germany, the land of precision, filled with industrious people who design marvels of engineering, where everything runs on time!

But whoever organised the Back-Roads tour of Germany’s Romantic Roads has mischievously thrown a spanner in the wonderful Germanic precision machine. How amazing is that? It is as if the administrators in your head office did little planning or advance work for the 2023 tour. Did you just pull out your cheat sheet from 2019?

None of these issues would be a deal-breaker, but when added up the experience was decidedly unimpressive. We are unlikely to take another Back-Roads tour. We would not recommend this tour company.

The tour guide, Kinka, and the bus driver, Tomaš, were great. They tried very, very hard. Their English was excellent, but neither the driver nor the guide could speak much German. For a tour of Germany!

Why can we not have a German who speaks German as a tour guide in Germany? Is it because Eastern Europeans are cheaper? Don’t care.

I am aware that those who work in the tourist industry speak English, but some situations might benefit from a native tour guide fluent in the local language who can navigate the subtleties of the language and the culture to sort out unusual difficulties. Yes, horrific problems unfortunately occur from time to time. We were lucky on this tour, but please… This is a lawsuit waiting to happen. What are you thinking of?

Sadly, I have so much more.

All ten of us on the tour came from far away, and booked travel to Munich a few days early to settle in, recuperate from ridiculously long flights, and see a couple of attractions in Munich. We could not learn in a timely manner the name of the hotel where the tour would start, except that it might be Le Méridien. Apparently, it simply was not possible, it violated the laws of physics, to know this information well in advance!

So, fingers crossed for good luck, our group of six booked several pre-tour nights at Le Méridien, which turned out not to be the hotel from which the tour departed. What fun we had dragging our cases along the congested and bumpy Munich footpath across from the busy central train station from Le Méridien to the tour accommodation selected at the last minute, the Hotel Dre Löwen! Is it not possible to organise the hotel at the start of tour a few months early so travellers could plan? Actually, it is. That would be so nice.

Gleefully holding up the middle finger to German notions of timeliness and preciseness, we began the tour 45 minutes late, thus crowding adventures scheduled during the first day. A day later, a walking tour of Bamberg also began 45 minutes late, apparently because the local guide, who was excellent, had no idea he had a tour booked.

On to Rothenberg, a town surrounded by a wall with gates. Alas, our Czech-registered tour bus could not fit into the gate of the adorable town, so the bus parked outside the walls of Rothenburg and our tour guide gamely unloaded all of our bags so we could drag them hither and yon, over rough cobblestone streets and footpaths to our also adorable hotel. One American guest could be heard saying, ”If I wanted a Rick Steve’s tour, I would have booked a Rick Steve’s tour”. * It was good that the tour guide found a route to the hotel that was mostly downhill.

Every single tour participant had a “spinner” bag, a style that is designed to glide happily over smooth airport and hotel floors. Spinner bags are not useful…no, they are actually shameful…to drag over cobblestones. We also had to haul our bags back over cobblestone streets to leave the next day. The tour guide attempted to organise transport for the bags for the return trip to the bus, but had no luck. Not even a taxi was available.

As far as I know, no one ended up with a broken bag.

Let me take a moment to mention that many of the participants in the tour were in their 70s, one was 80. This was not fun for them.

We had only overnight stops in Rothenburg and Baden Baden. Pit stops, really. These looked like interesting towns, much more compelling than Freiburg, where we stayed two nights. The hotel in Freiburg was not close to restaurants, apart from a pizza cafe two blocks away. One of the older, single participants deemed the hotel to be in a dodgy neighbourhood, skipped dinner and hungry, stayed in her tiny, tiny room for the evening. When we found out about this, our group of six rounded her up for dinner the next night, for a second meal at the not-too-far-away pizza cafe.

At this point another solo participant attempted to escape from the Back-Roads tour, but could not find a train from Freiburg that could take her to a place that aligned with her itinerary after the tour. So she stuck with the tour. Nevertheless, I am not sure this is the reaction from your guests that you are looking for. Escape? Really?

I am not even going to get started on the uncomfortable bus…who designed the seats? And organised their placement? Have these designers ever met an adult human? On the positive side, the charging stations above each seat were a good idea.

In 2018 our group of six took a Back-Roads tour of Italy, which was great.

What happened?

Cheers, Phylis

* Rick Steves is an American travel guru who operates value-oriented tours of Europe where participants are expected to carry their own bags over moderate distances and up and down staircases at “authentic” European hotels. His website encourages travellers to limit their baggage to a backpack. Rick Steves also sells bags that are lightweight to accommodate the travel style he promotes.

Back-Roads,

Yay! We were in Germany, the land of precision, filled with industrious people who design marvels of engineering, where everything runs on time!

But whoever organised the Back-Roads tour of Germany’s Romantic Roads has mischievously thrown a spanner in the wonderful Germanic precision machine. How amazing is that? It is as if the administrators in your head office did little planning or advance work for the 2023 tour. Did you just pull out your cheat sheet from 2019?

None of these issues would be a deal-breaker, but when added up the experience was decidedly unimpressive. We are unlikely to take another Back-Roads tour. We would not recommend this tour company.

The tour guide, Kinka, and the bus driver, Tomaš, were great. They tried very, very hard. Their English was excellent, but neither the driver nor the guide could speak much German. For a tour of Germany!

Why can we not have a German who speaks German as a tour guide in Germany? Is it because Eastern Europeans are cheaper? Don’t care.

I am aware that those who work in the tourist industry speak English, but some situations might benefit from a native tour guide fluent in the local language who can navigate the subtleties of the language and the culture to sort out unusual difficulties. Yes, horrific problems unfortunately occur from time to time. We were lucky on this tour, but please… This is a lawsuit waiting to happen. What are you thinking of?

Sadly, I have so much more.

All ten of us on the tour came from far away, and booked travel to Munich a few days early to settle in, recuperate from ridiculously long flights, and see a couple of attractions in Munich. We could not learn in a timely manner the name of the hotel where the tour would start, except that it might be Le Méridien. Apparently, it simply was not possible, it violated the laws of physics, to know this information well in advance!

So, fingers crossed for good luck, our group of six booked several pre-tour nights at Le Méridien, which turned out not to be the hotel from which the tour departed. What fun we had dragging our cases along the congested and bumpy Munich footpath across from the busy central train station from Le Méridien to the tour accommodation selected at the last minute, the Hotel Dre Löwen! Is it not possible to organise the hotel at the start of tour a few months early so travellers could plan? Actually, it is. That would be so nice.

Gleefully holding up the middle finger to German notions of timeliness and preciseness, we began the tour 45 minutes late, thus crowding adventures scheduled during the first day. A day later, a walking tour of Bamberg also began 45 minutes late, apparently because the local guide, who was excellent, had no idea he had a tour booked.

On to Rothenberg, a town surrounded by a wall with gates. Alas, our Czech-registered tour bus could not fit into the gate of the adorable town, so the bus parked outside the walls of Rothenburg and our tour guide gamely unloaded all of our bags so we could drag them hither and yon, over rough cobblestone streets and footpaths to our also adorable hotel. One American guest could be heard saying, ”If I wanted a Rick Steve’s tour, I would have booked a Rick Steve’s tour”. * It was good that the tour guide found a route to the hotel that was mostly downhill.

Every single tour participant had a “spinner” bag, a style that is designed to glide happily over smooth airport and hotel floors. Spinner bags are not useful…no, they are actually shameful…to drag over cobblestones. We also had to haul our bags back over cobblestone streets to leave the next day. The tour guide attempted to organise transport for the bags for the return trip to the bus, but had no luck. Not even a taxi was available.

As far as I know, no one ended up with a broken bag.

Let me take a moment to mention that many of the participants in the tour were in their 70s, one was 80. This was not fun for them.

We had only overnight stops in Rothenburg and Baden Baden. Pit stops, really. These looked like interesting towns, much more compelling than Freiburg, where we stayed two nights. The hotel in Freiburg was not close to restaurants, apart from a pizza cafe two blocks away. One of the older, single participants deemed the hotel to be in a dodgy neighbourhood, skipped dinner and hungry, stayed in her tiny, tiny room for the evening. When we found out about this, our group of six rounded her up for dinner the next night, for a second meal at the not-too-far-away pizza cafe.

At this point another solo participant attempted to escape from the Back-Roads tour, but could not find a train from Freiburg that could take her to a place that aligned with her itinerary after the tour. So she stuck with the tour. Nevertheless, I am not sure this is the reaction from your guests that you are looking for. Escape? Really?

I am not even going to get started on the uncomfortable bus…who designed the seats? And organised their placement? Have these designers ever met an adult human? On the positive side, the charging stations above each seat were a good idea.

In 2018 our group of six took a Back-Roads tour of Italy, which was great.

What happened?

Cheers, Phylis

* Rick Steves is an American travel guru who operates value-oriented tours of Europe where participants are expected to carry their own bags over moderate distances and up and down staircases at “authentic” European hotels. His website encourages travellers to limit their baggage to a backpack. Rick Steves also sells bags that are lightweight to accommodate the travel style he promotes.