Handpicked experience · Frankfurt
Frankfurt, Germany
The hills where the Danube begins, a cathedral that topped the world for two centuries, a clock that strikes at half past twelve, and a quarter named after syphilis.
A long drive south through fir valleys with stops to get out and look
Time of your own in an old centre you can cross in a quarter of an hour
A cross-border day that needs no planning from you
A route that trades a German river source for a French river island
A ten-hour run from Frankfurt south into the Black Forest and across the Rhine into Strasbourg, with unguided time in the French city at the far end of it. Two countries, one coach, one day.
The driving is the frame: long stretches south through wooded valleys, stops for photographs and a village walk, then the border and a couple of hours on your own feet in Strasbourg. The city's old quarter sits on an island in the river, which makes it almost impossible to get properly lost, and nothing there is more than fifteen minutes from anything else.
Two streams rise in these hills, the Breg and the Brigach, and where they join they become the Danube. From that point the water runs east for nearly two thousand nine hundred kilometres through ten countries before reaching the Black Sea. The Romans called the whole range Silva Nigra — black wood — because the fir canopy shut out so much light that the forest floor stayed dark at midday. Both facts are the same fact: dense trees, high rainfall, and rivers that start small here and end enormous somewhere else.
Strasbourg's cathedral held that title from the seventeenth century until the 1870s, which is a longer run than any structure has managed since. It is built of pink Vosges sandstone, and it has one tower rather than two — the second was designed, foundations and all, and simply never went up. The lopsided front is not damage; it is an unfinished plan that everyone stopped minding.
Inside stands an astronomical clock whose current mechanism dates from 1842. It tracks leap years, computes the date of Easter, and runs a procession of apostles past a figure of Christ once a day — at half past twelve rather than noon, a hangover from the city keeping its own local time. People queue for it.
The prettiest quarter, all half-timbering and canals, takes its name from a sixteenth-century hospital that stood there for men suffering from syphilis, which the Germans of the day called the French disease. Tanners and millers worked the water channels; the picturesque came much later.
The border crossing is unmanned and you will pass it without noticing, but carry a passport or national identity card anyway. Both sides use the euro. Strasbourg's old town is cobbled throughout. Meals, museum entry and cathedral tower access are settled separately, and cancellation is free up to a day ahead.
Open it to pick a date and work out the price.
What the fare covers, and what to budget for separately.
The practical detail, and the answers people actually ask for.
About ten hours from Frankfurt and back, most of it driving south and returning, with free time in Strasbourg and stops in the forest along the way.
Yes. The Breg and the Brigach rise in these hills and become the Danube where they meet, which then runs nearly two thousand nine hundred kilometres east through ten countries to the Black Sea.
The Romans named it Silva Nigra because the fir canopy blocked so much light that the ground stayed dark in the middle of the day. The name survived the Romans by about two thousand years.
The second was designed and founded but never built. What looks like damage or eccentricity is simply an unfinished plan, and the building held the title of tallest in the world for two centuries regardless.
At half past twelve rather than noon — a leftover from the city running on its own local time. The mechanism dates from 1842 and calculates leap years and the date of Easter.
From a sixteenth-century hospital on the site for men with syphilis, known then as the French disease. The half-timbering and canals were a working tanners' and millers' district long before they were picturesque.
The crossing itself is unmanned and you will not be stopped, but carry a passport or national identity card. Spot checks happen, and it is a genuine international border.