Special-Interest Vacations

Germany is one of the great outdoor destinations of Europe. From its mountains to its beaches, from its rivers to its castles, there is much to see and explore. It has summer attractions galore, plus skiing on its alpine slopes in winter. Here is but a sampling of the offerings that await you.

Outdoor-Activity Tours

E.E.I. Travel, 19021 120th Ave. NE, Suite 102, Bothell, WA 98011 (tel. 800/927-3876; www.eeitravel.com), offers a variety of self-guided walking and biking tours as well as cross-country skiing trips throughout Germany. It covers such areas as the Black Forest and King Ludwig's Trail, and can customize your trip.

Biking

In Germany you can bike through green valleys and past rivers while enjoying rural landscapes and villages. Allgemeiner Deutscher Fahrrad-Club, P.O. Box 107747, 28077 Bremen (tel. 0421/346290; www.adfc.de), offers complete information on biking in Germany.

For over 20 years, Classic Adventures, P.O. Box 143, Hamlin, NY 14464 (tel. 800/777-8090; fax 585/964-7297; www.classicadventures.com), has offered bike tours of such areas as the Romantic Road. Euro-Bike and Walking Tours, P.O. Box 990, DeKalb, IL 60115 (tel. 800/321-6060 or 815/758-8851 outside the U.S.; www.eurobike.com), has a full range of bicycling and walking tours of Bavaria, as well as a 9-day biking tour of Germany, Switzerland, and France.

Dozens of companies in Britain offer guided cycling tours. One of the best is the Cyclists Touring Club, Parklands, Railton Road, Guildford, Surrey GUZ 9JX (tel. 0870/873-0060; www.ctc.org.uk). It charges £35 a year for membership.

Golf

Most German golf courses welcome visiting players who are members of courses at home. Weekday greens fees are usually around 48€ ($77), rising to as much as 90€ ($144) on Saturday and Sunday. For information about the various golf courses, write to the Deutscher Golf/Verband, Viktoriastrasse 16, 65189 Wiesbaden (tel. 0611/990200; www.golf.de/dgv).

The Swabian region of Allgäu has several good courses. Golf Club Oberstaufen und Steibis (tel. 08386/8529; www.golf-oberstaufen.de), at Oberstaufen, is an 18-hole course close to a forest and nature park. Ofterschwang, a small, peaceful resort on the scenically beautiful Tiefenberger Moor, has Golf Club Sonnenalp (tel. 08321/272-76; www.golfresort-sonnenalp.de). A good 18-hole course is found at Golf Bodensee (tel. 08389/89190; www.gcbw.de) on Lake Constance in southern Germany. Farther north, the city of Augsburg has an 18-hole course at Golf Augsburg (tel. 08234/5621; www.golfclub-augsburg.de).

Hiking & Mountain Climbing

These sports are popular in the German uplands. It's estimated that Germany has more than 80,000 marked hiking and mountain-walking tracks. The Deutschen Wanderverband, Wilhelmshöher Alle 157-159, 34121 Kassel (tel. 0561/938730; www.wanderverband.de), services the trails and offers details about trails, shelters, huts, and addresses of hiking associations in various regions. The Deutscher Alpenverein (DAV), Von-Kahr-Strasse 2-4, 80997 Munich (tel. 089/140030; www.alpenverein.de), owns and operates 50 huts in and around the Alps that are open to all mountaineers. This association also maintains a 15,000km (9,300-mile) network of alpine trails.

The best alpine hiking is in the Bavarian Alps, especially the 1,240m (4,070-ft.) Eckbauer, on the southern fringe of Partenkirchen. The tourist office will supply hiking maps and details. Another great place for hiking is Berchtesgaden National Park, Kurgarten, Maximilianstrasse 1, Berchtesgaden (tel. 08652/64343; www.nationalpark-berchtesgaden.bayern.de), bordering the Austrian province of Salzburg. This park offers the best-organized hikes and will hook you up with various groups offering hikes.

Germany for Jewish Visitors

Jews in eastern Europe have decreased in population because of emigration; the Jewish populations in some western countries have also decreased because of intermarriage. Germany's Jewish population, on the other hand, is slowly increasing, mostly through immigration. It's estimated that between 40,000 and 80,000 Jews now live in Germany, a figure that's nowhere near the prewar high of 500,000, but that still represents significant growth. The most prominent of the new arrivals are from the former Soviet Union. Some 70% of Jews in such cities as Bremen and Hamburg are native Russian speakers.

Berlin's Jewish community is the largest. Its 10,000 to 20,000 members are well served by several kosher restaurants, a Jewish high school, the new Mendelssohn Center at nearby Potsdam University, and a weekly and a monthly paper. Other important Jewish communities are located in Frankfurt (7,000), Munich (3,000), Düsseldorf (2,000), Stuttgart (1,600), Cologne (1,500), and Hamburg (1,500). Another 75 smaller communities are scattered throughout the country.

While anti-Semitism has not disappeared completely, in general, postwar Germany has worked hard to confront its past -- far more so than Austria, for example. Some 30 museums today deal with Jewish issues, and former concentration camp sites display grisly reminders to visitors. German high schools include Holocaust studies in their curriculum. In politics, there are about 80 extreme-right groups; 20 or so are classified as neo-Nazi, with maybe 65,000 members, a small minority in a country of more than 80 million people.

Berlin has the country's highest concentration of places of interest to Jewish visitors. The Jüdischer Friedhof at Weisensee, a suburb of Berlin, was Europe's largest Jewish cemetery and today contains around 110,000 graves and a memorial to Jews murdered in the Nazi era. A darker sight is the chillingly elegant Wannsee Villa, overlooking the Wannsee (lake), where the "Final Solution" was formally proposed in January 1942. The most hopeful landmark is the newly renovated Oranienburger Strasse Synagogue. Unlike the other five Berlin synagogues, this glorious and immense Moorish-style structure operates only as a memorial and museum. Berlin also has two museums dedicated to the city's Jews and many monuments, such as the Wives of Jewish Husbands Memorial, dedicated to the hundreds of non-Jewish women who demonstrated outside Gestapo headquarters, in February 1943, after their husbands had been arrested.

Winter Sports

More than 300 winter-sports resorts operate in the German Alps and wooded hill country such as the Harz Mountains and the Black Forest. In addition to outstanding ski slopes, trails, lifts, jumps, toboggan slides, and skating rinks, many larger resorts also offer ice hockey, ice boating, and bobsledding. Curling is very popular as well, especially in upper Bavaria. The Olympic sports facilities at Garmisch-Partenkirchen enjoy international renown, as do the ski jumps of Oberstdorf and the artificial-ice speed-skating rink at Inzell. More than 250 ski lifts are found in the German Alps, the Black Forest, and the Harz Mountains. Information on winter-sports facilities is available from local tourist bureaus and the offices of the German National Tourist Board.

Garmisch-Partenkirchen is Germany's most famous winter-sports center. Set in beautiful alpine scenery, this picturesque resort is close to Zugspitze, Germany's highest mountain. A mountain railway and a cable car can take you to the peak. In the town is the Olympic Ice Stadium, built in 1936, and the Ski Stadium, which has two jumps and a slalom course. Skiers of every level will be satisfied with the slopes on the mountain above the town. For information, contact the Tourist Office on Richard-Strauss-Platz (tel. 08821/180700).