Parcs et zones de loisirs

One of the quiet pleasures of living in Germany is how much protected, open nature sits within easy reach of almost every town, and how much of it is free to walk into. This chapter is about the bigger natural spaces beyond your local city park: the national parks, the nature parks, the recreation areas that ring every city, and the reclaimed lakes and forests where Germans go to spend a weekend being active outdoors. The aim here is practical. By the end you should understand how Germany sorts its protected land into a few clear categories, what each one means for you as a visitor, where to find the ones near you, and how to reach them cheaply and use them well. For the everyday urban park, the allotment garden and the casual picnic-and-barbecue side of German green space, see our companion guide to activités de plein air et parcs. This chapter picks up where that one leaves off, at the edge of the city.

How Germany sorts its protected nature

Germany organises its large protected landscapes into three main categories, and knowing which one you are standing in tells you almost everything about what you are allowed to do there. The strictest are the Nationalparks, the national parks. There are sixteen of them, and the guiding idea is “Natur Natur sein lassen”, letting nature be nature, so human use is deliberately limited. You are generally welcome, but you are expected to stay on marked paths, keep dogs on a lead, take nothing with you and leave nothing behind. The oldest is the Bayerischer Wald, the Bavarian Forest, which became Germany’s first national park in 1970 and now forms one huge wild woodland along the Czech border together with its neighbour across the frontier. Others give you a sense of the range: Berchtesgaden in the far south is the country’s only Alpine national park, with the steep Watzmann and the fjord-like Königssee; three coastal parks protect the Wattenmeer, the tidal mudflats of the North Sea and a UNESCO World Heritage site; Jasmund on the island of Rügen guards the white chalk cliffs and old beech forest of the Baltic coast; and the Sächsische Schweiz, Saxon Switzerland, southeast of Dresden is famous for its dramatic sandstone towers. The newest of the sixteen, the Hunsrück-Hochwald straddling Rheinland-Pfalz and the Saarland, was only designated in 2015, so the network is still growing. They are spread right across the country, from the Alps to the Baltic and North Sea coasts, which means wherever you settle at least one is likely within a day’s reach, and entry is free. National parks are where you go to see nature managed for its own sake rather than for your convenience, and the payoff is landscape you will not find anywhere else.

The second and by far the most common category is the Naturpark, the nature park. Germany has more than a hundred of them, and they work on a completely different principle. A Naturpark is usually a large, lived-in cultural landscape, farmland, forest, villages and all, that is protected for recreation as much as for conservation. This is the category built with visitors in mind: waymarked hiking and cycling networks, visitor centres, picnic areas, viewpoints and family trails are the whole point. When a German talks about heading to the Eifel, the Schwarzwald, the Lüneburger Heide or the Bergisches Land for the weekend, they are usually heading into a Naturpark. If you want somewhere you can roam freely, bring the family and not worry too much about strict rules, a Naturpark is almost always the answer. The third category, the Biosphärenreservat or biosphere reserve, is recognised by UNESCO and sits somewhere in between: a working landscape divided into zones, some strictly protected, some used gently for farming and tourism, with the whole area run as a model for living alongside nature. The Spreewald southeast of Berlin, a maze of little waterways you explore by canoe or flat-bottomed punt, and the rolling Rhön uplands in central Germany are two of the best known. For a newcomer, the simple rule of thumb is this: Nationalpark means tread lightly and stay on the path, Naturpark means come and enjoy yourself, and Biosphärenreservat means a bit of both depending on which zone you are in.

The recreation areas where Germans actually spend their weekends

Not everything worth visiting carries an official protected-area label. The word you will hear most in daily life is Naherholungsgebiet, which translates roughly as “local recreation area”: the ring of woods, lakes, river meadows and low hills that sits on the doorstep of every German city and exists purely so that people can get out of town for a few hours. Around Munich it might be the Isar valley and the lakes to the south; around Hamburg the forests and heath of the surrounding countryside; around the Ruhr cities a green belt of reclaimed land. You do not need to plan an expedition to use one. The whole idea of a Naherholungsgebiet is that you can be there within half an hour, walk or cycle or swim for the afternoon, and be home by evening. Learning the name of your nearest one, and the tram or S-Bahn stop that reaches it, is one of the most useful pieces of local knowledge you can pick up as a newcomer.

Germany also does something distinctive with land that industry has finished with. In the Ruhrgebiet, the old coal-and-steel region in the west, a whole belt of former ironworks, collieries and slag heaps has been turned into public parkland rather than fenced off. The best-loved example is the Landschaftspark Duisburg-Nord, a decommissioned Thyssen ironworks whose blast furnaces you can now climb for the view, whose old gasometer has become a scuba-diving tank, and whose ore bunkers have been rebuilt as a climbing garden, all set in green space that is free to enter day and night. It is part of a wider network of reinvented industrial sites strung along the former Emscher river corridor, and there is nothing else quite like it. Further east, an even bigger transformation is still under way: the open-pit lignite mines around Leipzig and in the Lausitz region have been flooded to create entire new lake districts. The Leipziger Neuseenland, the “Leipzig new lake land”, and the Lausitzer Seenland now offer swimming, sailing, stand-up paddling and lakeside cycling on water that a generation ago was a coal pit. They are a striking illustration of how quickly a damaged landscape can become a recreation area, and they are genuinely pleasant places to spend a summer day.

For families and for anyone who likes their nature with a bit of structure, two more kinds of place are worth knowing. The Wildpark or Tierpark, wildlife park or animal park, is a large, mostly open enclosure where native and sometimes exotic animals live in generous paddocks you walk through on foot, usually much cheaper and calmer than a full zoo and often set inside a forest. Many have deer, wild boar and other local species you can feed or watch at close range, which makes them a reliable outing with small children. The Kletterwald or Hochseilgarten, the high-ropes adventure park, is the other family favourite: a course of rope bridges, platforms and zip lines strung between the trees, with harnesses and safety lines, graded from gentle child-height loops to genuinely testing high courses. You will find one in the woods near most larger cities, and no experience is needed to try the easier routes. Both fit neatly into the recreation-area idea and both work as a first taste of the outdoors for anyone still finding their feet in Germany. For a fuller list of family days out, see our guide to activités pour la famille.

Être actif une fois sur place

The reason to care about all these areas is that they are built for movement, not just for looking at. Cycling is often the easiest way in. Most nature parks and recreation areas are threaded with waymarked Radwege, cycle routes, and Germany has an outstanding network of long-distance routes that pass through them, many following rivers on gentle, mostly flat paths that suit a relaxed day rather than a workout. You can rent a bike in most towns or bring your own on regional trains outside peak hours with a bicycle ticket. For how the German cycling network is organised and which long routes are worth a trip, see our guide to culture et itinéraires du vélo. Walking is the other universal option: the marked trail networks in nature parks range from short loops signposted with coloured symbols to serious long-distance paths. If your interest runs to real hiking in the hills and mountains, with the proper gear and route planning that involves, that has its own home in our guide to aventures en plein air et randonnée; il suffit ici de dire que le sentier est presque toujours déjà balisé et cartographié pour vous.

Water is a big part of the appeal, especially in summer. The reclaimed lake districts, the lakes inside recreation areas and the slow rivers of the biosphere reserves are all used for swimming, canoeing, sailing and stand-up paddling, and where an area is set up for it you will find rental stations, jetties and marked bathing spots. The rules and the safety side of getting on the water are covered separately in our guide to sports et activités nautiques, so it is worth a look before you launch anything. Nature parks also cater deliberately to families and to people who want to learn as they walk. Many run a Naturerlebnispfad, a nature-experience trail, dotted with hands-on stations that explain the local plants and animals, and some have a Barfußpark, a barefoot park, a path laid out with mud, sand, pebbles, water and wood chips that you walk over in bare feet to feel the different surfaces. Both are cheap or free and both are a hit with children. Add quiet wildlife watching, which the strict national parks are especially good for, from deer and wild boar to sea birds on the Wattenmeer and cranes resting on their migration, and you have a full menu of things to do. Early morning and the hour before dusk are the best times to see animals, and the simple courtesies of staying quiet, keeping your distance and using binoculars rather than trying to get close will reward you far more than they cost. None of this requires special skill or expensive kit, which is part of why these areas are so easy to fold into ordinary life here.

You do not have to work any of this out on your own. Almost every Nationalpark and larger Naturpark runs a visitor centre, often called a Nationalparkzentrum, Naturparkhaus or Haus des Gastes, where you can pick up free maps, ask staff which trails suit your group, and sign up for guided programmes. These Führungen, guided tours, are a genuinely good way in for a newcomer: guided dawn wildlife walks, ranger-led hikes, canoe trips through the Spreewald, mudflat crossings on the Wattenmeer led by a licensed guide who knows the tides, and children’s discovery days run in the school holidays. Many are free or cost only a few euros, and they are usually offered in German, though some parks in tourist regions run them in English too, so it is worth asking. Starting with a guided programme takes the guesswork out of a place you do not yet know and quickly teaches you how to use it on your own afterwards.

Access, rules and getting there

The single best thing about all of this is how open it is. Germany has a broad right of access to the countryside, the Betretungsrecht, which lets you enter forests and open landscape on foot for recreation, largely free of charge, even where the land is privately owned. The forest side of this right, and what it does and does not allow, is explained in our companion guide to activités de plein air et parcs; the short version is that you may walk in the woods, but you do so at your own risk, and cycling or riding is limited to paths. The important thing to understand for this chapter is that the right is at its widest in ordinary countryside and nature parks, and at its narrowest in the national parks, where conservation comes first. In a Nationalpark you should expect to keep to the marked trails, and in the strictly protected core zones you may not leave them at all. Signs at the entrance and at trailheads will tell you which zone you are in and what applies. This is not bureaucracy for its own sake; straying off-path in a protected core can trample the very habitat the park exists to save, and fines are possible.

Dogs are welcome in most areas but come with real seasonal rules. Across much of Germany there is a Brut- und Setzzeit, the breeding and rearing season in spring and early summer, roughly from the start of April to mid-July, though the exact dates and rules are set by each Bundesland. During this period, when ground-nesting birds are on their eggs and deer are raising their young, many areas require dogs to be kept on a lead, and some nature and national parks require leads all year round. Even outside that season, a dog that chases wildlife can cause serious harm, so the safe and courteous default is to keep yours close and leashed unless a sign clearly says otherwise. The same spirit of care runs through the rest of the etiquette: take all your rubbish home with you, since many natural areas have no bins by design, stick to open fires and barbecues only where they are expressly allowed, and leave plants, fungi and stones where you find them. Germans take this quiet Leave-No-Trace ethic seriously, and following it is part of being a good guest.

Reaching these places without a car is easier than many newcomers expect, and this is where the Deutschlandticket earns its keep. The nationwide monthly public-transport pass covers regional trains, trams and buses right across the country, so a single ticket can carry you to a lake district one weekend and a national park gateway the next, with your bike coming along outside peak hours. Many national parks and larger nature parks are deliberately served by regional stations and park shuttle buses precisely so that visitors can arrive without driving. For how the pass works and what it currently costs, see our guide to le billet d'AllemagneCombiner ce pass avec une excursion dans un espace naturel proche d'une voie ferrée est l'une des sorties agréables et économiques que vous puissiez faire en Allemagne.

Par où commencer

Si vous ne deviez retenir qu'une seule chose de ce chapitre, ce serait celle-ci : trouvez le nom de l'espace de loisirs le plus proche de chez vous et comment vous y rendre en transports en commun. Une simple recherche avec les mots-clés « Naherholungsgebiet » ou « Naturpark » suivis du nom de votre ville vous permettra généralement de trouver les options les plus proches, ainsi qu'une carte et la station la plus proche. Vous pourrez ainsi vous y rendre à pied ou à vélo ce week-end. Ensuite, élargissez votre recherche et repérez le parc national, le parc naturel et la réserve de biosphère les plus proches. Presque tous les Allemands vivent à une distance raisonnable d'au moins un de ces espaces, ce qui vous permettra de savoir à l'avance à quel point les règles y sont strictes et si le lieu est adapté aux familles.

When you go, lean on the free help that is already there. Start at the visitor centre if the area has one, pick up the free map, and consider a guided programme for your first visit so you learn the place from someone who knows it. Check whether dogs need a lead and whether you are in a season or a zone with tighter rules, bring a bag for your rubbish, and travel light. Above all, remember that the vast majority of this is completely free: no ticket, no booking, no membership, just open land that the country maintains so that people can use it. For the everyday city park and allotment side of German green space, keep our guide to activités de plein air et parcs handy alongside this one. Between the two, you have the whole picture, from the bench in your neighbourhood park to the far edge of a national park, and getting out into it is one of the genuine everyday pleasures of living in Germany.