Honestly, Xanten (pronounced Zanten) would have never made our visit list, much less the first town we road tripped to, except for a quirk of timing: our friend Joe was going to be in Xanten for work over the weekend. Since Joe is one of our favorite people, and it was Eurovision weekend, which happens to be one of Joe’s favorite events and is now on our list of annual events after a couple of Joe and Brad’s Eurovision parties in Maryland, we decided we had to make the effort to spend the evening with Joe in Xanten.
When we first arrived last week, I wasn’t sure we would be able to pull the trip off since we needed to line up a dog sitter on super short notice. Luckily, I’m part of several facebook groups of Americans in the Wiesbaden region, which includes a pet group. I posted the request on the site, and immediately had two people reach out to me offering to house/pet sit for us. Within a couple of days we had met with the pet sitter and made all of the arrangements, leaving us free to make the final arrangements for the trip.
We initially thought we would take the train up since driving was going to be intimidating, but the tickets cost 300 euros, so we decided to drive instead. We also lucked out with a hotel since my initial searches showed no availability in downtown Xanten, but just as I was going to book something in the next town, a new search showed a place available in Xanten itself. Apparently, the universe was in favor of us visiting with Joe in Germany.
Autobahn Driving
I could probably write a huge post about how much better it is to drive in Germany than in Maryland. We knew, in theory, that driving would be better here, but the reality is so much better than we expected. It doesn’t help of course that we were coming from the Maryland beltway area where the drivers seem to take all their driving lessons from Cannonball Run or Mad Max Fury Road. On the autobahn here, everyone actually follows the rules of the road: they slow down when the speed limit changes, slower drivers keep to the right, cars use the far left lane to pass and then move back to the right, and pretty much everyone uses their blinkers.
Even on the sections of the autobahn with no speed restrictions, it wasn’t a free-for-all like it is on the highways in Maryland. Sure, we had quite a few cars pass us going very fast, but they were always, always in the far left lane, and as soon as the speed restrictions were back into effect, those cars immediately slowed back down. In Maryland, it was pretty much a daily occurrence to watch cars going 90 to 100 MPH on a 50 MPH highway zipping across 3 lanes (plus shoulders and turn only center lanes) to weave in and out of traffic. The highway we used most often to get to work in Maryland has a posted speed of 55, but if there was traffic it didn’t actually feel safe to go any slower than 70. Here, even the cars that were going faster than the posted speed limit were generally only 10-15 kph over, rather than 30 or 40 MPH.
Xanten
As I mentioned above, Xanten would have never made our list of places to see, even though we expect to live in Germany for several years. Honestly, it’s also not going to be a place that I recommend that others go out of their way to visit since we have so much of Europe to explore, but it was still worth the trip because it’s a cute little town, there was a mid-evil festival over the weekend, we got to check out a re-created Roman fort next to the town, and of course we got to hang out with Joe for a couple of hours and watch Eurovision with him in the lobby of our hotel.
Once we got settled into our hotel (which only involved backing up after driving down 1 one way street going the wrong direction, and just committing to the mistake on a 2nd one way street) we wandered over to the festival for a bit. It was honestly a lot like the festivals in the states — lots of people dressed up, jewelry, arts and crafts, random shows and events, and people wandering around drinking and eating things on a stick. After that we met up with Joe to wander around the festival for a bit, then grabbed dinner at a German restaurant in the little town square. Joe had to run to take care of some work stuff, so after dinner Chris and I followed the local German tradition, and grabbed some ice cream from a local shop and wandered around the downtown area. Later, we met up with Joe again and set ourselves up in our hotel lobby to watch Eurovision, although we only managed to stay awake long enough to watch all the performances, so I had to check to see who won the next morning. (yay Switzerland! I liked that song and performance)
The next morning Chris and I grabbed breakfast at the hotel and then wandered around downtown for a bit longer. We had originally planned to head back to the house as soon as we checked out of the hotel, but while we were walking past the tourist office, we saw information about the local Roman fort, so we decided to check that out before we hit the road.
The fort, Colonia Ulpia Traiana, turned out to be a a re-created set of Roman ruins with a wall, amphitheater, bath house and a few other things. We didn’t see everything, but it was nice to wander around for a bit reading about the history of the site. (The site was named a colony by Emperor Trajan in year 100, but was overrun by Germanic Franks around the year 276. By the 1950s, only the foundation of the amphitheater remained visible, but the a lot of the site was reconstructed in the 70s as a historical tourist destination.
All in all, it was a very successful first excursion. The weather was perfect all weekend, the pet sitter kept us up to date with frequent pictures and videos of how the puppies were doing, and we got to hang out with a friend and see some cool, old stuff.
Next weekend we’re planning to take a slightly shorter road trip to Heidelberg with the puppies.
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