May 20, 2019, 1:05 pm | Read time: 4 minutes
TRAVELBOOK readers have voted and chosen Tangermünde as “Germany’s Most Beautiful Small Town 2019.” To give everyone who hasn’t yet visited a glimpse, we traveled to Tangermünde and learned quite a bit about the town and its residents.
What makes Tangermünde so special? It’s not just that it’s a historic imperial and Hanseatic city. According to the independent Mayor Jürgen Pyrdok, there are many such cities in Germany. No, Tangermünde is unique because of its approximately 11,000 residents—and because it is the imperial and Hanseatic city in Germany that is farthest from any highway.
It is indeed quiet here in this small town in Saxony-Anhalt, about twelve kilometers from Stendal, the nearest larger city. From Berlin, it’s about an hour and a half by train. Coming from the big city, the contrast couldn’t be greater: Instead of graffiti, you’ll find quaint half-timbered houses; instead of asphalt, cobblestones; no airplanes overhead, but birdsong and church bells. The “coffee to go” here is still just a regular coffee to take away. It might seem boring, but it’s not. For one, you can’t get enough of the historic old town, with its faithfully restored half-timbered houses. For another, it’s because of the residents.
Tourism and Daily Life Go Hand in Hand Here
The people of Tangermünde are so open and welcoming to visitors that you immediately feel at home. There’s the friendly taxi driver who takes an extra round to find the perfect starting point for a city tour. Or the Tangermünde resident who proudly shares that the town actually laid the foundation for Berlin because the Hohenzollerns resided here before moving to Berlin. This way of optimally marketing their own town may have contributed to Tangermünde now holding the title of “Germany’s Most Beautiful Small Town 2019.”
Tourism is the largest source of income, with about 100,000 tourists visiting each year. The town has eight hotels and twelve guesthouses, a school camp, and 24 vacation homes and apartments—yet by mid-May 2019, all accommodations for the upcoming Christmas season were already booked. But if you think Tangermünde is a kind of open-air museum without life, you’re mistaken.
In fact, among the vacation rentals and souvenir shops, you’ll find regular bakeries, medical practices, nail salons, and schools. Life goes on its normal course in this idyllic setting—it’s just that people know each other longer and better than in a big city. Perhaps the closeness is so great because the people of Tangermünde are such a close-knit community. “Not everyone who lives in Tangermünde is a Tangermünder. You only become one after two or three generations,” says Regine Schönburg from the tourism association to TRAVELBOOK. Conversely, you remain a Tangermünder even if you move away. That’s good, because quite a few have moved away over the years.
Life in Tangermünde Thrives
Even though the town shines today and it hardly seems so: As part of the new federal state of Saxony-Anhalt, the past 30 years have not been easy for Tangermünde. “After the reunification, many people moved away,” Mayor Pyrdok tells TRAVELBOOK. Jobs were also lost back then. The town, like many other places in the East, faced economic and demographic challenges.
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But it never got as bad as feared. Pyrdok says, “We were shown trends indicating that more and more people would move away. But for several years now, we’ve noticed the opposite: The population has stabilized.” In fact, an upward trend is now visible, and many younger residents who left for college are returning with their families. And now, with its new title, the town has become even more attractive.
See for yourself if Tangermünde deserves its title—in the video above!
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Getting to Tangermünde:
- Train: Take the ICE to Stendal. From there, take the regional train to Tangermünde station.
- Car: A2 to Ziesar, then B107 to Tangermünde.
Don’t Miss:
- A meal at the “Exempel Gaststuben” in the former school. Be sure to try the Kuhschwanzbier, a regional specialty. Where does the name come from? Since the town’s founding, beer has been brewed here using water from the Tanger River, which flows into the Elbe. But along the Tanger, farmers also had their pastures for cows. The brewers repeatedly tried to drive the cows away from the river. But legend has it that at least one cow’s tail was always in the water—hence the Tangermünde Kuhschwanzbier tastes as spicy as it does.