March 2, 2022, 2:30 pm | Read time: 3 minutes
When planning a road trip through Germany, people often research in advance where the best places to stay are, the condition of the roads, and where to park the camper. Or they skip all that and rely on a 200-year-old travel guide. That’s exactly what Christian Eisert did. He shared with TRAVELBOOK why he chose this approach and what he experienced on his travels.
Christian Eisert has embarked on many exciting journeys. In 2014, the comedy writer traveled to North Korea, a wild trip he later wrote about. His book, “Kim & Struppi: Holidays in North Korea,” spent six months at number two on the Spiegel bestseller list (TRAVELBOOK reported). Nearly seven years later, Christian Eisert found himself in a place almost as eerie: Germany’s country roads.
In his new book, “Travel Preferably with Your Own Blanket,” Eisert takes a road trip through Germany, guided by the 200-year-old tips of a Brit, John Murray. Murray seemed as enthusiastic about Germany as Kim Jong-un is about Facebook, complaining about Bavarian roads, German cuisine, and the seemingly too short and thick German hotel blankets. At least on the last point, Eisert agrees with Murray and brings two of his own blankets in his camper, which he chose instead of a horse-drawn carriage.
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But it’s not just Murray’s blanket advice that remains surprisingly relevant. As Christian Eisert reveals in the TRAVELBOOK interview, many hotels from the old travel guide are still open. “At some point on my road trip, I developed a penchant for checking if the old hotels from the guide still existed,” Christian Eisert shares in the TRAVELBOOK interview. He discovered many that shared one common feature: their names. “The classics were ‘Zur Krone,’ ‘Zur Linde,’ and ‘Zur Post’ or ‘Alte Post,’” Eisert reports.
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Eisert was also able to dine in some of the restaurants recommended in the 200-year-old travel guide. Some offered surprising dishes–such as a Mutzbraten, which initially startled with its jet-black color. Nevertheless, it was delicious.
What Christian Eisert enjoyed most about his journey through Germany, aside from hotels and gastronomy, why he found Germany more dangerous than North Korea in one aspect, and why he recommends everyone try traveling with an old travel guide, can be seen in the video above.
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