Thuringia, Germany

Thuringia calls itself the green heart of Germany and it is genuinely the middle of the country — forest, small towns and a cultural heritage that is out of all proportion to its size. Weimar is the town where Goethe and Schiller wrote, where the Bauhaus was founded, where Liszt conducted and where the constitution that created the first German republic was signed, all within a few streets of each other. Erfurt is the state capital with the medieval bridge that has houses built on it, Jena is the university and optics city where Zeiss and Schott built the lens industry, and the Wartburg is the castle above Eisenach where Luther translated the bible and where the festival that arguably started German nationalism happened.

The state's character is eastern German, green and culturally serious, with a genuine walking tradition in the forest, a real Christmas-market culture in the towns, and the cheapest living costs in the west of the country. The Thuringian bratwurst is a protected local institution.

Expect real literary and cultural talk, genuine forest-hiking content, and a state that produced a disproportionate share of German culture and knows it.

Nearby: Leipzig Dresden Saxony Frankfurt