Kelheim, Stadt im Fluss, a gorgeous city with a very small but beautiful Altstadt. We went there for the Schneider Weisse starkbierfest, but I will happily come back again for the city itself. And for a visit to the hopfields,, because Kelheim is on the border of the Hallertau, one of the biggest hopfields in the world!
Unfortunately I wasn’t able to visit those hopfields, so Maurus visited the hopfields alone on Sunday. Maybe I can convince him to write a guestblog about it. This post however will therefore be short and a tad bit less beery, the beery parts you can find in abundance in the later posts on the starkbierfest and the hopfields. But Kelheim impressed me so much, I still wanted to share this city with you.
The Altstadt of Kelheim is small and the biggest portion of it is the terrain of the Schneider Weisse brauerei and Weisses bräuhaus. They were closed the days after the party, obviously, but the town has more to offer. The most quiry feature of the city is that on the crossing of the Ludwigstraße, Altmühlstraße, Ludwigplatz and Donaustraße, you can see three towers/gates that were once the entrances to the city (the fourth way ends at Schneider). The city is located on the banks of the Donau, and a lot of recreational ships can take you to other gorgeous points of interests from the new harbor of Kelheim. When you look to the west you see the most prominent feature of Kelheim though, a giant hall towering the city, the Befreiungshalle. It looks far away, but it really is just huge! And I mean HUGE. A short walk via the old harbor and quite a climb brings you to the halls in half an hour. It’s a steep climb, but that climb is worth it, especially the gorgeous short-cut through the woods that opens to gorgeous vistas all around. It is possible to take a bus to the other side, but one way or other, you will have to walk and you will have to climb for and in the halls.
The liberation halls themselves are very impressive up close as well. That’s an understatement, they’re mightily impressive! Especially when you have the halls for yourself and we had, it being off season and all. Quite eery and scary as well, but that might be the Whovian in me speaking.
Don’t blink
The Doctor
You can climb all the way to the top of the building and see miles around. You can look down the Donau, you can see the Alstadt and the rest of Kelheim. You can see a weird opening in one of the hills. Over the donau you might see a beautiful monastry in the distance. You could wander from the Befreiungshalle through the gorgeous forests or take one of the ships from the new harbor to that monastry, and we’ll probably do that another time. For this trip the halls were the fartest point of the day though. It will have to wait for another time.
Back in the Altstadt you’ll mainly find hotels and restaurants, almost all serving Schneider. You’ll also find an Archeological museum and lots of Celts related things. I have to come back for all of those as well. I’ll probably have to stay longer than just a few days though to be able to do everything.
I thought Kelheim was just a very small village and the only interesting thing was Schneider, but if you like nature, culture, history, Schneider weisse; this small town will really surprise you.
Which town has surprised you by being much more interesting than anticipated?
