Hitzacker, Germany

Hitzacker is a small town of about 5.000 inhabitants located on the river Elbe (Natural Park Elbufer-Drawehn). Over 750-year-old Hitzacker has a nice historic centre with beautiful old half-timbered houses. The town hosts two international music festivals (one in summer and one in winter), a museum of local history, the Archeological Center (open air museum and reconstruction of a Bronze Age settlement ).
Our region is famous for its picturesque circular villages (Rundlinge), which are unique to this part of Germany. Many artists and arts and crafts people live here. In a big event every spring many of them open their studios for 10 days, acompanied by music and theater shows.
The region is great for walking, biking and horse riding (which, however,  is not exactly our cup of tea ;-)), for tours through a surprisingly varied landscape: along the banks of the river, across forests and hills, through meadows, fields and heath.
Until the year 1989 the river Elbe formed part of the "Iron Curtain" that split the world into East and West. Eastern Germany was situated on the other banks and appeared more distant and inaccessible than Australia. Some small museums tell about those days.
Now our region is located in the very heart of Northern Germany. The former "death strip" has been transformed into a large Natural Park (Biosphere Reserve Lower Saxony Elbe Valley) stretching along both banks of the river for almost 100 km.

Close-by highlights are:

• SAMMATZ, eco farm (dedicated to preserving endangered livestock breed) and café (excellent cakes!) featuring an impressive garden park

• DÖMITZ with its river harbour and a competely preserved 16th century fortress

• LUDWIGSLUST with its beautiful baroque palace, park and town center

• LÜNEBURG, old Hanseatic City with picturesque historic center and excellent shopping facilities

• SCHWERIN, capital of Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, "City of Seven Lakes" with beautiful castle-palace

• WISMAR, historic Hanseatic harbour on the shores of the Baltic Sea with an almost fully preserved medieval town center (declared UNESCO World Heritage in 2002)

• BERGEN-BELSEN, memorial of the notorious Nazi concentration camp, a sad, but nevertheless impressive site and a great lesson in history.

• WIETZE German Oil Museum, site where, during the first decades of the 20th century, the major part of Germany's petroleum production took place.

The distance to HAMBURG is about 1:20 h by car,
to HANOVER about 1:30 h by car+train,
to BERLIN about 2:30 h by car and 2:00 h by car+train,
to WOLFSBURG (Volkswagen) is about 1:45 h by car.
Cities like BREMEN (2 h) or BRAUNSCHWEIG (1:30 h) are also within a day trip's reach.