Picturesque but a bit boring, my German family's home region surprisingly pleasant

After two highly indulgent trips to Italy, taken practically back-to-back, my wisest strategy would have been some quiet time at home, avoiding carbohydrates, alcohol and discretionary spending. But life doesn’t always support prudent decisions. Four days after my return from Sicily I was back at Heathrow. This time, however, I was heading to Germany.

For years, my father and I have been talking about going to the village from which our ancestor left for America in the mid-1800s. We’d visited the origin point of the Swiss side, the Wallemanns, outside of Lucern. But getting to the German homelands had been lingering on the to do list for a while. Probably because, from a sightseeing perspective, this bit of Hesse … about an hour north of Frankfurt … seems to have little appeal for tourism. My Dad is 86, however, and though he’s healthy and active I thought I’d better stop taking time for granted. We needed to complete the genealogical quest while we both had the ability to do so.

My expectations were low. So Imagine my surprise when I discovered a region of half-timbered villages like sets from a fairy tale, attractive rolling countryside and picturesque castles. There were few other tourists and those we encountered were mostly German. They’re obviously keeping this part of the country to themselves.

Whalen is a tiny farming community which I suspect hasn’t changed much since my great-, great-grandfather Martin Scherstuhl left. There are no shops, offices or services. The only businesses are agricultural, a pig farm being the only one to bother with much signage. The barns here haven’t been turned into posh homes or holiday lets; they’re full of tractors and agricultural supplies. The architecture is split roughly half and half between 20th century housing and much older half-timbered farm houses. A few were freshly renovated but most are well-loved and well-used. At the highest ground in the village sits a red sandstone church with a plaque over the door that read 1780, but walls that looked older. It only opened for Sunday services, so we didn’t get inside, but we found the family name on a memorial next to the front door. It told us that a descendent of the brother Martin left behind had died in the Franco-Prussian war.

Over in the village cemetery, located on the edge of town rather than next to the church, we found that another Scherstuhl made the ultimate sacrifice in the opening months of WW1. The American side was luckier. Martin fought through the Civil War on the Union side, survived, and none of his descendants saw combat after. Despite the sacrifices of the German Scherstuhls the family survives in the village. Thanks to the magic of Google Translate we “talked” to two locals who pointed out their house, and the grave of cousins from my grandparents’ generation who’d helped another American cousin trace the line back to the first Scherstuhl in Wahlen in the 17th century.

With no ability to speak German on our side, and no common ancestor since the early 1800s, we thought we’d skip knocking on the modern Scherstuhl door and instead did a wandering road trip through nearby villages that were home to some of the women that the family tree told us had married into the family. They were all the same: small, quiet, attractive clusters of farm houses around a church, communities entirely dedicated to agriculture. Any modern young person with a desire for excitement would leave quickly, and I suspect that’s what drove Martin to American adventure all those years ago.

Thankfully, we did not follow my instinct to stay in the closest accommodation to Whalen. Kirtorf was big enough to have a small inn, but little else. We opted instead for the major town in the area, Alsfeld. This was about 15 miles away from Wahlen and would have been where villagers came when they needed to do any significant legal transactions or business deals. Though there’s no documentary evidence of it, we can be fairly sure our ancestors walked these streets.

And what picturesque streets they are.

Two years ago I patiently endured 90 minutes each way on a bus from our Rhine cruise just to get to the tourist hot spot of Rothenburg ob der Tauber, joining thousands of other tourists to appreciate its much-publicised glories. Alsfeld is just as attractive, and there’s almost nobody here. Many times across the long weekend dad and I found ourselves strolling almost alone down the cobbled streets, quietly appreciating their remarkable beauty.

Alsfeld has one of the largest collections of 16th century half-timbered housing in Germany. In modern times the town and its residents have invested heavily in restoring and preserving their heritage, so much of it is in pristine shape. We stumbled upon a few places in mid-restoration, wreathed in scaffolding and propped up by iron skeletons. It was obvious what an enormous job renovation of one of these old beauties would be.

Though the ring of medieval city walls is gone, their outline is still clear, and once you cross into their circle it’s like stepping back 400 years.

There’s no uniformity to the half-timbering; creative builders seemed to treat each facade as a fresh design opportunity. The patchwork of dark wood criss-crossing pale plaster beneath steeply-gabled roofs offers plenty to delight the eyes. But there’s much more. The original owners of these houses had their names, occupations, favourite phrases or bible verses carved across beams separating the ground and first floors; still lovingly picked out in white paint all these years later. Architecture always comments on the history of a place; rarely is it so obvious. Some buildings have patterns incised into their plaster panels, then picked out in contrasting dark paint. Usually flowers or animals, these are proper works of art. On many corners, vertical beams stretching multiple floors are carved with fanciful guardian figures picked out in bright colours. There are knights, angels and proud beasts both real and mythical.

A few of the grander buildings feature support brackets for protruding floors writhing with more carved guardian figures and foliage. Just a week before I’d been in Sicily’s Val di Noto, famous for the exuberant carvings supporting the region’s balconies. I realised I was looking at exactly the same architectural flourishes here, in a remarkably similar style from roughly the same time period. It’s just that in the north the fantasy was realised in wood, while 1,300 miles south they carved from stone.

Hessian and Sicilian blood didn’t mix in my veins until the 1960s, but artistically they were cross-fertilising long before.

Alsfeld’s market square is the climax of its decorative abundance, with some of the tallest buildings and the most flamboyant carving. There’s an impressive stone market building with a covered loggia on the ground floor. The cathedral next door might be Lutheran, but the town’s artistic sensibilities were never going to allow a stripped back, plain space for worship. The interior features more fabulous carving and a cycle of vivid paintings, including a host of Protestant founding fathers who manage to look both stern and a bit festive thanks to the artists’ bright colour scheme. Visiting at the height of the autumn harvest, we were lucky to find the altar dressed with the abundance of the surrounding farms.

There’s a tiny local museum, free to enter, that has a handful of historic artefacts displayed across two floors. The most troubling time in the town’s history is confronted directly here: Alsfeld is so cute, so quintessentially German, that Hitler named it a model town. His opinion was confirmed when the town was proudly ahead of its neighbours proclaiming itself free of Jews. (Heartbreaking museum displays show remnants of the extinct community.) The height of Alsfeld tourism was during WW2, when the Nazis used to run bus tours into town to show off what a good Aryan community should look like. I suspect that legacy may be why Alsfeld has been a bit slower than Rothenburg at angling for modern tourists.

There was also a cute Brothers Grimm fairy tale house, but it was never open in the days we walked by. Tourists mostly seem to come to the market square, shop on the streets around it, and eat at the Restaurant Kartoffelsack.

The “potato sack” had a menu entirely built around the humble spud. If you think Italy is carb heavy, you will see it as a land of light dishes and vegetables after a few meals in Hesse. This is comfort food taken to rib-sticking extremes. Dad had cheesy potato gnocchi while I opted for spaetzle baked with cheese and friend onions. It came with a delicious salad, thank God, to ease the guilt of everything else. There’s also a local wine list here worthy of exploration, though the two glasses I tried were a bit sweet for my taste.

We stayed just outside the old walled centre at Hotel Zum Schwalbennest (the swallow’s nest). Between the town itself and online photos of a building that looked a bit like a German mountain retreat, we were expecting something with old world charm. We were amused to instead find Route 66 theming and decor that appealed to German Harley Davidson fans who ride this route on weekends. The rooms are functional, almost like a university dorm, but comfortable and reasonably priced. Few on staff spoke English but they were tremendously genial and took good care of the odd English-speaking tourists. Their restaurant also serves up some brilliant traditional food, with a whole double-page spread of the menu dedicated to variations on schnitzel. So while it lacked the historic charm of the town centre, its other attributes and its convenient location made it a perfect base for us.

There’s not a great deal to do in Alsfeld beyond wandering around to appreciate the architecture, so we were looking for something else to divert us on our fourth and last day in the region. I found a medieval festival at Ronneburg Castle, on our way back to the airport, to entertain us.

Ronneburg is an impressive pastiche of historic buildings on a hilltop to the east of Frankfurt. Medieval foundations now support 17th-century buildings restored at the hands of 19th century romanticists. Lots of floral wall paintings, dark wood furniture and antlers. Climbing the central tower is the equivalent of scaling an eight-story building, but if you make it … which my age-defying father proudly did … the views from the top are beautiful. As a historic attraction i wouldn’t go out of my way for it, but if you’re in the area it’s worth a nose around. Particularly if you eat in their restaurant, a grand hall where they serve more traditional, rib-sticking cuisine.

If the medieval festival is on, however, there’s a whole additional layer of fun to be had. Two stages with entertainment, loads of people in costume and lots of interesting craft booths. I’ve been to plenty of historical fairs in my time. While most of what was on offer here was consistent with what you’d find in England, there were a few curious discrepancies.

The food was oddly disappointing. I was expecting a variety of German specialties and a lot of sausage. There wasn’t a single German sausage booth of the kind that turns up at every English event. The closest they came was a guy selling gourmet venison sausages. Meat and some sort of sweet bread on skewers seemed to be everyone’s go-to dish.

While people who choose to dress up at English medieval fairs tend to be resolutely faithful to our home-grown traditions, the Germans spread their horizons further. On the edge of the encampment for the reenactors who were here for the whole weekend we found a Turkish bazaar, complete with a hot tub in which you could strip off and soothe your fair-weary bones. There was a disproportionate number of Scottish highlanders, both as costumed attendees and as the vendors in several tartan-draped booths. They all sounded like native Germans, however. I was unable to solve the mystery of whether people here just really love Outlander, or whether there’s some long-naturalised community of Scottish immigrants here who celebrate their heritage at the festival.

Most notably, in comparison with an English event, there was no fighting. Any medieval festival in the UK is built around jousting, or hand-to-hand combat of armoured knights. Both, if you’re lucky. There was little armour at Ronneburg, and nobody wearing it got into a ring to bash anyone else. Yet another legacy of WW2? I’ll never know without befriending a local.

Maybe I should look up those distant Scherstuhl cousins back in Wahlen. For now, it remains a mystery. The bigger question, however, of where the Swiss and German sides of my family came from has now been fully answered. In both cases, ambitious young men left fairly comfortable lives in generally prosperous but extremely unexciting places to seek adventure in a new world. Four generations later, it’s been great fun to see where their stories started.