Idling in a biergarten not your thing? Germany has plenty of extraordinary alternatives, from stargazing and beekeeping to culinary donkey trekking
Extreme sleepouts in Saarland
The German language has some marvellous words, ranging from wegbier (“beer to drink on the way”) to hamsterkauf (“panic-buying”). Another to add to that lexicon is waldeinsamkeit: a feeling of being alone and finding inner peace in the forest. Arguably, travellers can’t get any more at one with the woods than sleeping in a portaledge tent (or cloefhänger) suspended between trees in the Saarland forest. It’s a wonderful way to immerse yourself into forest life: think morning mists, twit-twooing owls, mysterious nocturnal noises, and occasional bursts of “we’re up how high?!” when peering at the clouds below (the tents are perched at head-spinning heights overlooking a dramatic bend in the Saar river). The website specifies cloefhängers aren’t for people who don’t have schwindelfreiheit (“freedom from dizziness”; AKA a head-for-heights) or trittsicherheit (“tread safety”; AKA surefootedness), but there’s a less vertiginous version involving hammocks in the same forests.
Price: €119 (£102) a night, June-September
cloefhaenger.com