Follow the Kraft Family in Germany on their "Live Like a German" tour on Facebook!

Categories: Family and Kids, Sightseeing, Cultural and History

Visiting a local Biergarten in Waldgirmes (near Wetzlar)

[ source: Wikipedia]

Over the next few weeks the Kraft family is visiting Germany as part of their yearly "Live Like a German" tour and vacation. Daily posts from Germany with pictures and travel insider tips (e.g., where to find that great ice cream parlor, restaurant, or special places to visit) are provided on a daily basis on Facebook. Stay in touch and learn more what you can do in Germany by following the Kraft family during their Germany trip!

The Kraft family - living in the San Francisco bay area (and running the Live Like a German web site) - typically tries to visit Germany once a year to meet their family and connect with old friends. Also, for their (bilingual) kids this is a great opportunity to immerse into the German culture and language. For example, their younger son Finn will be able to visit Kindergarten for a few weeks, while their older son Tom will be able to attend the local elementary school. This is a great way to strengthen German language development and also to make a few new friends abroad. Of course school is just a small part of their overall trip. Doing some sightseeing and exploring the country is a lot of fun and their goal is to combine this in a balanced way.

Bettina Kraft in her own words:

We're excited to visit our home town Wetzlar. It is located about 60 kilometers north of Frankfurt (Frankfurt vacation rentals | Frankfurt travel guide) in Hesse. We grew up in this area, and always like returning there. Of course visiting family and friends is one of our highlights. However, living in the US now for a long time we realized that there are many local (and sometimes hidden) treasures in Germany that we didn't pay too much attention while we were actually living there. This was one of our primary motivations when we started the Live Like a German site 2 years ago. We wanted to build a platform to share this valuable insider information that a typical local knows, but which is not necessarily available to a tourist visiting Germany. Many travelers know the traditional and popular tourist attractions, such as the Oktoberfest, some popular cities like Munich (Munich vacation rentals | Munich travel guide) or Heidelberg (Heidelberg vacation rentals | Heidelberg travel guide) — but there are many more villages and towns that are less popular, but nevertheless have lots to offer. Our goal is to promote these to a broader international audience. That's why the [Live Like a German] web site is completely written in English (and will soon be translated in many more), and has one key focus: To help those planning on going to Germany to experience Germany from a more personal angle, and to get to know many cultural highlights that would otherwise be missed.

When planning our Germany trip this year we thought Wouldn't it be cool if we can share our travel experience live and post real-time updates? Given today's technology this is actually not too difficult to do, just using an iPhone on the go and a Facebook app.

Therefore we are going to post daily updates to our Facebook community live from our iPhone. Our posts will focus on local insider tips, great food choices, and interesting places to visit. Of course in Wetzlar (Wetzlar vacation rentals | Wetzlar travel guide) we know the area very well, since we lived there for a long time. We're also planning on visiting Oberstdorf (Oberstdorf vacation rentals | Oberstdorf travel guide), and a few other destinations in Bavaria. We will use the Live Like a German site to obtain insider tips for these. Try to search for Oberstdorf for example and go to the Oberstdorf travel guide. You will be amazed how many insider tips and trip ideas are there for your disposal.

Another important thing: We will try to stay only in our Live Like a German vacation rentals that we are promoting on our web site (basically eating our "own dog food") . At this point we are staying in the Altstadtdiamant in Wetzlar, which is a great place, centrally located in Wetzlar's historic old town, just in walking distance to ice cafe, bistros, restaurants, and many local shops and museums. So far we had great feedback from other travelers for this particular apartment and now we can actually confirm that this is a great choice for a vacation rental when visiting Wetzlar based on our first-hand experience.

Stay tuned for our daily posts and check back often. If you're currently also traveling in Germany we encourage you to post your travel insider tips on Live Like a German on Facebook. Hope you enjoy the posts!

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About this Article

This travel guide has been written by
  Bettina Kraft.

Bettina Kraft likes to write Germany related travel articles on Live Like a German - a site for exploring Germany, to learn more about its culture / language, and to find a great Germany vacation rental or holiday apartment when going on a Germany vacation. Bettina likes to help visitors from all over the world to experience Germany in a different, more personal way, and make it easy for them to do so by providing detailed travel tips and advise.

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Browse Related Photos (Interactive Slideshow)

The pictures shown are part of our Live Like a German Travel Guide to Germany group on Flickr. If you have great Germany pictures please consider joining that group and sharing them on Flickr. If you tag them with wetzlar (and they got approved) they will also show up in the slide show above.

Feedback, comments, questions?

If you have visited here please share your experiences with our readers on Facebook. Or, if you have other cool trip suggestions and would like to contribute a travel guide here, please drop me an email. We also are encouraging free-lancers, travel guide writers or publishers who have great Germany related content to send us an email and get in touch with us.