Bad Aachen isn't so bad at all!
Written: Mar 24 '05 (Updated Dec 29 '05)
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Product Rating:
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Pros: The baths, the Cathedral and the food
Cons: I can't take it with me to California.
The Bottom Line: A very relaxing and worthwhile daytrip destination in the Westphalia region of Germany.
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| lyagushka's Full Review: Aachen |
Just an hour's drive from our home in Belgium, the German border town of Aachen was long one of our favorite escapist day-trips. The main reason for our recidivist visits is that Aachen is home to marvelous natural hot springs. The remarkable thing about the hot springs is the way that the town has dealt with them. In the last decade, the town has built a municipal spa, the "Bad Aachen," over the site of the springs. What amazes me is how beautiful the spa is, and how cheap it is to use it. As an American, I am simply stunned by the scale and the attractiveness of something that is basically public property. If you were to patronize a facility this beautiful in the States, you would pay very handsomely to enrich a private business. And if you were to frequent a municipal service, you would never find anything half so luxurious and well kept. We've been to Aachen at least a dozen times, always for 6-10 hours at a time.
Aachen's municipal spa is called Carolus Thermen. The first thing you will need to do when you arrive at the baths is park your car in the enormous parking garage. This place definitely needs every parking slot. Hundreds of people show up here on weekends to enjoy the waters that are so conducive to relaxation, especially in winter. When you make your way inside, the first sensation is olfactory. The place has a pronounced honey-herbal scent to it. The smell always strikes me when I enter and immediately triggers a sense of relaxation, but after about 10 minutes in this incredibly soothing environment, I can't perceive the smell anymore. But it makes a nice intro to a place that always leaves me feeling calm and restored. Carolus Thermen is so enormously large and extensive that I simply will not have room to describe everything there is to find there. In fact, I am still discovering new nooks and corners of the place after many, many visits. I could probably write an entire review just on the baths themselves, but I will leave the details for other visitors to discover.
Carolus Thermen is basically divided into the clothed and the nude sections. Children under the age of six are not allowed in any part of the baths because the minerals in the water apparently penetrate the skin of very young children very easily. Children over the age of six are allowed in both parts of the spa.
There's a basic charge for access to the mineral water pools, which is the first area you will come to when leaving the dressing rooms. This first area requires a bathing suit and contains large and small pools, both indoors and outdoors, kept at various temperatures. This is a nice, relaxing introduction to the baths. Even in this smaller portion of the facility there are plenty of discoveries to make. I especially like the hot and cold wading pools filled with small smooth river rocks. It's a nice way to get an intense foot massage.
Entrance to the "saunaworld" will cost a bit more, but is well worth the additional charge in my opinion. This is the "clothing optional" part of the baths, but plenty of people of both sexes just walk around nude most of the time. You can of course, keep a robe on in many parts of this area, but swimsuits are not permitted. The saunaworld contains multiple saunas and mineral pools, showers in several areas, an entire Turkish hamam, scented steam baths, relaxation rooms equipped with day beds, a few private areas for women, indoor/outdoor areas, footbaths, a koi pool and even a café. There is so very much to see and do here at Carolus Thermen that even after a dozen or so visits it still surprises us with previously undiscovered delights.
I was surprised at how comfortable the Germans are with communal nudity. I knew that the Scandinavian countries are fairly accepting of mixed-gendered nudity in saunas, but to find it in Germany as well was unexpected for me. I have never picked up any sexual vibe at Carolus Thermen, and there are easily as many women as men. I would say that there is almost a conscious effort to dampen down sexual overtones: even couples visiting the baths together are very discreet. This is a place to relax for the old and young, the fit and flabby, male and female, families and solo visitors. Though I wouldn't have said so when I first started visiting the baths, I would now feel comfortable being in even the clothing-optional part of the baths by myself. Even though I've always been there with my husband, we aren't joined at the hip and we often visit different areas independently.
I highly recommend that visitors to Carolus Thermen bring their own robe, towel and flip-flop type sandals. Robes and towels can be rented there, but the cost is rather steep. If you come equipped for your own needs, you can visit the baths for €22 for three and a half hours, which is plenty of time to enjoy a bit of many parts of the baths, and even have a relaxing rest or a nap. During the summer months, visits of three and a half hours are charged at the two-and-a-half-hour rate.
The town
So now to tell you a bit about the town itself. Aachen is a mid-sized city in the Westphalia region that is home to a significant Turkish minority. Traveling from staid Belgium we always found it a refreshing change from the monoculture society of Flanders. Aachen also was the chosen capital of Charlemagne, so it is rich in historic associations.
The main tourist attraction here is Dom Aachen, the city's cathedral and a World Heritage site. It's very easy to see why the cathedral and its treasury earned this distinction nearly 30 years ago. If you need any other reason to visit Aachen, this cathedral should provide it. I finally visited both of these places on our last visit to Aachen before we left Europe. You can find the Cathedral not far from the central platz. The interior is simply amazing! I can't say too much about the exterior because it was under extensive renovation. The inside reminded me a little bit of Venice's San Marco church. The center of the Cathedral is an octagonal structure, which gives it a more Orthodox flavor than most Catholic churches have. The mosaic tilework on the ceilings and the marble arches were simply astounding. According to the pamphlet available at the door, the cathedral served as the coronation site for more than 30 German kings. That might explain why so much money has obviously been heaped on this house of God. I'm not a religious person, so I especially liked the unusual amount of anti-iconic, floral motifs worked into the mosaics. For the same reason, I found the collection in the Treasury less interesting. The Treasury is located just a short distance from the Cathedral itself, and requires a €4 admission. Unless you really enjoy reliquaries and other religious art, I would say you'd probably get much more out of the free visit to the Cathedral itself. Guided tours of the Cathedral can be arranged at the Treasury though.
Like many German towns, Aachen hosts an annual Christmas market. This one is fairly small and compares rather poorly to the other German Christmas markets I've seen, especially in Nuremberg and Munich. We visited it in 2003, and had no desire to return in 2004. Really it's just more of an outdoor fair in wintertime. Most of the stuff being sold there had nothing to do with Christmas, per se, it was just sold for the sake of selling. There were few Christmas tree ornaments, though I suppose any of the items sold could've served as Christmas gifts. There were ceramics, glass, wooden and knitted items, as well as jewelry and toys. Of course the physical appetites were catered to as well as the commercial appetites. Sausages and fried things, plus beer of course.
Aachen boasts a few culinary specialties, particularly their "printen" cookies/biscuits. These are rectangular ginger-bread baked goodies. Roughly size of a large man's hand, these cookies might be adorned with whole almonds or dipped in chocolate. We tried several of them from several different bakeries over the course of our visits. Sadly, we never thought they were all that great. My husband was much more taken with the local Bitburger beer.
After our regular visits to Carolus Thermen, we like to wind up our evening with a meal at Magellan, a good Turkish restaurant with a pleasant outdoor patio for the warm months of the year. Service is a little indifferent at times, but the food is very good and reasonably priced. Unfortunately, it lacks non-smoking section, but at least it's possible to sit outdoors in summer. I particularly recommend the ali nazik, which is a dish of grilled lamb on a puree of roasted eggplant, garlic and yogurt. Magellan is located at Pontstrasse 78. More recently, we've also discovered a great Chinese-Indonesian restaurant called "Good Friends," just around the corner from Magellan. This unpretentious little place serves up really flavorful food with friendly service in a relatively non-smoky environment. The hostess/waitress remembered us after just a single visit and was more than willing to help us decipher the German-only menu. There are no ashtrays set out on the tables, so patrons tend not to smoke, even though smoking is not actually prohibited here. There's also a special dining room at Ratskellar Postwagen, which is an old restaurant built right up against the side of the town hall. From the charming tiny dining room on the second floor you can overlook the central platz through leaded bubble glass windows. The beer in the downstairs bar is good, but you will definitely need reservations to dine here. In general, Aachen is blessed with ethnic restaurants of many types, so you should be able to find something to match your fancy, whatever it may be.
Aachen also serves up local flavor in the form of buskers, jugglers and other performers in the area around central platz, especially on weekends. It's a lively small-town scene. The four-string quartet we heard on the street on our last visit performed admirably. That's the kind of casual culture that makes me appreciate such towns.
I would highly recommend Aachen as a laid-back daytrip to anyone who finds themselves in northern Germany, eastern Belgium or southern Netherlands. It's well worth making the trip, and you can easily get a nice taste of this town in a visit of just one day. If you include a visit to Carolus Thermen, you'll definitely leave feeling quite relaxed.
Looking for information on Germany? These reviews might be of interest to you:
• Munich - simply a fantastic city, with so much to see and do!
• Nuremberg - a smaller, more northerly Bavarian town with a great Christmas market
• Dresden - a developing Saxon town in the former East Germany
• Bavarian Cuisine - it's a lot more impressive than you might imagine
Recommended:
Yes
Best Time to Travel Here: Anytime
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