Stuff to do in southwest Germany

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I'd highly recommend a trip to the Burg Eltz castle. It looks like about a 2 hour drive from Ramstein and you'd be driving through some really scenic areas of Germany.

http://burg-eltz.de/en/eltz-castle-t...s-history.html

This was an awesome recommendation. On Sunday my coworker and I drove up the Moselle River from Trier to Koblenz. We toured both Cochem and Eltz castles, and in my opinion there was no comparison. Eltz was exactly what I was looking for: an actual castle that was not rebuilt in a "fairytale recreation" by some rich guy in 1880. The castle tour was very detailed and gave a good sense of how the rich lived during the middle ages. Their collection of fine arms was really impressive. They had a number of ornate old rifles with O.G. Damascus steel barrels...not the modern recreations. And yes you can tell the difference. All the guns looked extremely well-kept despite being 200-300 years old. It wouldn't surprise me if they could still be fired today. They didn't allow photography at all inside the castle, which was very disappointing. They do sell a book for about $10 which covers the history of the castle. It has plenty of photos of the castle itself, which is great, and a few pictures of the guns in their collection, but the pictures don't do the guns justice.

Warning: After you have German beer and food, coming back to the US will be a letdown. Don't say I didn't warn you.

This is true. I love that they can't use high fructose corn syrup and other artificial stuff in their food. Everything I ate was more "basic" tasting than food here, but more satisfying. Also the breakfasts at the hotel were freakin' awesome. Between those and the beer I must have gained 10 lbs. Oh, the beer....everybody talks about German beer to the point that it's a trite conversation point. But similar to the food, the beer was basic but very tasty, perfect texture, and in some ways more satisfying than beer here. I've had Paulaner hefeweizen on tap here in the US before, and from my recollection it was about the same, but I can't do a taste comparison across multiple years. But I feel like a lot of hefeweizen's here are mixed with other flavoring agents, or are actually belgian-style as opposed to German-style. Anyway, I liked them, and miss them already.