"Discovering Darmstadt with the eyes of a tourist" Top 5 Page for this destination Darmstadt by Trekki

So I am expected to write an intro about the town where I live and work ? It seems so. This is not an easy task as … how should I put it… I don’t like it here very much. It is not the city but the authorities or better the municipality who make life not the easiest here. Driving with car or bike can drive you mad, as whoever is responsible for a smooth traffic has never ever heard of the existence of phased traffic lights and is a plain idiot. Bike lanes are hardly existing and if, they are squeezed in so that bikers have to take extra care not to get run over by cars or busses. When I looked at the newest version of Google Earth I laughed when I saw that a guy (obviously living here) has made the effort to mark lousy biking lanes in GE. Streetcars do have something like god’s rights and often ignore pedestrians or bikers. Car parking is ridiculously expensive compared to other big cities. Public transport is good, but also this is ridiculously expensive compared to other big cities. I am lucky to have a so-called job ticket (where the employer pays almost half of a yearly transport card). The city centre is ugly and despite the attempt of the officials to make it nice (I couldn’t even call it effort as effort implies for me a desire to do something), they fail badly. Nice and special shops can hardly be sustainable, maybe it is a ridiculous high rent (it wouldn’t surprise me), so many shops are more of the typical chains without any real charm and good service (but with shop assistents which are lousy paid and therefore cannot be blamed for the service and customer orientation). Rents are ridiculously high, even higher than in Frankfurt or Munich and the overall attitude of the officials or the ones responsible for tourism is very much arrogant. Darmstadt was even "funny" enough to apply to be listed as UNESCO heritage. Thanks god, the UNESCO officials have some strength and refused this. But I doubt that the officials will learn something from this. On the other hand it is good as they don’t have an instrument to raise the prices even more beyond limits.

But… I have found a little bit of peace with this city. I have found “my” shops to leave my money. And on weekends I can hop in the car or train and just go somewhere else, mostly to Palatine, where people are merry and officials at least know a bit of what people want of cities and villages and are prepared to offer friendlyness and want to make you feel at home – something that Darmstadt unfortunately fails to do.

But Darmstadt has interesting sights, and I am showing some of them. For a one day visitor it might be nice to walk around, but they can go back home in the evening :-), haha :-)

Mathildenhöhe - sycamore grove

Darmstadt's surroundings have quite an old history. Eberstadt, a little suburb south of town, was first mentioned in 782 A.D. in documents of Monastery (Kloster) Lorsch

In 1330, King Ludwig the Bavarian chartered Darmstadt as a city, which then became headquarter for the ruling landgraves (Landgrafen). In 1567, it was appointed Shire "Hessen-Darmstadt" and later in 1806 Grand Duchy of the state of Hessen.

In early 20th century, Grand Duke (Grossherzog) Ernst Ludwig established the artists' colony (Künstlerkolonie) on Mathildenhöhe, through which Darmstadt became a quite important center of Art Nouveau in Germany. A lot of the buildings of this period still exist and Ernst-Ludwig-Haus is now a famous museum.
There are more interesting landmarks which can be visited on or near Mathildenhöhe: the Hochzeitsturm (marriage tower), which is now the symbol of Darmstadt, the Russian Chapel, which was built by Tzar Nikolas II, whose wife Alexandra was born in Darmstadt and Rosenhöhe, a nice park nearby.

Today Darmstadt promotes itself as "City of Science", ESOC (European Space Operation Center) and GSI (Institute for Heavy Ion Research) are located here. Here are also the headquarters of some multinational and European companies, such as Merck KGaA (chemical-pharmaceutical company and main provider for liquid crystals), Wella AG (Haircare), Carl Schenk AG (process engineering), Software AG (biggest European provider for software systems and solutions) and T-Online (said to be the biggest European internet provider).

Oh, and as "funny" as Darmstadt is, feeling to be the centre of science, it has now the so-called Darmstadtium, a congress complex next to Technical University and Castle. But…. it seems that this is also only a money factory, as they seriously allow multivision lecturer Dieter Glogowski, who recently was convicted of cheating and his “roaring” show “Tibet – escape from the roof of the world” (Tibet – Flucht vom Dach der Welt) to be a fake, to present here. Is this scientific ? Darmstadtium at least stands for science, it is a chemical element of the super heavy atom class and was created in 1994 by the aforementioned GSI.

Art Deco window in Ernst Ludwig Haus

I am pleased to say that Don (@Nemorino) has finally wrote about his impressions of Darmstadt from several visits and who can better talk about opera facilities than him? And I like the neutral view he has - maybe I simply should learn to close one eye and only see the good things of our city :-)

And following her visit in October 2005, Joan (@scottishvisitor) also found the time to tell us her view of the city :-)

• Pros:hm....I still didn't find out.... Some nice sights to see
• Cons:Silly marketing people make visiting the city difficult; silly opening hours and criminally high parking fees
• In a nutshell:Palatine is only 30 min to the west :-)