What do you do when visiting German towns

Smaller towns all over Europe (in and outside of Germany) have their own "draw" for some people irrespective if it's "obvious" to others who may have different interests or gravitate to bigger cities. They're a good lens to see local life on a finer scale, and they provide much needed balance to what would otherwise be a hectic multi-city trip (I like to have a mix of urban/rural, small/big on all my trips for variety's sake). Since you mentioned these towns as "historic", then surely they have some UNESCO or other attractions worth seeing, whether they are castles or ramparts or churches or town/city halls (Rathäuser) or distinctive architecture or natural beauty. The slower pace of smaller towns and ability to stop frequently and partake of local culture (including drinking German beer) is also a major plus, as is the ability to interact with locals who are often quite friendly if you engage them. Basically, people sightsee, stroll, and eat/drink in these towns just as they would anywhere else.

I'll start. I'll describe a little town we lived near many years ago and visited several times.

We drove through Lemgo one day on our way to somewhere else. We noticed that they had signs posted saying they were celebrating their 900th (I believe) anniversary that weekend so we stopped and spent the day.

We returned several times to walk the pedestrian streets, admiring the wood carved and decorated homes and shops. We found some very local restaurants and backeri that we liked. We discovered its claim to fame was the indigo trade in the Middle Ages by visiting a little museum--the town had more little, unique museums.

There were some beautiful churches where you could drop in and often time someone was practicing the ancient organ.

Also there were more unique shops selling hand crafted items the likes that I hadn't seen in other towns and the 300,000 population city where we were living--at least not concentrated in a small pedestrian area.

There was great public art. One bronze piece with movable parts we noticed years later by the same artist in Aachen and we even have one in our own city now.

There were trails and paths near the town. There was daily life happening. I could go on and on and this is only 1 lovely town we visited over 20 years ago and we've never been back. Just give yourself the time and freedom to explore.

EDIT: they were celebrating their 700th anniversary.

The highlight for me in small towns like that is not the buildings (interesting as they are), but meeting the people who live there.

On a recent trip I returned to the Bavarian town of Dießen am Ammersee, where I had stayed for a week while on a student tour in 1968. In the ground floor of the building where I had stayed there is now a wine/gelato bar. I chatted with the owner and showed her photos from the 1968 trip. She introduced me to one of her regular customers, and we sat and chatted at an outside table for over an hour. She spoke no English, but was very patient with my high-school German.

Later I sat on one of the benches on the lakefront, enjoying the setting just like the dozens of German weekenders there also. Some of them spontaneously struck up conversations, unaware that I was a foreigner.

Across the lake, in Herrsching, was the annual Night Market, complete with live band, and vendors selling Haxn, spareribs, grilled chicken ... and beer!

Bavarians are wonderful hosts.

I enjoy just walking around, looking at the buildings, finding places with outdoor seating for a coffee or snack, and just enjoying being there. I can spend a lot of time looking at small details on historic buildings, and thinking about what it looked like hundreds of years ago, and what life was like in that town hundreds of years ago. Whenever possible I learn some of the history of the town where I am staying. Also, many German towns have walking paths into the countryside around them, and I enjoy walking on them just for the walk and to see what I see. I also like to use smaller towns as a base to explore some of the nearby region.

I can spend a lot of time looking at small details on historic buildings, and thinking about what it looked like hundreds of years ago, and what life was like in that town hundreds of years ago.

Sometimes I wonder what life was like in those towns even 75 years ago. I recently found an article written by a man describing how as a teenager he was sent from his home in Munich to live in the Marienmünster abbey in Dießen, which had been refitted as a youth dormitory during the war. And after his imprisonment for war crimes, the Nazi "mayor" of Munich, Karl Fiehler, returned to Dießen to work as a bookkeeper until his death there in 1969. We forget how much has changed in a relatively short time.

I tend to wander around, visit the spa (or a good one nearby), have a schnitzel or plate of wurst, enjoy the architecture, visit whatever is locally famous and relax, usually with an evening walk.

Sample the local beer and chat with the locals. Makes for some interesting times.

I am certainly one of the people on this site that extol the virtue of staying in small towns, but I don't usually just look around for a small town and say, "there's a small town, I think I'll go there". It's just that so many things I want to see seem to be in or near small towns.

Sometimes I go to a town because there is one thing in or near that town where I want to go, e.g., a castle I want to see (Sigmaringen) or a spa I want to visit (Bad Wildbad).

Other times it's just in a beautiful setting (you don't often get that in big cities) like Hallstatt or Berchtesgaden.

Some other times it's in a good position to use as a base to see the whole region, eg Boppard to see the Rhein gorge, Braunlage to tour the Harz Mountains and the Brocken, or Zwiesel to visit the Bavarian Forest Nat. Park. I've stayed for a week multiple times in a little town in the Oberallgäu called Fischen. Although it's scenic and quaint, It's a quiet little town with not much going on, but it is a very good base to visit Oberstdorf, the Kleinwalsertal (hike in the alps), Lindau, Oberstaufen, and Füssen.

Other times it's just a convenient stopping point on the way to somewhere else. Once I went from Hall, Austria, down the Inn to Brannenburg and over the Wendelstein in one day and spent the night in Osterhofen, the next day I went from there by train and bus to Mittenwald. Osterhofen was a very lovely place to stay, but there was nothing distinctive about it. It was just a good stopping point going between Hall and Mittenwald via the Wendelstein.

If I were making a trip that would take more than a day, and I had a choice of stopping part way in a big city or a small town, I'd take the small town. In a small town, you are somehow nearer to the people, and the cost of staying there is much less.

When I lived in Germany, I did a lot of hiking through the countryside. As another poster noted, there's often trails (paved or not) that connect nearby towns and villages, so you can string together an all-day hiking loop that takes you through forests, pastureland, villages, towns and cities. For me, it was a nice contrast to walk through the forest and come out to a small little town, maybe stop for a bit for a drink, sit in the little public space that even the smallest villages usually maintain (usually by the local war memorial). It's very reassuring to see that Germans really do live and maintain these beautiful little places, not as a facade to attract tourists, but simply because they like it that way.

As I explored more areas of the country, you also get a better sense of the regional vernacular architecture styles. Chalets with intricately carved wooden railings in the Alps and Alpine foreland, the extremely colorful Fachwerk of Baden and Franconia, the grey stone buildings of the Eifel, the brick Fachwerk of Brandenburg and Niedersachen, the low-roofed stone houses of the Baltic and North Sea regions, and the brightly colored stucco buildings of southeast Bavaria and Austria that I now know is called the "Inn-Salzach Style" (I'd previously called it Austro-Bavarian Baroque for lack of a better term).

When I visit the small towns around Frankfurt, I like to go on walking tours while I am there. Either of the town, or their church. The TI in small towns are helpful with this and often have an open tour on weekends that one can join. (usually just in German though.)

Many towns have something that they are famous for, either a famous person (king, author, criminal) came from there or the town is famous for an event like the persecution of witches in Büdingen. Salem has nothing on this town that killed 400 people for witchcraft. Their town walls are the most massive in Germany and it is worth booking a private tour here so that you can go inside of the walls and up on their towers. Seligenstadt was founded by Eberhard, the autobiographer of Charlemagne in the early 800's and the abbey and church reflect this. It was also the trade-off spot for the merchants coming to the Frankfurt trade fairs, one of the biggest markets in Germany for centuries. Limburg was a famous market town for cloth and is an archbishop seat, plus it has fabulous half-timbered buildings in it. Wander around and find the Roman numerals on the wood just for fun. Sort of like medieval Ikea. Lots of religious symbolism too if you know what to look for. (why I go on tours!) Marburg has an ancient university as well as being a pilgrimage spot for St. Elizabeth. Bad Homburg has an intact palace from Kaiser Wilhelm I and II, plus the fabulous Erlöscher church built by Wilhelm II, and the Saalburg Roman fort is near-by as is Hessen Park, one of the best open air museums around. Gelnhausen was popular with Barbarrosa in the 1100's and the church there is ancient as well as beautiful. Towns with old Jewish sites are interesting, which is why I enjoy visiting Worms and the cathedral there is massive and stunning. Anyone with interest in Luther or Jewish history should stop there. Eltville is just plain pretty with lots of wineries to visit, a great river promenade, and the near-by Eberbach monastery is always worth a visit as is the neighboring town of Kiedrich with St. Valentines. Have been to the monastery a number of times and never tire of walking into the basilica.

I like half-timbered buildings as well as really old churches. Finding stone masons marks is fun, or figuring out which saint is depicted in the altars depending on their torture instruments shown. Seeing unique vaulting or organs from the 1600's is a treat. Not fond of baroque churches, so I tend more towards Carolingen, Romanesque and Gothic. Many towns have their own town museum which can be interesting, but unfortunately seldom is the text in English.

I have trip reports written about visiting most of these towns.

Generic check list:

1. go to the tourist office to learn what's special about the small town (every town offers something special).
2. see the old town
3. check out the town hall and the church(es)
4. find a restaurant with local cuisine (sometimes the cuisine in the next town already differs)
5. visit the town museum (most are pretty good)
6. time for Kaffee und Kuchen (coffee and cake). Don't ask for Blake Forest cake but for local specialties instead.
7. see/buy the local specialties the tourist office told you about

Most smaller towns have a local historical museum of the town or the area it's in, with things that the big museums don't have space for. Sometimes I get a lot more information I can use from a TI in a small town. Recently in Germany I visited Speyer and Celle, both very interesting to me, and everyone was happy to see a tourist. The additional benefit is that accommodations and meals are usually significantly less expensive in a smaller town.

I am with Mark on this, go for a beer and have a chat with the locals even though my German is terrible.
wherever I travel I try to hunt down micro-breweries and have a few beers in them.

Many recommended, small historic towns are better preserved in their historic state than are larger cities where growth and progress have added more modernity (and traffic) to the mix. They avoided modernity due to an economic shift, such as Rick's description for the Cotswolds in England:

As with many fairy-tale regions of Europe, the present-day beauty of the Cotswolds was the result of an economic disaster: the collapse of the woolen industry. Once-wealthy Cotswold towns fell into a depressed time warp; the homes of impoverished nobility became gracefully dilapidated. Today, visitors enjoy a harmonious blend of man and nature — the most pristine of English countrysides decorated with time-passed villages, rich wool churches, tell-me-a-story stone fences, and "kissing gates" you wouldn't want to experience alone.

Its all about seeing and experiencing a different lifestyle, atmosphere and culture (from urban/suburban US) rather than doing something while there. Admittedly, many towns look and feel alike after awhile, and some people are just not interested in things that are not tourist attractions. I like small towns because you can get closer to the people. Its good to visit the Hofbrauhaus in Munich, but a meal at a small family owned restaurant or a local Kneipe in the middle of nowhere is more interesting. My best travel experiences have been in small towns.

Most of the time my small village visits are coordinated with some local event. For example a seasonal festival (Frühlings/Herbstfest, Winter/Sommersonnenwende, Maibaumfest), local foot race (5k-marathon), sporting event, seasonal market, Dorffest, etc. Participating in one of these events really gives me the feeling of what it's like to be a local so much more than some walking tour of the Altstadt.

I particularly miss the Sommersonnenwende or Johannifeuer. We used to go to one in Hartpenning just south of Munich every year put on by the local Burschenverein (https://www.facebook.com/BurschenvereinHartpenning/). If you are in the area in late June I highly recommend it.

DJ