If you are looking for world records, you do not need to travel far: Germany also has travel destinations that will amaze the whole world. The largest piggy bank was recently presented on the US television station KDVR in Colorado. Appropriately, it is located in Swabia, in the region that is often ridiculed as the most economical in Germany.
The red stately pig named Louise is 5.58 meters high and has a circumference of 17.87 meters. It is based in Ludwigsburg near Stuttgart. Visitors can feed it with coins donated to the Child Protection Association. It works like this: You throw a coin into a small piggy bank attached to the outside; a special glass elevator then transports the money up into the slot on the back of the world record piggy bank.
The inside can also be visited: on two floors, everything revolves around saving – with historic piggy banks, old banknotes and a coin minting machine. In these times, a monument to savings takes on a whole new meaning.
The newly published book “Guinness World Records 2023” (Ravensburger Verlag) presents this and other travel superlatives from Germany, which are worth a stopover on the way. If you’re looking for record-breaking destinations, how about a visit to the world’s oldest working brewery? The former Benedictine monastery of Weihenstephan in Freising, Bavaria, received its license almost 1000 years ago, namely in 1040 AD.
Conveniently, the world’s second oldest brewery is also nearby: Weltenburg Abbey near Kelheim is 60 kilometers to the north; Beer has been brewed here since at least 1050 AD. Korbinian or Barock Dunkel, Weizenbock Vitus or rather naturally cloudy cellar beer, that is the question for a record-breaking beer weekend.
There are actually more superlatives in this country than you might think, and the pretty volume “Rerecord Travel Guide” (Conbook Verlag) has found a good 25 of them in Germany, both curios and classics. For example, a visit to the world’s largest bird park in Walsrode, Lower Saxony. 4000 birds, 650 species, fluttering as far as the eye can see: hummingbirds and Andean condors, colorful birds of paradise and pink flamingos.
In neighboring Saxony-Anhalt, things get a little more animalistic: the world’s largest cheese mite monument is in the little village of Würchwitz near Zeitz. A gigantic cheese mite made of Carrara marble is enthroned there on a three meter high base. There is a simple reason why this honor is due to an arachnid: mite cheese has been made in the village for centuries, and this is explained in more detail in the mite cheese museum.
And the narrowest alley in the world? There are also those in Germany: the Spreuerhofstraße in Reutlingen is just 31 centimeters wide, you can only squeeze through it sideways. At both ends of the claustrophobic narrow passage are signs that refer to their superlative. Incidentally, they have been unscrewed and taken away so often that they are now secured with special seals.
