Camper Champ

The 16 national parks are spread out across the country, meaning you won’t be able to see them all in one trip, so here are Germany’s greatest national parks and their best overnight parking spots:

Berchtesgaden National Park

The Berchtesgaden National Park is stretched across the Bavarian Alps, on the border with Austria. The park is formed of rolling hillsides and staggering mountains, all merging to create the perfect hiking paradise. Furthermore, the picturesque landscape acted as the backdrop for the opening scene of The Sound Of Music.

The park is also near the Eagle’s Nest, a mountaintop structure where Hitler and other top Nazi officials used to gather to make battle plans. A rare survivor of Germany’s terrible past, the building is now a popular tourist attraction.

Berchtesgaden is a mountainous region, so you’ll want to pitch your motorhome at a campsite high in the hills for the best panoramic views. On average, it costs at least €35 a night for two people and a campervan pitch in Berchtesgaden. This rustic campsite is located in the heart of the national park, a great starting point for mountain hikes, and has an on-site shop and restaurant.

Saxon Switzerland National Park

Saxon Switzerland is an astonishingly beautiful national park filled with incredible rock formations and pine-covered cliffs. Unlike the Alpine ranges, the mountains here are more rugged, with unexpected plateaus and staggering stone columns that rise from the forest floor. River valleys fill with mist in the morning, and you can ride through them on boats and canoes.

The park is tucked against Germany’s border with the Czech Republic, only an hour’s drive from Dresden. Spend the night in a countryside campsite for €25 for two and get the rural experience, or stay closer to Dresden for some exciting German nightlife.

Lower Saxon Wadden Sea National Park

The Lower Saxon Wadden Sea Park covers a huge swathe of the northwest coastline. This area was designated as an ecological reserve in 1986, and the protected park is a refuge for the 4,000 plant and animal species living there.

The flat, marshy shoreline is important for Germany’s migrating birds, as hundreds of thousands of birds land here yearly to breed in the summer. The sandy bluffs and dunes that wind along the North Sea provide a refreshingly calm setting for a bird-watching hike.

Lower Saxon Wadden is a sea park, so it’s best to camp by the shore. There are some great beachside campsites near the port town of Cuxhaven that charge €40 for two people plus a campervan.

Black Forest National Park

The Black Forest is a vast mountain range in Germany’s southwestern corner, between France and Switzerland. The range is covered in densely-packed coniferous trees, making the mountains seem black against the morning mist.

Despite the scary-sounding name, the park is a friendly and peaceful place for woodland hikes. If you don’t feel like walking under the trees, walk on top of them! Visit Bad Wildbad in the heart of the forest and explore over a kilometre of treetop walkways for only €11.50.

On average, overnight stays in the Black Forest cost €40 for two travellers, and both the mountainside and the picturesque valleys are great places to spend the night. This boutique campsite in the forest has a restaurant and offers pony rides and fishing trips.

Each German National Park Has Its Own Beauty

Don’t miss out on the central Harz National Park, which had an explosion of biodiversity during the four decades it spent as an untouched no man’s land between East and West Germany. The Harz is full of lush woodland hikes, where you have a chance to spot an elusive Eurasian Lynx. The closest national park to Berlin is Müritz, formed of lakes and bird-friendly wetlands. The Bavarian Forest National Park is another mountain range that borders the Czech Republic; here, you can walk among ancient trees where wild wolves still roam.

Germany's National Parks are large areas, often forested, that are generally free to enter and explore (there is no nationwide entrance fee for visiting). However, in some parks and popular trailhead areas, you will have to pay to park your campervan for the day. Parking fees are set locally and vary by location—sometimes a few euros (for example, up to €5/day in some central national-park car parks), and in very popular gateway areas they can be higher (for example, motorhome parking can be €10 for up to 8 hours or €25 for 24 hours at some major car parks). You typically don’t need an entry permit for a normal day visit, but certain activities (such as flying drones or commercial filming/photography) may be prohibited or require permission.

Some National Parks, such as Harz, Eifel, and Jasmund, have one or more visitor centres that offer information about the park and support conservation and education. Exhibitions and events often run in these visitor centres, and entry can be free at some sites, while others charge admission (for example, around €8 at the Eifel National Park Centre and €14 at the Nationalpark-Zentrum Königsstuhl).