A covered bridge

As those who have driven Europe's back roads can attest, large portions of the countryside are archipelagoes of villages and hamlets connected by a complex network of roads. Drivers can get from 'here' to 'there' by a variety of routes. Though such off-the-beaten-track roads are the great charm of a European driving vacation, don't even think of trying to navigate them with anything less than 1:200,000 scale maps. A 1:400,000 or greater scale is good for an overview, and perhaps useful if one stays on the main roads and expressways, but simply doesn't offer enough detail for true back roads driving. Some hamlets and narrow roads are not even shown.

Though GPS technology may soon replace detailed maps and atlases for the vacationer to Europe, it is not there yet. The GPS's we've used in rental cars, especially in the countryside, have come up with some strange and circuitous routes. But more important, they have been unable to, as good maps can, draw attention to scenic routes and interesting sights and towns along the way.

In Germany, we use the German Auto Club's (ADAC) Maxi-Atlas. For a variety of reasons, we find it to be the ultimate tool for back roads travel in that country. For those who use all its features, it's a map and guidebook rolled into one package. Not only does it display all the roads and tiny villages, via a system of symbols and color-coding it offers a mountain of information that goes far beyond merely telling us where we're going.

Prime example: we often want to find the least traveled, most scenic road. What the Maxi- Atlas terms "minor" roads are colored in yellow and scenic routes are edged in green. So when we find a yellow road with a green edge, we know we've got a winner. Panoramic views are marked with a red rosette. The names of picturesque towns are outlined in red. Towns "worth a journey" get two red stars; those "worth a detour" get one star, and those "worth seeing" are underlined in red. Using the atlas, we've found many charming small towns that are not in guidebooks.

Notable elements of the landscape are singled out in the same way, but with blue stars and underlining. The atlas considers the Mosel River Valley, for example, "worth a journey" and gives it two blue stars. The Partnachklamm gorge, near Garmisch-Partenkirchen, is deemed "worth a detour" and gets a single blue star.
There are symbols, too, for castles, waterfalls, significant churches, monuments, lighthouses, monasteries, hostels, military cemeteries, caves, mines, even golf courses. In hilly or mountainous regions, rack railways, chair lifts, funiculars, and aerial trams are shown.

Everybody's heard of the famed Romantic Road, but what about the Badische Weinstrasse, a vineyard route most Americans have never heard of, let alone driven. These and other tourist routes are marked.
Of course, there's plenty of practical information for the driver. Symbols denote services available at each Autobahn exit: fuel, toilets, restaurants, overnight accommodations, etc. There are map markings for tunnels and when the road is steep, the percent of gradient is indicated.

Michelin publishes a similar atlas for France at 1:200,000 and a 1:300,000 atlas for Italy, though the latter scale is less than optimum. Freytag & Berndt offers a 1:200,000 scale atlas of Austria.

Also available are individual maps at our recommended scale. However, it takes 16 individual 1:200,000 Michelin maps to cover the whole of France. At $7.16 per map vs. the $16 atlas price, there is a clear economic advantage in favor of the atlas.

Recently, using the Germany Maxi Atlas, we explored some of the narrowest and most remote tracks of the former East Germany in the area between Bayreuth and Quedlinburg. In three days of driving we went through dozens, perhaps hundreds of towns. We got lost (even with the Maxi-Atlas); saw farmers still using draught horses to pull wagons and farm implements, and came upon odd, decaying little villages that look as though it could be 50 years before they catch up to their counterparts in the west. We stopped to explore charming half-timbered, recently resurrected walled towns unknown to most guidebooks. There was little traffic and almost no tourists.

All the way, the Maxi Atlas was our lifeline. Wife-navigator Liz used a large metal clip when she had to work with two pages at the same time. She also marked our progress with a yellow highlighter pen to provide a record of the exact route.

There's nothing quite like puttering down a quiet European country road wondering what's just over the hill or what's in that little town just ahead. Until the time-not too long from now-when all rental cars are equipped with improved GPS devices, these wonderful maps and atlases published by Michelin, Mairs, Freytag & Berndt and others, are fantastic, liberating travel tools.