Unfortunately, the website for the routes etc is only in German, as is the magazine. It’s also the same with Alpentourer’s magazine and much of their website. Similarly, Motorrad Freizeit magazine and their website.
I don’t speak any German but subscribe to the magazines via the Readly / United Kiosk app’s, working on the basis that a map is a map and a photograph is a photograph, no matter what language it’s in. I then tap around the various websites’ and routes on my iPad, safe in the belief that I can’t break anything.
I have learned by trial and error that:
A. Tourenfahrer take a week or so to load the magazine routes onto the their website
B. That the magazine’s name for the article (in this case ‘Der sonne entgegen’) is searchable by typing say, ‘sonne’ or ‘entgegen’ into the box ‘Suche’. This of course works only if you have the magazine available via the app, so you know what the article was called
As the website is in German, it’s sometimes useful to look up on ‘Google Translate’ the German name for countries and regions. But it’s so easy to zoom in on the map and tap on the little symbols to see what pops up, you can get by without doing so. As I say, play around, you can’t break it
I had some friendly correspondence with the editors of Alpentourer magazine, suggesting that they create an English version of the magazine. They told me that they had often thought about it but, as there are only two of them in the office, they didn’t have the time. Which is a pity, they admitted.
The Germans have a long history of producing some pretty good ‘Touring magazines’. Before the explosion of the internet and app’s (along with the power of iPads) I used to pick up the occasional copy when in Germany or France and sometimes from a specialist international newspaper shop in London. With the web, I can get them from the comfort of my bed, settee or anywhere around the globe with an internet connection. It costs maybe three euro a month for a subscription to a magazine, pennies really. The websites are all free, with maybe a charge of a couple of euro if you want the GPS download of a route. I sometimes do it but more often than not just create it from the map and a bit of imaginative invention in BaseCamp; easy enough when you get the hang of it.
PS I found that ‘Der sonne entgegen’ translates as ‘Towards the sun’. Remember that when it’s peeing down in the Schwartzwald.
