Hey! I'm working on a novel (a hobby for now) that has scenes in Germany. I need someone from the region to help me with scenery. Specifically, I have a commuter plane headed for Koln that crashes in a mountainous area. The peaks don't have to be exceptionally high but they need to have at least some snow in May. If need be, the plane (coming from Amsterdam) can sweep north a bit as it winds up being diverted and escorted by Tornados from Bergische.

So... where is my best candidate?

Help?

No mountains north of Köln that have snow in May :-) The only mountains close to Köln is the "Siebengebirge" but that are more ore less 7 small hills. No snow there.

Ok... what about a little farther east?

That area is pretty flat.

Google Earth. Look for Heidelberg, Frankfurt, Dusseldorf, Essen.

These should list the area and mountains.

Change the city to Stuttgart or Munchen. Or have it go down while circling over the Ardennes (350-650m) to line up with the Rhine during a freak May storm.

Thanks for the suggestion YoDude.

I'm really also needing some first-hand descriptions from someone who's very familiar with the area I wind up using. I am still leaning toward Koln as the intended destination due to other factors in the story, but the flight gets diverted so I have some flexibility...

The highest mountain in that region is to the south, near Frankfurt, in an area called the Taunus.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Taunus

The highest mountain there is Der Grosse Feldberg, which is apprx 900m above ground.

http://de.wikipedia.org/wiki/Großer_Feldberg


Tough look finding any snow in may in germany except for the higher mountains of the Alps, global warming has pretty much ensured that.

I was just in the Bad Homburg/Oberusel area yesterday speaking to a company. There is absolutely no snow there. In fact the clients I met with said they had not seen snow since January. It is very nice seeing the green though considering Finland is all rainy now.

Having lived in the Main Taunus/Frankfurt region from '95 to Nov '06 I can tell you that the closest thing to what you want in that area is Koenigstein. I dated a British nanny who lives there and that place ALWAYS had snow when no other place had it.
It's "hilly" but not mountainous. Even had snow in May...May '06 to be exact.
I would go with Feldberg which is right next door to Koenigstein.
The U.S. Army even has a military training reservation up in those hills. I've spent many a cold, snowy night training up in those damnable hills on both an M113A3 and M1A1 tank. They still use it for training the troops from nearby Friedberg and Giessen.
Same with Heidelberg which has an old, closed down military re-trans site up on top of their mountain there.
Just in case you wanted to throw a U.S. Army aspect into the mix.

Okay, now we're getting somewhere! iball's post is really what I'm looking for. Thanks!

I did do some googling and offline reading before asking, but just not finding what I needed... hence the request of a resident. You can't beat first-hand descriptions!

EDIT: Feldberg was on my short list of candidate regions. Sweet!