Hotel Brander Hof

Thirty Seven Rooms on a Market Square in Silver Country

Brand-Erbisdorf is a small town in the Ore Mountains that once produced, in its best years, more than a fifth of all the silver mined in Saxony. The Brander Hof stands on its market square, at Markt 4, in the ordinary middle of the place rather than out on a bypass. The Kaur family took the house on and brought it back into shape, and it now does what a market square hotel should: thirty seven rooms, a restaurant that stays open for the town as well as for guests, a beer garden, and parking for anything up to a coach.

Why It Works

Our preference here is practical rather than romantic. Dogs are accepted without a special room type or a negotiation, the parking is free and on site, and the checkout window opens very early, which suits anyone leaving at first light for a trail or a motorcycle run. The house sits on the B 101 and openly courts bikers, so nobody blinks at boots, mud or a wet dog in the hall. For a walking holiday in the Erzgebirge, that combination of tolerance and position is worth more than a spa.

Why This Location

The mining landscape of Brand-Erbisdorf is part of the UNESCO Erzgebirge and Krusnohori Mining Region, and it is a landscape you walk rather than visit. Heaps and heap rows, shaft buildings and the surface works of the Alte Mordgrube and the Grube Einigkeit stand in open country around the town, with the Huthaus Einigkeit museum among them. Beneath your feet runs the Thelersberger Stolln, a drainage adit of more than fifty kilometres. Freiberg, the old silver capital with its cathedral and its mining academy, lies a short drive north, and the Erzengler pond is close enough for an evening circuit.

Fast Facts

• Price: Affordable

• Vibe: small town, family run, straightforward, welcoming to boots and paws

• Rooms: 37, in single, double and twin configurations

• Best For: walkers and dog owners touring the Ore Mountains, motorcyclists on the B 101, visitors doing the UNESCO mining route

• Our Favorite Thing About the Hotel: the Bergmannskeller, the vaulted miners cellar under the house, used for dinners and celebrations

• Dining: restaurant serving Indian, Italian and German dishes, buffets for occasions, a bar and a beer garden

• Amenities: free parking including coach spaces, free WiFi, dogs accepted, very early checkout available

• Attractions: the Brand-Erbisdorf mining landscape and Huthaus Einigkeit, Freiberg and its mining academy, the Erzengler pond, Ore Mountains hiking trails

A Kitchen That Refuses to Choose, and Is Better For It

The restaurant serves Indian, Italian and German dishes from one menu. In a city that would read as indecision. In a town of this size it reads as the opposite: the house is the place people come to, so the kitchen covers what the town actually wants to eat, and it does buffets when there is something to celebrate. For a traveller it means you are not driving twenty minutes for dinner after a day on the trails, and it means a second and third night do not repeat the first. The bar and the beer garden carry the evening afterwards.

The Bergmannskeller Under the House

The cellar is the piece of the building worth asking to see. It is a historic miners cellar, vaulted and cool, and the hotel uses it as a room for dinners and celebrations rather than as a display case. In a district whose entire identity is underground, eating in a stone cellar is not a theme, it is continuity: the same rock, the same century, a different purpose. Ask when you book whether anything is on down there during your stay.

Walking a Dog in a World Heritage Landscape

What makes this an easy base with an animal is that the interesting ground begins immediately. The mining landscape is open country crossed by field and forest paths, not a fenced site with a ticket desk, so a long morning loop past the old workings needs no car. The Erzengler pond gives a shorter circuit for the end of the day. Germany expects dogs on a lead near livestock and in forest during the breeding season, which is the only real constraint out here. Between the trails and the town square, the rhythm sorts itself out.