Family trip to Germany

A great starting point would be to know how you travel, by plane, train, bus, car and where you enter in Germany. Also in what are your family and you interested (or not), if your planning included to use camping places, hotels, b&b's, privat pensions, apartments or maybe hotels / hostels and at least how long will be your trip inside Germany. Any idea about?

We like to be outdoors

I guess that can be done basically everywhere in Germany.

and will be arriving from Amsterdam direction

So if you don't want to travel too far stay in the northleft part, if you don't mind the distance you can go anywhere else.

I'm not joking. Based on your question this is the best advice I can give. I'm sure you can provide us with some more details of exactly what you like to do outdoors (hiking, sailing, climbing, kayaking?) and I'm also sure that you can do a little digging on your own, selecting a couple of regions that sound interesting to you and then come back to ask for tailored advice.

what timespan? what are your expectations?

Berchtesgaden is quite nice... Fehmarn... Konstanz...

Düsseldorf... Dresden :-)

Germans take their leisure time very seriously, and there is an almost unlimited array of outdoors things to do, in every region even on the smallest local scale. You could spend all your holiday in the same place and not get bored... or zoom back and forth across the country.

Nice places, if you come from direction Amsterdam is Koblenz, Cologne. But there are much more nice cities in Germany. Berlin, Nuremberg, Dresden...

If you like culture, make a visit to some of the german churches, they are wonderfull. http://www.novinitravel.com/articles/top-10-visited-protestant-churches-germany/

I like the Baltic coast very much. Try the islands Rügen (Ruegen) and Usedom.
http://www.ruegen.de/en/ueber-ruegen.html
http://www.usedom.de/
After that you could go inland to lake Müritz (Mueritz) and spend some days on a house boat.
http://www.mecklenburgische-seenplatte.de/seenplatte_erleben/Englische_Landingspage/index.html

Hi Tom,

We just spent a few weeks in Southern Germany and while being at Munich, the hotel where we stayed recommended us a hike with Steinbock Bergtouren. It seems to be a rather new outdoor event organization specialized on mountain hikes in different languages. Their website is quite nice but could be improved in terms of it's structure. Anyhow, we have chosen the Hollentalklam and our kids thought is was terrific.
They really do a good job and are enthusiastic about their work.
Maybe your boys would like it too!

Anny