Which sentence structure is more correct and why?

Question

Ich finde den Bauernhof gehen is besser als den Berg klettern.

Vs.

Ich finde, auf den Bauernhof zu gehen ist besser als auf den Berg zu klettern.

I can understand using auf with berg ..to indicate the top of the mountain but why with Bauernhof?

About using zu is it a must to make the sentence correct ?

Answer 1

The first sentence makes no sense at all, a kind of literally translation would be:

I find go the farm...

Auf has several meanings, among them there are:

• on
• upon
• to
• at
• to
• in

Some examples of this:

Auf dem Baum (in the tree)

auf der Erde (on earth)

auf dem Hügel (on the hill)

auf einem Pferd sitzen (to sit on/upon a horse)

warst du schon auf der Polizei? (have you already been to the police)

auf Gleis 3 (at platform 3)

auf Jamaika (in Jamaica)

auf dem Bauernhof (at the farm)

auf den Bauernhof (to the farm)

Prepositions in german are usually very difficult when learning. I recommend you to try to remember in which cases you use which preposition, it's a long way but with practice you will get better.

You use zu to bind the verb, it's kind of the english to:

Ich muss verstehen was ich lese, um es den anderen zu erklären (I have to understand what I'm reading in order to explain it to the others)

Answer 2

1. "zu" is necessary for a correct sentence.
2. The preposition "auf" is necessary as well."gehen" is not a transitive verb with an object, it needs a prepositional adjunct.
3. As for "Why 'auf'?", this is to a large part arbitrary. "Hof" takes "auf" and that's all there's to it, it's a bit of agreement that you have to learn just like gender and number agreement. Compare a bird on a branch in German and English: the English bird sits in a tree, but a German bird would sit on (auf) a tree, but clearly this says something about differences between the two languages, and not about differences in the situation.