Day trip Mittenwald to Salzburg

Train, probably no need to reserve much in advance, some segments on trains that cannot be reserved anyway. But check your train times on bahn.de. No matter the itinerary you take, it is going to be a trip 3 1/2 to 4 hours long in each direction with one or more train changes. It looks to me that you would spend 8 hours on trains just to have 4 hours at destination.

You can do it if you are night owls. Best way IMHO, is to get a Bayern Ticket for 28 euro. Covers 2 people all day on regional Bavarian trains (Salzburg is included). Starts 9:00 am weekdays and all day weekends and holidays. That would get you to Salzburg by 1:41 pm if you start on the 9:36 am train. The last train home leaves at 9:18 pm and gets you back to Mittenwald by 1:23 am.
If going on a weekday, there is a trick to getting an hour earlier start. But 2 tickets to Garmisch for 4.40 euro each, as well as your Bayern ticket. Then you can get on the 8:36 train, and at 9:07 when you depart Garmisch, the Bayern ticket kicks in.
You can buy the tickets at the stations in Germany. There is a small (2 euro) service charge if you use a ticket window. You can buy out of a vending machine and skip the service charge.

Hi David,

I would think the 8 hours travel time back and forth would pretty much take the fun out of visitng Salzburg as a day trip. Consider Innsbruck as an alternative. Maybe Brixen/Bressanone and Sterzing/Vipiteno over the Italian border.

Or, to avoid the short time in Salzburg, plan it as an overnight (at least one night) trip.

From Mittenwald the closest city to visit is Innsbruck (one hour by train). München, at a little less than two hours, is quite possible. Even Augsburg would be closer than Salzburg.

All these places could be reached relatively faster with a car. But Salzburg would be something like three hours driving, so still quite long for a day trip.

Thanks all for your information. With the long train times, I think we will just go with driving since we will have a rental car anyway. Just thought we might like the train experience had it been similar travel time.