Germany/Czechia/Poland itinerary questions

Hi,

I go for the cities myself, a very good choice here. No, don't change the month of travel given your preferences. May is good, I have been going in May recently , at least to start out on the trip, even though the heat won't deter me in the summer. Still, it gets a bit tedious having to deal with oppressive heat on a daily basis in central Europe.

If I were doing this given itinerary, I would want at least 30 days, ie the entire month of May, say 4-5 nights in Gdansk with time to see not only Malbork but little towns along the lower Vistula. Tracking down the historical sites depends on your priorities, ie, how desperate you are in seeing a particular place. Is it worth the time, energy, or money getting to the place?

Depending on the frequency of train departures, r/t, I have no problems getting to a particular historical place/ museum, small town, etc even the if total train time r/t is 5-6 hrs. Of the cities listed only Wroclaw I've not visited, only passed through it on the train from Krakow to Berlin in 2001. Set aside 4-5 nights in Warsaw too.

With your interests I'd try to fit in Łódz, if only for its impressive Jewish cemetery.

I don't think you'll find any issue with train service over most of your route. The slowest is Prague-Wroclaw, e.g. with a connection back through Dresden in 7.5 hours. PolskiBus runs this route about 3x/day in 4.5 hours.

Just today, my colleague was telling me how good the Jewish Museum in Warsaw was. Historians willing to go the extra mile can also see Krakow's in-city concentration camp memorial at Plaszow, about 2.5 km south of Oskar Schindler's factory.

A few years ago, in 2012, I did this itinerary:

Fly to Gdansk (via Amsterdam from the US)
Taking trains between all Polish cities:
Gdansk (3 nights)
Torun (1 night)
Wroclaw (2 nights)
Krakow (3 nights)
Train to Czech Republic
Rent a car in Brno, stop in a few Czech towns for a few nights (like Cesky Krumlov), drive to Prague
Prague (3 nights - had been here previously)

I visited Berlin/Potsdam and Dresden on a previous trip:

Berlin (4 nights)
Dresden (2 nights)

with a stop in the lovely old town of Gorlitz in between (a bit of a detour but worth it).

The Polish trains were slower then and a bit run down, but I love trains and I didn't mind (and they were cheap! Even first class, which I never book in other countries, but well worth it on Polish trains!). The train between Wroclaw and Poland is a lot faster now I think. Still, if you don't mind buses, you might look for alternate bus routes between cities to save money.

I actually loved all of the Polish cities to some degree and felt I had enough time in all of them. (Notice I skipped Warsaw - not saying you should.) I really enjoyed the little old town of Torun (not really a small town but feels smaller than the other places in the old center) and recommend you stop at least for a few hours off the train to or from Gdansk if you train.

There are direct flights between Krakow and Prague once or twice a week on RyanAir I believe (never flown them - I guess I might if I had to). So you might take advantage of that connection if you can time it right, if it still exists in 2019. Otherwise, it's a long train ride (some direct now I think) between Krakow and Prague. If you could fly into Gdansk like I did to start, might train to Warsaw, train to Wroclaw, train to Krakow, and fly to Prague, then Dresden up to Berlin. You if you start in Warsaw instead, you could train to Krakow or Gdansk and fly to the other, then wind up in Wroclaw by train and on to Berlin - Dresden - Prague at the end if you can fly out of Prague. There are a couple of scenarios that ought to work, based on 2019 flight schedules...

My four nights in Berlin weren't wasted even though I didn't really love Berlin - there is a lot to see, and the city is big and spread out. Prague by contrast is lovely and charming (and very touristy) and can be explored much more quickly than Berlin (much smaller in the center I believe) but is one of those places I just hated to leave - a great walking town. I spent four nights in Prague the first time just because I enjoyed being there, but you can do with fewer nights than that on a constrained trip.

Krakow is a lovely city and less touristy than Prague, and of course there's Auschwitz which takes a day alone, so adding more beyond my three nights might make sense for you there. But do plan some time in Krakow itself, just to explore it.

"...sites related to my Jewish heritage." Then I would suggest seeing the Weißensee Jewish Cemetery in Berlin-Pankow, it's huge

What is the minimum time you would suggest for this itinerary? If you
were doing this trip, how much time would you want?

2-3 weeks, and if you add a few day trips (recommended) 4 weeks.

What transportation would you recommend for travel between these
cities? My preference is trains/buses, but is there any part of this
itinerary you would recommend flying? Or a rental car?

A rental car only makes sense if you want to explore the countryside. In most cases public transport makes much more sense.

Sticking with the mostly urban theme (but I'm open to visiting smaller
cities and towns), are there any other destinations you would
recommend I include? Any of the locations on my list you consider to
be outliers I should consider skipping?

I would have recommended to skip Leipzig in favour of some day trips from Dresden, but since you love classical music you can't skip the city of course. But I would still recommend to do one or two day trips from Dresden, to see Görlitz, Bautzen or Meissen, all beautiful small towns. Görlitz, which is probably Germanys best preserved town, has two synagogues which weren't destroyed by the Nazis btw.. In this respect Wroclaw is a good choice too, since the Poles destroyed almost all historic cemeteries of the city after the war and the expulsions, but the two Jewish cemeteries survived.
I don't know how much you like nature, but I would recommend to see either the Spreewald near Berlin or Saxon Switzerland near Dresden, and the Tatra mountains near Krakow.

I am thinking of May 2019.

Perfect time of the year.

Wow, thank you all for the thoughtful and thorough replies. It's still a long way off, but I am looking forward to beginning building out my plans.

I can probably take up to 4 weeks, so I will most likely be able to cover all of my main destinations plus possibly some side trips.

Thanks again!

You can also focus on Poznań, Szczecin, Świnoujście, Kołobrzeg, Bydgoszcz, Toruń and Gniezno - all of them are between Gdańsk and Wrocław

I am currently working with a travel agency to help me put together a private itinerary (using trains mostly, and a few buses or shared vans). They've put together this itinerary for me as a starting point, and I'd love to get some feedback.

3 nights Berlin
2 nights Leipzig
3 nights Dresden
4 nights Prague
1 night Cesky Krumlov
4 nights Krakow
2 nights Wroclaw
2 nights Poznan
3 nights Gdansk
3 nights Warsaw

My initial reaction is it's not enough time in Berlin, especially since I'll be landing there after an overnight flight from Seattle, and with a day trip to Potsdam, it leaves me with only a day in Berlin in addition to my arrival day. But I'm not sure what adjustments to make. Should I cut time in Dresden and/or Prague to add a couple of nights in Berlin? Should I do Leipzig as a day trip from Dresden? Should I skip Poznan (which wasn't on my radar initially but seems worthwhile)? Should I skip Cesky Krumlov (which I hear so many people on this site -- including Mr. Steves -- rave about, but is it just another quaint, charming European city, and if I didn't love Bruges maybe I won't be smitten)?

Ten destinations in 28 days does feel like too much. I wouldn't mind cutting it back to 8 or 9.

I'd appreciate any suggestions on how to make this work.

Of the places on your list I've only been to Berlin and Dresden. (I'm not counting the 1972 visit to Prague!) I agree with you that starting with 3 days in Berlin is seriously inadequate. The city itself doesn't have much eye-candy architecture, so I trust you're going because of an interest in its museums and/or historic sites, which are numerous, widely scattered and time-consuming to visit. I have an atypical, insatiable interest in Cold War sights; with six days in Berlin I didn't set foot in the German History Museum or the Budestag, and those were not the only things I missed. As the first stop on your itinerary, I think 5 nights would be a more realistic minimum.

You can get from Leipzig to Dresden by train in as little as 65 minutes, so I'd collapse those two cities into a single 4-night (or 3-night?) stop if research showed that one day would be sufficient for one of them.

I'm hitting a lot of the same places myself this year, and I, too, am uncertain about Cesky Krumlov.

My wife and I just got back from a 15 night Gdansk-Krakow-Goerlitz-Dreden-Berlin itinerary less than a week ago, and I spent a lot of time researching the transit before experiencing it.

1. This looks like three or four weeks to me.
2. Mostly train, but bus between Krakow and Wroclaw. The train tracks are being worked on in Krakow and we found that train schedule were not convenient for what we wanted to do (which was leave Krakow early and stop in Wroclaw for a few hours, then continue on to Goerlitz). So we took the bus for the first part, from Krakow to Wroclaw. The 5.5 hour train from Gdansk to Krakow was fine, with a stop in Warsaw for a couple of days it will be even more manageable for you. If I were stopping in Warsaw I might consider adding Torun. We did not go there but it looks beautiful and was not destroyed in the war. Prague looks like an outlier, you might want to consider a flight for that one. Flibxus might make sense from Prague to Wroclaw. Be aware the leg room on the buses is not good, worse than an economy airline seat and even for me who has short legs, got a little claustrophobic. They say it's worth it to pay for first class train tickets in Poland. We paid 50% more for first class on the Gdansk to Krakow leg and I'm not so sure it was worth it. The four across seats did not look so bad to me; first class is three across.
3. Wroclaw was a good stop but I am not sorry we did not spend a couple of nights there. A few hours was fine. I might consider adding Goerlitz even though it's a smaller town. We really enjoyed the town. We stopped for a few hours in Bautzen on the way from Goerlitz to Dresden, it was nice enough but entirely skipable.
4. May is busy, we found the cities mobbed by locals due to holidays. This means the streets and squares could be overwhelmed, the actual sights like museums not so much. Malbork Castle outside of Gdansk was absolutely a zoo on May 1, holiday of course. Likewise the main square in Krakow for our entire stay May 2-6. We found it to be quite warm even in Gdansk at the end of April it was in the low seventies for afternoon high temperatures. Maybe even mid-seventies. That's about ten degrees warmer than usual, and a little warmer than I would have liked. I never touched the turtle neck or fuzzy vest that I brought, a sweatshirt was more than enough for even the chilliest evening (your mileage may vary)..

Additionally:
What worked for us was moving from place to place in the later afternoon/early evening. You might prefer to be up and at 'em early but we don't like to rush for an early train. (Exception was Krakow to Wroclaw where we did catch the early bus). So we ended up with four nights, three full days in Berlin and that was pushing it to get everything done that we wanted to visit. Two nights in Dresden, arriving in the evening and leaving late afternoon on the third day was also pushing it. Dresden and Berlin are both big museum cities so back to back that got a little exhausting. Four nights, three full days in Krakow was likewise tight because we did day tours to Auschwitz and the salt mine both. The latter stays open late and a good way to do it is to take a tour around 4 p.m. so you don't spend the better part of a day on it. Likewise you can get an Auschwitz tour that leaves at noon.

Thank you acraven and vftravels. Your input is really helpful. Lots still to think about.

Consider that you use about 1/2 day on average each time you change locations. If you want 3 days in a city, plan on 4 nights. Also take into account that you're likely to need some "orientation" time at each new place, that can be stressful. Try to include one "down" day every 7-10 days, a day to relax, smell the roses, do laundry and shopping . . .

For Jewish heritage, southern Germany is much more interesting than northern Germany: Frankfurt, Mainz, Speyer, Worms.