Berlin to Munich

http://www.viamichelin.com/ says:

Berlin – München
Costs 68.17 € with a Petrol vehicle, Toll 0.00 € | Petrol 68.17 €

Time 06h22 with 05h28 on motorways,
Distance 586 km with 568 km on motorway

Plus, of course the cost of the hire car, and any parking fees in Berlin or Munich

http://www.bahn.de (German railways site) shows train prices between from €45 for a book-in-advance ticket up to €130 for a turn-up-and-go ticket, per person, time 6 hours, for a random date in March next year.
Your choice.

For now, there are no tolls on the German Autobahn network, although this is scheduled to change within the next year or so.

I'm going to give you an estimate based on a rough guess of the "average" price of fuel over the four years that I lived in Germany. You can probably make the straight drive from Berlin to Munich on a single tank, although that will change depending on how many detours you take. I would say expect to pay between €90-125 per fill-up. And ditch the car as soon as you arrive in Munich. Most German cities, including even Berlin, are pretty easy to drive through. Munich is the big exception.

Do you plan to drive the entire route in one day or break it up? I can give you plenty of recommendations along the route (depending on if you wanted to make some little side detours also).

"and then starting a Eurail pass after that for getting around the rest of the trip." Read any of the hundreds of replies on this website on why most rail passes nowadays are mostly a shakedown of the unsuspecting.

Without doing any mathematics I can tell you right now - train for 2 people will be substantially cheaper. Rental + fee for dropping car somewhere else then where you rented it + 2 - 3 times more expensive gas than in US. You are not saying how long you want to drive from B. to M., assuming you want to stop in little towns, probably more than one day then. Add parking fees on the way and eventual fines and it is certain it will be more than train. If you want to know specifics and approximate price, look under travel tips on this website.

I'd like to add a second reply to note that Eurail passes are often not worth the money nowadays. Are you intending to travel further within Germany, or in other countries as well? We'll be able to give more advice with more details of what you are planning.

The Eurail pass has its haters, but can be a good value if selected wisely to fit your travel plans. The train ride from Berlin to Munich is an example of getting good value out of one rail pass travel day, with hop-on convenience and no advance planning or reservation necessary. Comparison prices for a direct ICE train ticket range from €29-57 for booking 3 months ahead, up to €130 for standard 2nd class fare. (Unlike some countries, Germany's Savings Fare tickets do have the advantage of being changeable for a fee, if your plan changes before the scheduled travel date and time.)

You cannot buy a rail pass more than 6 months before you plan to start using it. There's some possibility of a sale or extra-day offer for fall travel, so keep your eyes open for these when you're within the 6-month window. All rail passes will go through some changes in January. There's only good news for the Eurail Global but pricing on the Select (4-country) pass will be both up and down, depending on the countries of travel.

The upside of the car is, indeed, being able to stop at smaller towns en-route, but just brief photo stops are not a huge value or gain in your small-town experience. On a three-month trip, you should have time to include significant visits and overnight stops in the smaller towns that most interest you. When booking rental cars ahead from home, you often pay the same price for 1, 2, or 3 days of rental and for 5, 6, or 7 days of rental. See more driving tips at http://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/transportation.

Ditto Phillip on the Eurail pass.

Have you done the research and picked out the "little towns" you want to stop in? If not, what makes you think that you can find great places to stop by driving around randomly. Use guide books and the web to identify places worth stopping in now, then locate them and use the Bahn schedule webpage to see if they are accessible by train and bus.

How many days do you plan on taking from Berlin to Munich? If you have more then a few towns to see and several days to spend, I recommend that you check out Länder tickets for your travel. Länder tickets can be used for unlimited travel by regional trains all day long on weekends, after 9 AM on workdays in Brandenburg; Sachsen, Sachsen Anhalt, and Thüringen; or Bavaria for 28€ ± 1€ per day for two people - definitely less than renting a car, probable less than gas alone.

Hi Sarah-
It is probably most important to nail down your itinerary before worrying about mode of travel- For example, it is waaay too early to make train reservations to Munich for the Oktoberfest- but you need to get cracking on where you are going to stay in Munich during the 'Fest. The longer you wait the more you will probably have to pay for decent digs. And you can make reservations for a car to use between Berlin and Munich and then cancel if you decide trains are the way to go.

I agree with all of the posters about rail passes. The only time they appear to be useful is when you are making many long train runs or if you demand the flexibility they provide.. Otherwise they are usually overpriced. The last time I used one (spring of 2010) I really got ripped off because I didn't understand how to use the cost saving opportunities of advance purchases on the ww.bahn.com website. Look for an earlier post (several months or more) by Lee ( from Lakewood) that explains almost all of the various train tickets in Germany.

If you can provide an outline of where you want to go for the 3 month trip, when you are going, what you want to see, and a rough estimate of your budget, there are many folks that can help you out on this forum. For example, if your budget is less than 100 € per day for the two of you, you are probably restricted to staying in Hostels and skipping the Oktoberfest.
Get cracking on hotels for the Oktoberfest and then come back with a more detailed itinerary and you will get more help. At any rate, have a great trip!!!

"If not, what makes you think that you can find great places to stop by driving around randomly." Because Germany is filled with great little towns and curiosities and they're easy to stumble upon by randomly driving. The language-neutral brown cultural road signs you see everywhere are a great resource that allow for quite a bit of spontaniety. And if the town or cultural site turns out not to be that great, there's very little sunk costs, both in money and time, to just getting back in the car and driving further.

"Germany is filled with great little towns and curiosities and they're easy to stumble upon by randomly driving."

Is there some reason to believe that these great little towns avoid rail lines. If what you say is so, it seems to make sense to just get one of the Länder tickets and take a regional train, and stop at any little town that looks interesting. Wouldn't be any worse than using a car, and a lot less expensive.

Hi thanks for all your advice,The main thing is i do not know the price of petrol and how many tanks it might take to get there so thanks for the information. I don't mind if the car trip is more expensive than the train just not ridiculously so! I know with out an exact itinerary it might be hard to "nail down transportation" but i was thinking it would be cool and something different to drive down on the autobahn instead of all trains and planes.

If we had a car I was thinking of stopping at Dresden but only want the whole thing to take on or two days . And then possibly to Rothenburg but that is on my travel list either way even if it is a day trip after we arrive in Munich. Any other recommendations for places to stop on the way, either just for a lunch stop/stretch your legs or maybe an event that is on?
I think if we were to take a train we would probably not stop and just get there in one trip.
After spending sometime in Munich we will visit friends in Immenstadt for a bit (probably day trip to Fussen and Rothenburg from there so transportation not much of an issue because we will be with friends). Then we need to get over to the UK - i was thinkning to do this as soon as possible so the weather is nice while we are there? then maybe fly or triain into paris From here it was now i was thinking of starting the Eurail pass because i was thinking about catching a train to Strasbourg then to Marseille and Nice and then to Italy - Venice then down to Florence (Day trip to Pisa), to Rome. I also want to get over to Greece and then to Spain and was thinking of doing a Spain + Morocco type tour. Were hoping to head back to our friends and go skiing and to some Christmas markets and then fly to Norway - Oslo and Tromso to hopefully catch the Northern lights and then home.

budget wise i was working on the assumption of 100Eu per person per day - so $20K AU total, will have more saved by the time we go but would like to stick to a backpacking hostel style holiday.

Hi,

If you are concerned with the price of petrol, keep in mind that it is sold by the liter, not by the gallon. Most of the time in Germany in the last forty years I've found that going by public transportation suffices in getting me from point A to B. That's going to depend on your specific agenda. But there were/are times that getting out to historical sites, ie, museums, battlefield memorial sites, military cemeteries, monuments, historical site plaques, visiting outlying villages, etc it was a great deal easier and time saving by having a car.

The route Munich to Berlin and vice versa is still one that can be done by the CNL night train. Unlike other routes this particular one has luckily not been abolished. I'll be taking that CNL option the first week in June.

Rothenburg is a long ways from Immenstadt i. A., you should probably plan to stop in Rothenburg on your way to Munich. However, there are a lot of neat places, closer to Immenstadt to see. You can easily get to Lindau, on the Bodensee, from which you can take boat trips on the lake, or go down to Friedrichshafen and see the Zeppelin museum. Follow the Isar river up to Oberstdorf, Germany's second largest ski area or farther up the valley to the Kleinwalsertal, an alpine valley that is part of Austria Vorarlberg but isolated from it by the mountains. If you go to Füssen, be sure to take the route via Bad Hindelang, with the switchback road up the mountain to Oberjoch.

PS, I love the area around Immenstadt. Since 2000, I've spent five one-week stopovers in the Illertal, in Fischen.

You don't need to start a Eurailpass for the short cheap run from Paris to Strasbourg. If you plan in advance you can get iDTGV fares for very cheap, or PREMs very cheap, and the run is only lass than 2:20.

Sarah writes about Berlin-Munich: "If we had a car I was thinking of stopping at Dresden..." "I think if we were to take a train we would probably not stop and just get there in one trip."

You should have no need fear of being "railroaded" all the way to Munich! You can make your stopovers by train. Here's what I suggest for a 2-day trip to Munich with stopovers...

Day 1: Use the regional trains to travel to Dresden (about 3-3.5 hours) on a "Quer durchs Land" ticket (daypass, weekdays, €52 for two) or a "Happy Weekend" ticket (daypass, Sat or Sun, €44.) If there are places on the way you want to visit, just hop out and get back on a later train for Dresden or wherever you change trains next. The daypass allows you to do this.

Day 2: For the longer trip from Dresden to Munich, buy an advance-sale savings fare - best price for two is €49 if you buy in advance and pinpoint your travel time and date. You can schedule a stopover somewhere interesting on the way - like Nuremberg, for example. The DB site allows you to do this quite easily. I just tried this for a sample date in March (20.03.2015)

Lv. Dresden 7:53
Ar. Nuremberg 12:19
Lv. Nuremberg 16:27
Ar. Munich 17:39

Drop your bags in a locker at Nuremberg station while you enjoy the town.

You can play around with the schedule a lot and get the same €49 fare. Plan to stay longer in Nuremberg? You can schedule a later train and get to Munich at 18:41, 19:41, 20:41, or 21:39, all for the same price. Also, if the trains that get you between Dresden and Nuremberg are REGIONAL trains (and I think they all are on this route) you can leave Nuremberg any time you want in the morning - your savings fare ticket binds you ONLY to the fast trains on your schedule (in this case the one between Nuremberg and Munich) and allows scheduling flexibility on the routes covered by regional trains. So for two, your two-day trip cost is about €100.

There are other towns you might visit instead - Nuremberg is just an example.

If you do this route by car, it's 655 km and about 8 hours of driving time - figure nearly €80 for gas alone. A 2-day rental fee on top of that will not be cheap, nor will insurance. And then there are parking fees, insurance, the potential for car dings (or shady rental agents that bill you later,) traffic delays, traffic violations, and all the other fun that comes with a car. Instead you could be sipping your favorite German beer on the train.

viamichelin.com is a good way to check on driving routes, times, and costs. bahn.de is a good way to check on train routes and schedules, but it will only give you prices for voyages originating in Germany. You'll have to use individual country websites for prices. Keep in mind that if you rent a car, you have to factor in the time it takes to rent it - seems like there's always an hour of waiting/paperwork etc. and then to return it. You will be limited by the open hours of the rental offices which can often lead to having to pay for overnight parking before returning the car. Also the cheapest rentals will be manual transmissions - can you handle that with driving on the right side of the road and shifting with your right hand?

Also, the more you travel, the more expensive your trip will be. You can sleep pretty cheaply in hostels, eat cheaply from supermarkets, and cut corners on other things, but there are only two ways to save money on travel, the first is fewer destinations, the second is locking yourselves into a fixed itinerary by buying tickets (trains and planes) 3-4 months in advance. These are almost always non-refundable and if you can change them, there'll be a fee plus you'll have to pay the difference in price for the new tickets.

Sarah,

see my answer about Autobahns in your other thread https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/general-europe/3-months-budget-style-europe-trip-any-advice-on-many-questions-please