cost of 7 day trip in Germany using Rick Steve's recommendation?

It very much depends on when and where.

For trains
http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de/bin/query.exe/en

For Hotels this is a good start. You can also check town's website.

http://www.hrs.com/

We budget about 70 Euros per day for food for 2 and 40 Euros per day for Miscellaneous.

I do not think that there is a short cut to doing the calculations. Folks here can help with specific questions. I also like "Virtual Tourist" as there are a lot of Germans on that forum who are regular travelers.

What time of year are you looking at doing this?

Do the 7 days include the travel days? How many nights will you be there? Is the RS recommendation from his Germany guidebook?

You may need to do some significant prioritization in terms of locations for such a short trip. Otherwise your trip will be a blur. So that's a place to start. Decide exactly where you want to go, what you want to see and do in that location and how long it will take to see and do those things.

Look at a map and figure out how you will get there, and how long it will take. Use the DB Bahn website to see how long the trains will take. Note that the Rhine is on the border with France on the west and Munich is almost to the border of Austria on the east. So just for example it would take 3.5 hours to get from Munich to Karlsruhe, and that's just train time.

Depending on where you are flying from, your airfare may be your largest expense. One time I read that the average per person, per day cost for a moderate trip is $150 - $180. That's about €134 - €161 today. That's how my husband and I come out, but we count everything including many things others don't, like boarding the dog.

Many others get by on much less. If the moderate prices above seem too high or the cheaper prices others may cite seem too low, you will just need to go item by item to determine what your trip might cost.

Lodging is usually our largest expense besides airfare. Cheap hotels are different for different people. Do you want an ensuite bathroom or is one down the hall, possibly shared with others okay? Do you want breakfast included in the price? Do want to stay in a hotel or will a B&B or Gasthaus do? Use booking.com to start looking at the options. If you find something that will work for you, book directly with the lodging.

Food is our second largest expense. This is where you can save a lot of money, assuming you don't drink a lot of alcohol. However, with only about 7 days of meals, and with German food not being very expensive, I wouldn't miss some of the Bavarian or Franconian specialties.

Hi, 7 days excludes flights. I would expect to stay at a hotel with bathroom included. I will check the cost of trains and transportation.

What do you recommend transportation wise?

How much do you spend on food usually?

Stay some place that includes breakfast, buy groceries to pack lunches during the day and when traveling. Dinner, splurge a little and budget 60 EUR for two.
Maybe change locations once and buy the train tickets 90 days in advance to get Sparpreis tickets for 50 EUR total for 2.
Use local day tickets for day trips. In the Mosel/Rhine area, you can travel all day (after 9 am) for 22.10 EUR with a VRM Minigruppe ticket for 2 to 5 people. Stay in Bavaria and travel all day (after 9 am) for 28 EUR with a 2-person Bayern ticket.
Stay in small town hotels and B&B's which can run 50 to 75 EUR per day including breakfast.
All in all, 200 EUR per day for food, travel, lodging, and site admissions is very comfortable for 2 people.

For transportation: train, S-Bahn, U-Bahn, bus or KD boat on the Rhine, as needed. You may use any or all of those on your trip.

For food: we plan for about €100 per day for the two of us. Even with my husband's large appetite, "need" for a good lunch and a substantial dinner, and our frequent rest stops featuring snacks, we amazingly usually average less than that.

Sam provided some good specific numbers and details. Others may have more or different ones.

In 2013, our expenses were about 140 Euro per day for the two of us.

We typically spend 70Euro for a room and buffet breakfast. That's for 2 adults. Dinner can range from 30 to 50 Euro for the 2 of us. We either eat a light lunch or snack for maybe 10 to 20Euro for the two of us. Snacks and beverages for our days out and late evenings are normally bought at a super market.

Paul

My wife and I spent $748 in Beilstein for four nights which was everything,hotel,car rental,food,admission to castles,and river boat ride.This area is very reasonable,the Rhine and Mosel compared to the Munich area.
Mike

Well, we would love to keep expenses low but we are estimating that with 1400 dollars for airlines, about 100 dollars a day for food, another 100 for lodging, including transportation, and miscellaneous we can keep our expenses to about 3500 total.

I know I dont have specifics here and its very variable but because I need to save up for travel its nice to have some sort of ballpark figure planned out

On another note- how do you recommend trip planning? Should we buy the airline tickets first then plan or the other way around? I ask because tickets get more expensive the more time we spend planning and I feel that if we know where we are going its best to just buy them and plan around the flights. Not sure if you guys recommend any other ways to plan a trip!

Thank you for all of your help!! Great community here

We are averaging $130 a day for lodging and train + car rental for a trip through southern Germany in September, including 4 nights in Munich.

"Should we buy the airline tickets first then plan or the other way around?"

Yes.

What I mean is, these two processes are interlocked. Start by figuring out where you want to go, and look at flight options, prices, etc. But, while it's great go get cheap flights by buying in advance, don't lock in flights until you make sure they really are best for your itinerary. For instance, flying round trip to Frankfurt may be cheapest, but it may be more efficient for a particular itinerary to fly into Munich and out of Duesseldorf. Remember that backtracking costs both time and money, so the money saved on a "cheaper" flight is often spent in other ways - particularly on a short trip like yours.

I'm always saddened by people who have bought tickets because they were cheap, and now have to contort their itineraries to fit. For example, someone here bought a cheap ticket to Stockholm, but had no interest in Stockholm, or Sweden, or even Scandinavia on that trip; they will lose a day on each end, as well as a lot of money, getting to where they really want to be.

Of course, sometimes the money saved is worth it. Last year, it was often several hundred dollars cheaper to fly to Milan than to Rome or Venice; particularly for a whole family, the money saved was worth the few extra hours on the train and the not high train fare. But do investigate all the particulars before booking anything non-refundable.

I start with where I want to go. Research flights at https://matrix.itasoftware.com/, especially using the multi city function and round trip function. With the round trip function, you can get an entire 30 day calendar with prices and vary the stay length in a 7-day window. Also eliminate certain airports because it will show oddball connections like Moscow or Istanbul. When I find a price, itinerary and carrier I like, I buy. Now the trip has book ends. Then locations with a look at the rail options between spots. As Rick says, put them in a logical geographic order, with how many days in each spot covering what I want to see and do. Then book lodging, then rail tickets as soon as the 90 day window opens up for Sparpreis tickets, noting days where laender and verhehrsverbund tickets can be used.

In the 15 years I've been tracking my expenses in Europe, prices in euro have been pretty stable. However, the exchange rate when I was there has varied a lot, from $0.89/euro (equivalent) to $1.46/euro. So, I like to express my expenses in euro, not dollars.

My last trip was for 21 days (24 hr periods or nights) and was the first 2 person trip in over 10 years. My total on-the-ground expenses were just over 2730€ or 130€ per day for two people. At today's exchange rate, that would be a little under $150/day.

Some caveats:
Accommodations
1. Ten out of 21 nights were in small towns in small hotels and gasthofs. Seven nights were in an apartment in the Alps. Four nights were in a small Munich hotel.
2. Almost all accommodations were found on town (not booking) websites and booked directly. One place was recommended on this website.
3. Accommodations averaged about 67 euro per day, including Kurtaxes.
Food
1. Except for the apartment, all accommodations included breakfast
2. We had at least one sit-down meal each day, including while in the apartment.
3. For two, we averaged 38 euro per day - lunch, dinner, beverages, tips. That includes food purchased for the apartment.
Travel
1. 27% or our travel expenses were incurred the first day - a full fare ICE ticket to get us where we were going quickly with jet lag.
2. One third of our time we used a local pass which cost 38€ for two. In Berchtesgaden, we used a free pass that came with our room.
3. We used six regional passes, one all-Germany weekend pass, and one city Tageskarte.
Travel averaged 16,50 euro per day there, not per travel day.
Entry/Misc
1. Most of what we saw were natural sights, without entry fees.
2. We did see the Eagles Nest, ride a boat on Königsee, visit two museums and a castle, and go into a spa.
3. Entry and misc cost an average of 8,75 euro per day.