Day Trips by Train from Hamburg

Luneburg is a small medieval town which makes for an easy daytrip as it’s 30-60 minutes by train.

Lubeck was the capital city of the Hanseatic League, and is stunningly beautiful. Lubeck is about 40 minutes away by train.

Bremen (bigger city, further away), Buxtehude (small town, close in).

Lavandula

Here's a day-trip guide for Lüneburg:

https://lifeslittleadventures.typepad.com/lifes_little_adventures/2009/09/

I'm hoping to get to the Hamburg area this fall and have been thinking of three WW2 places to daytrip to-
Bremerhaven, which has the most advanced sub of WW2 built by the Germans late in the war (never saw action) but was so revolutionary that a lot of the later US Subs were based on the design apparently.
Also the Panzer museum in Munster (Ortze) - not to be confused with the city of Munster!
Kiel, north of Hamburg has the U995 type 7 Uboat which was one of the most common of the war
And in Hamburg is a flac tower but I'm not sure if you can go in, but I plan to at least walk around it.

I plan to visit these places this fall but I've never been, so I can't say for sure how long it takes or how good they are. Looks like a couple hours or via train to each except of course the flac tower

https://uboot-wilhelm-bauer.de/en/start/
https://daspanzermuseum.de/en/
https://navalhistoria.com/u-995/
https://www.hamburg.com/visitors/sights/architecture/st-pauli-bunker-19378

Greg, The article you provided the link for says the Hamburg Flak Tower has a hotel and restaurant open to the public on the top 5 floors. The rest of the building is mixed-use with residential and commercial
spaces.

Cheers!

The mentioned submarine type VII you can find in Laboe as technical museum.

The mentioned Wilhelm Bauer, a type XXI submarine which was developed too late in WWII to change things you can find in Bremerhaven (link).

In April combine visiting Stade with Altes Land, a fruit area West of Hamburg.

Hi Kenko and Mark K
Thanks, I'm still in the early research stage so I don't really know what I'm talking about. My main purpose was to give the OP- Cooper some day trip ideas for WW2 stuff with the qualification that Cooper will need to do research if those things are of interest. I've been reading a bit more about the flac tower, doesn't look like tours are available, and there may be nothing on the inside to see anyway if it's all been renovated.
I'm hoping to go in late Sept, so I'll have to get up to speed on all these subs and museums and towers.

@kenko. The flak tower in Hamburg has been turned into a hotel. You can still make out the basic design but it definitely been modified (at least what I'm seeing from the pics I've seen). If you want to see a few in the original state, there are two in the middle of a park in Vienna (the Augarten) with another two that are a bit harder to see

Thanks for the info everyone!

Re the earlier discussions about the Hamburg Flak tower, I was in Hamburg in early October and went to the Flak tower. I got off at St. Pauli Station and once outside the station I guarantee you won't be able to miss it -it's maybe a couple hundred yards away. There is a spiraling staircase/ walkway that spirals around it on the outside which has plaques and signage about its history and the war. You get amazing views of the city as you slowly climb up and around. While there is nothing to see in the businesses that are in it, when you get one floor level from the roof, that level is open and you can go in - it's empty except for the middle which is a caved in concrete pile where the fire control room is/was. There is lots of signage about the war and tower in this area (as well as toilets with attendant that requires payment) on this level. You can go up one level higher onto the roof, which is a big garden where you will obviously get the best views of the city in all directions including the harbour.

I also did a day trip to the Tank Museum in Munster (Ortze - not the city of Munster). It was not a super long journey, although you may have to transfer trains once, can't remember. The museum is definitely worth it if you are into WW2 stuff (and WW1 and Cold War). It's not huge so a few hours is all you need. They have a Tigers, King Tiger, Panther, Sherman, Jagpanzer etc.
Them museum is a long walk from the town - doable but as it was a rainy day I got out of the station and asked in the store next door how far the museum was and one of the customers said "oh you don't want to walk there on a day like this - so he gave me a ride. Small town hospitality! On the way back I asked the lady in the gift shop if she could call a cab- she tried but it was Sunday and the cab company was closed, so she went on her coffee break and drove me back to the station!! Super nice people.

Part 2 - see my earlier comment for part 1
I also went to the two uboats in Bremerhaven and Kiel (actually Laboe, which is a suburb of Kiel) which are also doable as daytrips from Hamburg, as long as you don't mind changing trains. The biggest pain was the 45 minute bus from Kiel train station out to Laboe, (take the ferry instead) as it was a crowded milk run bus that had a million stops and took much longer than the schedule said. I thought it would be faster than the ferry but it wasn't. The ferry is only a few blocks from the train station and is much more pleasant to take.