Fall 2023 trip to E. France, southern Germany, and Berlin

Seems reasonable. As far as visiting Munich goes, leave the car home and buy a Bayern Ticket for 36 EUR and take a regional train. After 9 am weekdays or anytime weekends. Then you don't have to worry about parking. You can get to Dachau on the S-bahn, and a local bus assuming you want to visit the camp memorial. All public transportation for the day is covered as well as your return to Ingolstadt. Oktoberfest should not effect you as long as you are not staying in Munich.

Using Inglostadt as a base to visit Munich, Nuremberg, Dachau, Zugspitze, Rothenburg ob der Tauber may have the benefit of not having to change hotels or BnBs, but would involve way too much backtracking travel, especially to visit Garmish and the Zugspitze.

Also, cities like Munich deserve more than one day. Why not do two bases, Inglostadt and Munich.

By the way, why not visit Berchtesgaden and Salzburg?

Thank you both for your replies - very helpful. We've been to Salzburg (and loved it). No need to go back, although it's certainly a city and region worth revisiting. Again, thank you!

3) Drive Ingolstadt (Germany) as a multi-day hub for visiting Munich, Nuremberg, Dachau, Zugspitze, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, and other small towns.

Ingolstadt is rather impractical here , because on the way to the Zugspitze you have to bypass Munich, where in the morning hours the roads can be congested and the trains overcrowded. I would split item 3. into Nuremberg (Rothenburg, Bamberg...) and a location between Munich and the Zugspitze, e.g. Murnau am Staffelsee or Tutzing am Starnberger See. For the stations 3/4 you don't need a car, everything is more comfortable by train. Between Colmar and Munich I would plan a stopover at Lake Constance (Überlingen / Meersburg / Lindau).

sla019: great advice - thank you!

It doesn't seem reasonable to visit southern Germany sights via
train, esp. if one wants to explore the small towns.

Germany is different. Visiting small towns by train might seem counterintuitive if you've found small towns hard to reach by train in other European countries, but Germany's rail system makes it quite easy. Bavaria's rail network is incredibly dense.

I use your base-town-with-day-outings strategy all the time - it's a great way to see a country like Germany. The hard part is picking base towns which are appropriate for your day-outing destinations. As geovagriffith and sla019 have indicated, those destinations are spread too far apart for a single base town to be effective without a lot of extra ground travel. You are visiting only PART of southern Germany - Bavaria - but Bavaria is much too large for just one base town to work.

With your interest in smaller towns in mind, I took a look at some prior posts to learn about your interests...

We're not that much into museums - more into walking through charming
towns with narrow streets, shops, restaurants, and such, and
interesting natural sights.

Your base towns do not have to be cities like Ingolstadt (140,000) or Munich or Nuremberg. Stay in small towns if you prefer those - well-located small towns of course.

SOUTHERN BASE: sla019's Murnau am Staffelsee could be a very good choice for you. From there, day trip to the Zugspitze, to Mittenwald (small town) and to Oberammergau (small town) as well as into MUNICH (which you were planning as a daytrip destination from Ingolstadt, I believe.) Alternatively, MUNICH might be visited while you are in transit between Murnau and your base town to the north...

NORTHERN BASE: This is such a wonderful area for several days... For day trips to Nuremberg, Rothenburg, and small towns nearby, I'd suggest one of these small-town travel bases...

Bad Windsheim (Franconian open-air museum)
Neustadt-an-der-Aisch (handsome town, zero tourists)
Ipfhofen (wine/art town)

Würzburg and the smaller Main River wine towns of Marktbreit and Ochsenfurt would also be possible to visit from one of these base towns.

Every one of the towns mentioned has regular, frequent and dependable train service. I've used these routes many times - they are scenic, comfortable, relaxing as a rule, and they make for very inexpensive getting around. I recommend the trains without hesitation for your entire itinerary within Germany. If you want a car for France, pick it up in Germany and drop it when you re-enter Germany at the station of your choice. Most rental companies have a drop-off fee of €0.00.

Russ: wonderful advice. I will take it all in. Although I love to drive, as one gets older, it's harder on the back, plus, I love trains. Thank you!

Russ: let me add... THANK YOU for going back in my profile. Appreciate your extra effort!

We're not beer drinkers (gasp) and as such would want to avoid Octoberfest. As such, is early/mid Sept. best? Or another time?

I can definitely recommend September as a wonderful time to go. I was in Bavara about 12 years ago at that time (from Sept. 5th to Sept. 22) and the weather was delightful. In fact, we were in Munich right before Oktoberfest and it was fun to watch them putting it all together. However, I think this year Oktoberfest starts on Sept. 16th, so keep that in mind.

Thanks Mardee. How widespread is it? Is it likely to make hotel & restaurant reservations a problem?

O'fest means heavy competition for rooms and very high prices in Munich. It's not uncommon for O'festers to seek rooms in places nearby in Augsburg and elsewhere, possibly even Ingolstadt (which is about the same distance from Munich,) and to "commute" into Munich for their O'fest activities (there are direct trains into Munich from both towns.) There might be some small degree of "reveler-spill-over" into these Munich satellite towns and thus a little more pressure on lodging options.

Munich's O'fest run on rooms may well be a cue to you, especially with your small-town orientation, that Munich might best be visited as you are passing through from one base town to another (stow bags in a station locker in this case) or on a single day trip from Murnau or some other base town.

As long as you're gone from Munich a day or so before Oktoberfest, there shouldn't be any issue with hotels - at least there wasn't when we were there. I think we left 2 days before Oktoberfest began and spent some time driving around other places in Bavaria.