First trip to Germany and Austria

How much time do you have, and when is the trip?

What special interests do you have?

If you rent a car in Germany and drop it in Austria, or vice versa, you incur a big drop fee, since they can't rent a car in Austria that has German license plates. It has to be transported back to its home country, and you will be paying for that as well as the lost rental time.

A car in Berlin is pretty useless, and more so in Munich. There is some nice country between Berlin and Munich, so rent a car as you are leaving Berlin and turn it in when you arrive in Munch. If you want to drive to Vienna, Take the train to Salzburg and rent it there. Again, the car is useless in Vienna, so turn it in as you arrive.

Berlin can take 4 or 5 days IMO, as I spent 3 nights there and could have used more time. Munich, I think 3 days does it. Vienna 4 would be good.

Berlin to Munich: Erfurt, Weimar, Eisenach, Bamberg, Coburg, Bayreuth, Nuremberg, Regensburg. The list goes on.

Thank you so much! We will probably take the train from Berlin to Munich. Should we take a day trip/train to the castles and use Munich as our hub? Also, what are your thoughts on going to to garnish-partenkirachen and Innsbruck?

If we drive a car from Salzburg to Vienna, what places should we stop and visit along the way?

We are going next July. We plan on staying in Germany and Austria for ten days.

As you can see, with 10 days to do Berlin, Munich and Vienna, it does not leave time to do all these side trips. It will take the better part of a day to check out of your hotel, get to the station, travel to the next city, then to your hotel. The day you land will be shot for the most part with jet lag and getting your bearings, and the last day getting to the airport.

Sounds like you want a 3 week trip in 10 days. Its tough.

You can check train times on the Deutsche Bahn website and driving times (said to be optimistic; they definitely don't allow for stops, getting lost, finding parking, etc.) on ViaMichelin.com. You may well find the train faster, and as noted you don't really have much time for intermediate stops that would make use of a car.

Ok! Thank you!!

If I could extend my trip, what places would you suggest stopping in route from Salzburg to Vienna by car?

The first thing to do if you extend the trip would be to allow more time in Berlin, Munich and Vienna (sorry). You're sort of trying to put a gallon of milk in a half-gallon carton. I haven't been to Vienna recently, but Berlin is overly blessed with large, wonderful museums in addition to a very large number of interesting historical sights. Things are spread all over a large city, so even with good public transportation, quite a bit of time is lost to just traveling from point to point. I spent a solid six days there, didn't get to everything I wanted to see, and had hardly any time just to walk around and absorb the atmosphere.

If you want time for smaller cities (as I do--and of course Salzburg is one), I suggest dropping Berlin from this trip. That way, you can see a bit of Bavaria in addition to Munich, plus some smaller places in Austria. I should note that I find Berlin much more interesting than Munich, but geographically, Munich works better here.

I can think of a few ways to organize this trip, and it will really depend on where you really want to go and what you really want to see. Do you want to expolore the three big cities? Or are side-trips and small towns more important?

OPTION 1: BIG CITIES
Day 1: Arrive Berlin, get oriented, etc.
2: Berlin
3: Berlin
4: Berlin to Munich (takes about 6.5 hours; the 8:30 train gets you in at 14:45. By the time you get to your hotel, etc. it's probably 4pm before you're venturing into the city.)
5: Munich
6: Munich
7: Munich to Vienna (direct train takes 4 hours; the 9:30 gets in at 13:30, so you're into the city again mid-to-late afternoon)
8: Vienna
9: Vienna
10: Head to airport and home

This gives you two full days in each city, plus an afternoon/jetlagged day. You won't see everything (especially in Berlin and Vienna), but you'll see a lot, and can decide which city you'll want to return to on a later trip.

OPTION 2: Big Cities and Small(er) Towns
It seems like this might be more what you're leaning towards, and if that's the case I would drop one of the big cities and either go North to South (Berlin -- Munich, focusing on various German towns along the way) or West to East (Munich -- Vienna, with the focus more on Austrian towns). The Germany Route could look like:
Days 1-3: Berlin
Days 4-6: Explore Germany (Sam listed some great cities above; I'll add Dresden and Leipzig)
Days 7-9: Munich
Day 10: Airport and Home

However, it seems like you're more interested in exploring the area between Munich and Vienna. In that case, you could spend Days 1-3 in Munich, then head out in the direction of Vienna. Salzburg (I'm personally Meh on it, but recognize that puts me in the minority), Hallstatt, Krems and Melk would fit the bill here (and the last three are all beautiful). I haven't been, but I know Bad Ischl and St. Pölten seem to be popular as well. These should all be pretty well connected by trains.

Either way, you're not going to get to see everything, especially in Berlin. But if you think about what you really want to see and experience on this trip, that might help sort your priorities and you can go from there.

Thank you all so much!! Your information was so helpful!

I agree with the others that in ten days, you will hardly be able to see those three cities, much less any "hidden gems" along the way. Remember that each day that you spend relocating to a different hotel will also cost you considerable extra time.

If your emphasis is on those three cities, I would recommend not getting a car at all but going by train. With a car, you'd spend half your vacation stuck in the city traffic and the other half looking for parking. Public transportation is great in each of those cities, and so are the train connections between them, so you really don't need a car at all.

And if you want to see those cities, you won't have time for any side trips anyway. In a train, you can fully enjoy the countryside from the windows and won't have to concentrate on the traffic, so that's another plus.

As the others said, ten days isn't a whole lot for those three cities anyway. You'll probably be pretty jetlagged the first day, and you'll need two travel days in between, so that leaves only seven or eight full sightseeing days. Divide that by three... not a whole lot for each city.

If you have the possibility to extend your trip, by all means do so. Even then, a few extra days will just barely give you an appropriate number of days for each of those cities. If you want to add side trips, you'll either have to extend your stay considerably, or else drop one of those cities.

Hello there. I think you can do this trip in the 10 days but I would add 2 more just for travel time if you can. We did a similar trip and we just had to decide (in advance) what our priorities were in each area. We went from Venice to Munich during Oktoberfest. We attended the festival one day, went to Nymphenburg palace another and rented a car to go to Bavaria to check out the castles. Its about a 2 hour drive. We toured Neuschwanstein and Hohenschwangau castle the same day we left Munich. We spent the night in Hohenschwangau. We got up the next day, checked out and toured Weiskirche nearby (nice surprise) and drove to Lindor Castle which was spectacular. Drove back to Munich for the night train to Amsterdam. I guess I am saying that with careful planning you can spend 2-3 nights in each area you mentioned and still keep within your time allotment for your trip. I don't remember exactly but the car rental was probably like $100-120 something like that.

I agree that taking the train is the best mode to get from large city to large city. The beauty of that is you can plan to get off and spend sometime in little towns and then get back on a later train if the schedule allows.

Have a great trip

Lubitsch! Bite your tongue! :-)

Lubitsch, are you sure you aren't Norwegian?

Because you're acting like a troll.

Allison, don't be too severe on him. When someone says it took them a two hour drive to get from Munich to Bavaria, that's just a "scnr" situation. (No offense meant, @April!)

"If somebody goes to Bavaria and at the end of the holiday still doesn't understand what Bavaria means ... "

Bavaria is a small area - one completely separate from Munich, Rothenburg and the Romantic Road. It comprises Füssen, Oberammergau, the Zugspitze, the Wieskirche, the Tegelberg gondola, Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein. I know this because those are the destinations under "Bavaria" in my old 1998 Rick Steves G-A-S guidebook, the first four chapters of which are as follows:

Munich
Bavaria and Tirol
Baden-Baden and the Black Forest
Rothenburg and the Romantic Road

Bavaria is so tiny that it's covered on pages 42-52. (Pages 53-59 cover the Tirol. Since Munich and Rothenburg have their own separate chapters from the Bavaria chapter, it's obvious they have nothing to do with Bavaria. Page 43 has a map, "Highlights of Bavaria and Tirol," with Steingaden at the northern end of Bavaria and Lermoos at the bottom of the map.

So, there it is, Lubitsch. I suppose you're going to tell us that after his extensive travels in Germany, Rick got it wrong too, hm??

(I'm certain there's more than a handful of Rick-readers who've been similarly misled. Map of Bavaria. )

Wow, Russ, thank for explaining. I realize now that I had a completely erroneous concept of what Munich and Bavaria are. ;-)

Ten pages for Bavaria, surely that means he has 150 pages on the other 15 states of Germany... - ? ;-)