German Travel

If I had 10 days only - I would spend them all in Germany. There are many varied wonderful things to see! You should get a copy of Rick Steve's Germany Guidebook and see what intrigues you. Have you looked at the Germany section under the "explore europe" tab on this website? The different regions of Germany are very different. It really depends on what you are interested in.

For ten days I would devote my time to Germany,many different places to stay from Munich to the Rhine and Nurnburg with Berlin and Dresden in the East just to name a few.
Mike

Where are you flying into? That will suggest places to see, and a lot of variety. Keep it to no more than 4 places. You might have a German Rail Pass, but you still don't want to spend half your time riding on trains. And the last thing you want is the "If this is Tuesday, it must be Belgium" experience.

Hi,

You could spend all ten days in Germany, pick three cities, eg, Berlin, Munich, Frankfurt or Berlin, Hamburg, Leipzig. Another option spend five days in Berlin and five night nights in Vienna. Save going to another country on another trip.

Between the two options, I definitely would pick staying in Germany for all ten days My first trip over in 1971 was for 12 weeks, of which I spent 7 weeks in Germany, going from city to city, staying in hostels. What you have been told on German cities, I don't buy at all. In my view, you've been misinformed.

It's likely that a rail pass will cost you more than point-to -point tickets, but you wom't be able to figure that out for sure until you know what cities you want to visit. Use the Deutsche Bahn website to check schedules and fares.

Read about rail travel, top left menu of this site. Some long distance trains can require seat reservations.

Although distances can be long, there's no need to add a second country. Germany has great variety. We're in Copenhagen now, four hours by train from Lübeck, but we were mainly in Germany - Frankfurt, Berlin, Straslund, Lübeck. The first two train jumps were four to five hours, but only 40 to 60 euros per person months in advance, first class.

I'll be posting in another thread after we return, but I did learn that if you select the right ones, you only need to visit ONE Fachwerk town and one Hanseatic town, not multiples. Maybe thats what your advisors meant to tell you. Our favorites on this trip (our fourth to Germany) were Aschaffenberg, Gross Umstadt, Schwerin, and Lübeck. But bigger cities like Berlin and Weimar and Leipzig are also great.

Edit: Also, see this recent thread:
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/germany/what-are-your-top-5-german-towns-cities

"Maybe four or five cities. Someone told me I should try to go to another country of two, that there is too much of the same in the various German cities."

There is some truth in that. In 1945 nearly all large German cities were rubble, and soon after, nearly all were rebuilt. So it's wise not to focus only on the major cities but also to spend time in smaller ones that were less devastated by the war.

You can go to Belgium or Austria if you like, but no way do you need to.

Do you need a rail pass? For 10 days, maybe, maybe not. Don't worry about that yet. You can buy one when you arrive in Germany if you like. But just for fun, let's say you come up with an insane plan to visit Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt and Munich in 10 days on a traditional city-to-city-to-city itinerary. That would mean 4 long-distance trips to 5 cities scattered around the country, and a 4-day rail pass might be very convenient and save you some money too (fly into Berlin and out of Munich, or vice-versa, in this case.) It would mean a lot of time spent on the trains too - see map.

But that's probably not the best way to "see Germany." Most experienced travelers recommend 4 days for Berlin and maybe 2-3 in these other cities (all of which were major WW II bombing targets btw) as minimum stays. There's not enough time to dig into these place unless you shortchange yourself.

I think you've gotten the soundest advice so far from Lubitsch, who said this...

Europe is more tightly packed with points of interest and historical
places, there's therefore no need to cross vast spaces. You don't gain
anything by that but you lose time in transit. Don't do more than
three places and use towns as base towns from which you do day trips.

One very excellent base town is NUREMBERG (heavily bombed but rebuilt with the past in mind.) It's a fine city and a major train hub to other destinations. I would recommend 5-6 nights there. You'd have terrific day trip options galore, among them...
Bamberg
Würzburg
Regensburg
Bayreuth
Munich
Bad Windsheim
Iphofen

Day trips from Nuremberg will cost you only €19 - 25 per day using regional day passes like the Bavaria Ticket that you can buy from a ticket machine. You can get to Nuremberg easily by train from either FRA or MUC.

A second base town could be MAINZ for 3-5 days, just a few miles from FRA, and another excellent travel base with great daytrip options...

Middle Rhine Valley, including Marksburg Castle and St. Goar, Rheinfels Castle. Stop in Rüdesheim for a short visit too.
Speyer
Frankfurt

You will find cheap tickets and day passes for these trips from Mainz as well.

A German Rail Pass is a good deal under two conditions:

You're traveling on long or at least historically expensive high-speed routes. I.E. Frankfurt to Berlin. Or even Frankfurt to Stuttgart, which is fast, but pricey because of all the business travel

AND

You value flexibility. You don't want to be locked in to a specific train in advance.

AND

You have a travel companion. The German Rail Pass for 2 is a better deal than it is for 1.

I've certainly used them before, and they are convenient and can save some money if you don't want to book tickets in advance. Otherwise though, booking as early as possible in advance for point to point trips will probably always be somewhat cheaper than a pass.

For a trip like yours, I think it makes sense to focus on two areas, say Berlin and Muinch or Nuremberg and make day trips from there OR exploring a large geographical region, like say, Bavaria. In which case a Rail Pass isn't a great idea..

Thank you all very much. You've given me some good ideas. I think I am going to land in Frankfurt, head to Munich and surroundings, on to Dresden for a day, Berlin for a few days, then head West towards Cologne and finally back to Frankfurt. I was going to try to go to Austria and maybe Prague, but it sounds like there's enough to do in nine days without trying to do too much.
Thank you for your help!

I trust you have used the DB site to add up your rail hours! (Still too many big cities. You have local touring to do, as well.) On your next trip, look into Open Jaw air tickets - especially if your transatlantic carrier has "partner" airlines.