Itinerary for 12 days in Germany, travelling by train and/or bus

Germany does not have many real discounts for seniors on the rails. There are tickets called Super Sparpreis Senioren for people over 65. I don't know how useful they are as they say "selected routes".
https://int.bahn.de/en/offers/saver-fare-flexible-fare/super-saver-fare-senior

There are also Trial Bahncard 25 and Trial Bahncard 50, that give 25% and 50% discounts for a period of 4 weeks. Cost is reasonable. The discount is not as great if you book discount tickets ahead of time.
https://int.bahn.de/en/offers/bahncard/trial-bahncard25-2nd-class
https://int.bahn.de/en/offers/bahncard/trial-bahncard50-2nd-class

It would make your travels much easier if you can cut your suitcase weigh down to 10-12 kg each. Maybe bring small backpacks at 3-5 kg each.

What was the itinerary of the cancelled trip? With 12 days, I'd say no more than 6 stops, with some at 3 day and maybe one 1-day stop. Dresden, Erfurt, Rhine Valley, Rothenburg, Nuremberg, would work. You can visit Neuschwanstein as a day trip for Munich. Remember, traveling between all these places eats up at least a half day.

Thank you. The itinerary of our tour was pretty close to what I've mentioned (that was the main reason we selected it). We'll be travelling for 3 months across several countries with changeable weather, so it's going to be a challenge to significantly reduce the weight of our luggage. We'll try our best to keep it down to 15-16 kg.

The cancellation presents you with the opportunity to customize your trip to your own personal tastes and interests. Right now, the words "cruise" and "castle" are the only specific words in your post that might guide our advice. What additional things would you like to see/do on this trip?

42% of your time in Germany is dedicated to Berlin and Munich at this point, and it sounds like Dresden matters too; just 3 nights there will leave you only 8 nights for the rest of Germany...

Erfurt, Nuremburg, Rothenburg ob der Tauber, Frankurt/Mainz, a cruise
on the Rhein (even a short one of few hours), Heidelberg, Black Forest
area (maybe Freiburg), Neuschwanstein Castle...

But that's 8 different destinations that are quite spread out; you will need to make some choices to carry this off.

I would probably dedicate this time to smaller old-world places that are very different from Berlin, Munich, and Dresden... Perhaps something like this will suit you?

June 24: Dresden > Boppard by train for 3 nights on the Rhine. (8:10 - 15:44? 12:10 - 19:49?)

From Boppard you can do a day cruise on the best part of the Rhine, visit Mosel River villages by train, tour Marksburg Castle or Burg Eltz Castle (both are legitimate never-destroyed medieval castles.) A stay in Boppard gives you a free Guest Ticket for free local train travel throughout your stay.

June 27: Boppard > Gengenbach (9:16 - 13:05?) by train for 3 nights in the Black Forest

Gengenbach is an old walled town with a fine location that permits day trips by train to Triberg, Freiburg, Strasbourg, and other nice destinations, including the Vogtsbauernhof Open Air Museum in Gutach. And once again, a free Guest ticket, this one called the KONUS Card, gets you around for free and comes with your room.

June 30: Gengenbach > Füssen (8:53 - 14:55?) by train for 2 nights. From Füssen it will be an easy train trip to Munich. No day trip from Munich to see N'stein will be needed.

This itinerary means 3 train journeys to pre-purchase (Sparpreis saver fares) asap for the best prices.

https://www.ricksteves.com/travel-tips/packing-light/packing-smart

This is just one of several pages on Rick's site which should be helpful in guiding your packing strategy. It may seem impossible at first. But it is not.

Thank you very much for these suggestions, much appreciated. Yes, I should've provided more information about our interests. We love art (in all its forms: music, literature, painting, sculpture, architecture, theatre etc.), history and nature, but also enjoy a bit of quirkiness. We usually visit a mix of highly urban environments (largely for their museums, galleries, concert halls etc.) and smaller, quaint places with history, as well as places abundant in natural beauty.
We will be making some side trips from Berlin and Munich, but also realise that in the "gap" between these two cities we cannot fit more than another 3 or so places that will also serve as our base for some other explorations. I was thinking of Bamberg as one of those places, but we'll give your suggestions a serious thought. Thank you again.

As has been noted on this forum many times - the answer to traveling light is doing laundry. Three months is so long that doing laundry will be a once-a-week cafe visiting opportunity. The change in tour plans doesn't really change that. Keeping colors consistent and relatively dark so they cane be washed together helps a lot... brighter colors come in scarves, etc. It will be summer with a bit of rain. If you are going north then a down puffer jacket is light and packs easily and should take care of you. The previous suggestions on your itinerary are spot on, although some stops are on one axis - Berlin-Dresden- Erfurt- Munich (maybe including Nuremberg, or Bamberg (an often overlooked gem) or Rothenburg ob Der Tauber, and some stops are on another, the Rhine - Black Forest - Fussen. I would pick one axis and pause in smaller spots like Bamberg to enjoy it.

Get a Deutschland-Ticket on the Bahn webiste. Far and away the most cost effective ticket for local trains, busses, and mass transit. Long distance trains are not included on this ticket, so plan shorter trips to get the best deal.

As long as you can lift those bags up the 2-3 steps on to a train, two 20k bags should not be a problem (they are rollers, right?). In Germany, it has been my experience that you will find either an escalator or an elevator serving every train or metro platform. Most busses tilt to allow for an easier boarding/exiting.

Packing light is nice ( my newlywed wife about croaked when I limited her to 2 changes of clothes for our cycling in France ! ) but unless you have problems lifting the bags, I wouldn’t worry, especially if you just have the 2.

I like Russ’ suggestions about towns to stay in.

Russ, NickB, Sam, Stephen, jkh

Thank you all. Much of your advice and suggestions is very useful to us, particularly the information about trains, guest and Konus cards etc. It saved us heaps of time.

Before I posted mine, I've read quite a few other posts on Rick Steve's forum - all very educational. Re the laundry: on long trips such as this one, our accommodation - outside any guided tours we incorporate - is a combination of hotels and Airbnb apartments - the latter with washing machines. While we are on a tour, we mostly do light washing by hand and since we pack clothes from fabrics that are fast(er) drying, we've never had any grubby or smelly clothes.

Thank you again for all your help.

You should jot down exactly what you want to see at all your stops, and do you need an over night. Looking at other bus tours, more specifically "Rick Steves Best of Germany in 13 days", they go from Erfurt to Berlin with a stopover of a few hours in Dresden. If you only need a few hours to see something in Dresden, you can buy tickets from Berlin to Erfurt with a stopover in Dresden for less than individual tickets from Berlin to Dresden and Dresden to Erfurt, by specifying a stopover of 4, 6, or 8 hours. Train stations generally have luggage lockers to store your bags during a stopover.

The suggestion of getting Deutschland Tickets is worth considering if you really want to save. It will include all public transportation during your trip, costing 49 EUR per person per calendar month. Downsides: since your trip spans June and July, you would need 2 months worth before you cancel them. It will also slow travel times because you can only take regional trains, which will also require more train changes. Example, Berlin to Dresden can be done in 2 hours with direct EC or ICE trains, but 3 to 3 1/2 hours on regional trains with at least 2 train changes along the way.

Bus tours can be inherently more time efficient than do it yourself tours by train, thus mostly one and two day stops. A train travel tour should be made up of two and three day stops, with day trips from the base. Rothenburg can be done as a day trip from Nuremberg, Neuschwanstein as a day trip from Munich.

Yes, we've pared down the draft itinerary to three potential bases, with day trips to nearby locations of interest. In the meantime, the tour operator made an offer of seats on another tour of Germany, which starts a week earlier. This will require far less planning and new bookings, but will add some further costs, as we'd have to change the date of the flight to Berlin and move our intended (and booked) pre-tour stay in Berlin to the end of the tour. We can probably claim at least some of these on our travel insurance, although filling all the forms etc. is quite off-putting. We'll make the final decision tomorrow, after we weigh all the pros and cons over a cup of good coffee. Thank you.

Hi, we are doing something similar in that we have a 3 month (well 87 day) itinerary in Europe and will be arriving in Munich from Paris by train. Our itinerary is Munich, Erfurt, Leipzig, Berlin and Dresden. As the above poster said, it makes sense to stay along the same axis. After Dresden, we head to Prague.

Read your travel insurance policy very carefully, especially if it was not sold by the tour company. How is "trip delay" defined? Is your new cost "essential"? Are your new costs clearly quantifiable expenditures of new money? Is "cancel for any reason" involved? Cancel For Any Reason often has a limit of 90% or 80%. Advancing the trip is unusual.

On the face of it, I'd do Dresden, Prague, Nuremberg. All cities you can spend 2-3 days in easily.

But for something different I'd seriously consider Dresden, Chemnitz, Bayreuth, Regensburg, Ingolstadt, and Munich. Which you can do for 49 Euros (for the whole trip) using the Deutschland Pass on regional trains. And these are all nice cities.

One more suggestion, is fly to Nuremberg, and then do day trips using the Bayern Pass (which lets you use the trains, trams, subways, and buses for 22 euro a day.) That way you can see places like Amberg, Bayreuth, Dinkelsbuhl, Nordlingen, Ingolstadt, Augsburg, Ansbach, etc...

Just a note in addition as pointed out by my wife - I have just returned from three weeks in Italy - I was hauling a rolling duffle with about 20kg of ski kit (boots, helmets, warm clothes, etc.) to the Dolomites for two weeks and then on to Rome for a week. One certainly can handle bags of that size and weight but I am glad that I had only two bus/rail journeys (Venice to Ortisei and Ortisei to Rome). I was also certainly very very glad that I did not have to change locations multiple times with that size bag. Just being encouraging on going lighter.