Itinerary review: 10 days in Germany in April or May

If you enjoy historical sites, then I would suggest a half day trip from Munich to visit the Dachau Concentration Camp. I may be in the minority here, but we did not really enjoy our visit to Neuschwanstein, and I would not recommend it to anyone. We spent far too much time fighting the crowds for a very brief and uninspiring tour of a pseudo castle. In my opinion, they've done a wonderful job of marketing something that is not worth the time or effort. Dachau, on the other hand was one of the more memorable things we toured during our time in Munich.

A few comments....

Take a second look at your sights you have picked out and try to tag them with a time needed. For example, Marienplatz is not really a sight to plan for in itself, but maybe spending time in central Munich hitting Marienplatz, beer halls, the Viktual Markt, basically doing a city walk and maybe some minor museums in the area is a major sight, worth half a day. Same with the Holocaust Museum, Brandenburg Gate, and other central Berlin sights. Museum Island can well be a day, Sachsenhausen a half day, etc. I usually plan out sights as either half day or whole day, lumping several small sights into a half day, but only if they are in a compact area. You want to avoid having to travel from place to place in a day, any travel chews up time and is a waste.

Sidetracking to Stuttgart and Hamburg seems out of place and wastes a bunch of time on trains. Also figure that the 2.5 hour train ride is really half an hour to get to the train station in Munich and wait for a train, another half hour to an hour to get from the Stuttgart Train station to the car museum, and then back, that is 9-10 hours of just getting from point A to B to A, all for a couple of hours of visiting something. Better to plan two nights in Stuttgart, but you may not have time for that. Munich and Berlin both have more than enough sights to keep you busy this trip.

I would much prefer late May rather than late April for a trip to Germany. I do not like chilly, wet weather (not that even late May is a guarantee you won't run into that). Check the weather stats for Munich and Berlin and see what you think.

Hi,

I would suggest dropping Nürnberg this time, the day trip to Stuttgart is doable, if you keep to a strict schedule, can be done, likewise with Hamburg, which I've done from Berlin. Add the additional time to visiting Berlin. If you skip Nürnberg, you have the option of taking night train to Munich to Berlin via Hannover, (I would), still very convenient, even though a direct night line to Berlin would be better.

If you do a good orientation tour in Berlin, it will cover many of the sites that you list saving you time as well as making your visit a bit more memorable. Try Insider Tours or Original Walks.
http://www.insidertour.com/

Another poster suggested visiting Dachau, though you list you would like to visit Sachsenhausen. Having visited both, I found Sachsenhausen more intense, with higher quality exhibits as well as many original buildings. So, recommend keeping it on your list.

In terms of car museums, the Mercedes one was the most interesting to me. The Porsche one was less interesting unless you're a huge Porsche enthusiast who is fascinated by seeing all the different 911 derivatives and generations. The BMW one in Munich struck me as an inferior copy (especially with the architecture) of the Mercedes one.

If you want to visit Stuttgart and Hamburg, you could save yourself about 4 hours of train travel and the price of 2 train tickets if you visited them between the other cities on your itinerary rather than backtracking with day trips. This is because going from Stuttgart to Nürnberg by train takes the same amount of time as returning to Munich (both about 2h15m), and likewise Nürnberg to Hamburg by train takes the same amount of time as going from Nürnberg to Berlin (both about 5h). So, if you want to visit Stuttgart and Hamburg you could save both time and money if you went Munich -> Stuttgart -> Nürnberg -> Hamburg -> Berlin. You could even visit Hamburg for "free" by buying a train ticket from Nürnberg to Berlin with a stopover in Hamburg for the same price, 19 euros, as a direct ticket to Berlin.

Very good suggestions, thank you very much, I am adjusting and double checking my itinerary based on your replies.

Regards.