Munster for a wedding, then...?

Hi eag15119, is the wedding in Munster, Niedersachsen or in Münster (Muenster), North-Rhne-Westphalia? Munster (no umlaut), a small town where the British Army was based until the 90s, is in the midst of Bremen, Celle, Hamburg. For me a bit far north of the Black Forest. The other one (Münster) is a drawcard in itself, and not too far from Cologne, Aachen, Bonn.

If you still want to go to the Black Forest then Triberg, Gengenbach, Freudenstadt, Freiburg-im-Breisgau are all places you might visit.

Don't worry too much about not speaking German. Many people in the hospitality industry speak English, above all in the big cities. But bitte schön and danke schön will smooth the pathway for you!

Lavandula

Thank you! It’s the Munster with the umlaut.

A closer replacement for Black Forrest are the Harz mountains with beautiful old towns like in Goslar, Mt. Brocken and several nature experiences. There is also an old steam-engine train still in operations.

You can also include Hamburg, Bremen and Lübeck with Travemünde before turning South to Frankfurt. For Frankfurt area I would plan 4 nights including Mainz and a day cruise through Mid Rhine Valley.

For best translations to / from German I recommend DeepL translator and app.

Another option Go to Frankfurt from Münster ca 3hrs by train

From there go to Rüdesheim about 1 hr by train stay there for 1or 2 nights and do a Rhine River Cruise towards St Goar and back and see Rüdesheim an the Niederwald Monument via chairlift
Stay the night in the vineyards above town

Then back to Frankfurt by train and on to the Black Forest via Offenburg to Gengenbach 2hrs by train 1 change in Offenburg
Do a daytour through the area for ex with Konus card

or go to Frankfurt and do a guided daytour of the Black Forest and Strasbourg

Back to Frankfurt and Mainz about 30min by train from Frankfurt

Almost only direct train connections during the trip

Thank you all so much for each recommendation. I'll look into the translator app! We are still faffing around trying to determine the best itinerary. We are traveled enough to know the tendency is to try and do too much. Plus, this is the first time we'll be traveling without hiring a car. We simply do not want to, so will rely on public transport, train preferred. We do travel light, very much so, but don't relish the idea of lugging our cases behind us for anything other than train travel. Hope that made sense. Have looked a bit at Baden Baden, also Freiburg. We are thinking that we can possibly visit Cologne (again, by train) from Munster (with an umlaut ) for part of a day, depending upon when the civil ceremony is. (The civil is one day prior to the wedding ceremony).

We want to "see" of course, but we want to enjoy and savor, also. I like cities better than does my spouse, but mostly we love learning about the people, the customs. One of my favorite things to do is to visit wherever the residents of the area purchase their groceries.
Anyway, I'm nattering on about this to give some insight into what we do when we travel and a bit of our point of view. Germany is a big country and we are only there for a very short while, so we're trying to make the most logical use of our time (mostly, that means time between points of travel).

For the once with American Keyboard ue=ü So Muenster is ok for Münster in that case ;o)

If you go back to Frankfurt, after the wedding, you have a lot more choices as to how to get around. But, Mainz is also good, and you can easily base out of there and use the train to get to any number of places that should be ideal late August.

Another idea, from Munster, would be to go south to Koblenz for a couple days. From Koblenz you can easily visit Cochem, which is having it's main winefest 22-26 AUG. Plus Koblenz is a interesting and historic city, at the confluence of the Rhine and Mosel rivers, and easy transport up either of these into the wine regions by train, car, or boat.

https://cochem.de/kalender/heimat-und-weinfest/?lang=en

From Mainz you can easily reach Heidelberg, or the main city on the Rhine Wine Road, Neustadt (Weinstrasse), and all the smaller towns in the region. You can also take the train south to Karlsruhe and from there go into the Black Forest, towards Frieburg.

There is an option, which may be worth looking into if you stay within Germany, of using the Deutschland Pass, which is a subscription service that runs per calendar month, for 58 euro and allows you to use all the regional trains and trams and busses in the cities. There are multiple threads on how to use this in this forum. Note that all trains use announcements in English as well as German, although the major announcements in the train stations do not.