Need further assistance for itinerary 10/4 to 10/22

You have 11 nights after Rothenburg. Sounds like Berlin is off the table if you just need to get there by evening. Sounds like something else may still need to go. Maybe this itinerary could be worked over a little...

Nuremberg is a short trip from Rothenburg - around 1.5 hours. Spend 2 nights there 10/11-12?

Salzburg is less than 3 hours from Nuremberg. Spend morning/afternoon of 10/13 in Nuremberg, then fetch bags from hotel and catch afternoon or evening train to Salzburg. 2 nights there?

Munich is <2 hours from Salzburg. 4 nights there, w/ your Gray Line tour on one day?

Erfurt can be reached in under 4 hours from Munich. 2 nights there?

Berlin is less than 2 hours from Erfurt. 1 night there.

I think that's 11 nights altogether. Rushed but possible.

Thanks SO much for sure wanted to avoid many one night stays with this schedule looks like we'll only have one (in Rothenberg) great! It's been difficult for me to figure out these distances etc so your input is very much appreciated. I very highly doubt we'll ever be able to go back again since it's taken this long for our 1st time so wanted to see as much as we could while able ☺PS have you ever used Airbnb there we have used it numerous times in the US and for the most part have had great experiences. Plus we don't have to worry so much about the conversion either. Your thoughts?

I need to correct your spelling, sorry, don't want you on a train to some other R'burg - there are several...

ROTHENBURG is the one you are going to. The -BURG v. -BERG town-name endings sometimes distinguish one town from another in Germany - and if you misspell it at the DB site your routing may be wrong. The full station name at DB:

Rothenburg ob der Tauber

FYI Burg and Berg in German are pronounced differently too. Burg sounds like "bwuck" - and Berg sounds like "beh-uck" compressed into one syllable.

And NUREMBERG is how they spell it there, in English anyway. German is Nürnberg

Oh thanks like I say ANY and ALL info appreciated!! If you think of anything else please keep me posted. We're going to wait until we get there to get our rail pass/tickets at from what I've heard and saw on this forum that is better.?

It would be really helpful if you would add the link to your prior post, so people know what was written there already. Please think of the people who want to help and act responsibly towards their limited time.

We took the train from Rothenburg to Salzburg. No problem

PS have you ever used Airbnb there we have used it numerous times in
the US and for the most part have had great experiences. Plus we don't
have to worry so much about the conversion either. Your thoughts?

No "Airbnb" experience, though I have stayed in apartments that participate in Airbnb as well as the other standard booking options. Airbnb doesn't own the apartments. They're just one option for booking apartments (and BnBs.)

If with "no conversion" you are saying Airbnb allows you to pay in US dollars in advance, I don't know if that's true. If so, then are not converting but you are paying whatever conversion rate Airbnb uses - the European apartment owners don't want dollars. Personally I don't like paying in advance at all and I never have for an apartment. It's common practice in Germany when you book apartments directly with owners to pay the entire sum for your stay once you are in Germany (usually no deposit either. To book you can either provide all your contact information in an email that requests booking, or book on the owner's home website. Be sure to learn about refund policy etc. before booking.) I booked 4 nights in an apartment near Saarbrücken this way in the spring without the help of Airbnb or booking.com (which also has lots of apartments) or any other booking engine. No pre-payment and all went smoothly. I withdrew cash at the ATM that day and paid the owner upon arrival. I also booked a number of hotels the same way at booking.com - and paid the owner directly. You need cash quite often in Germany anyway, so I usually get all I need for everything over a few days at an ATM.

BTW Airbnb is outlawed in some places, I understand - like in Munich, I believe - because it drives up apartment rents for locals.

The sites that offer information on MULTIPLE booking engines can turn up booking conditions that you prefer. Hotelscombined.com is one of those I've found helpful for hotels, BnBs, and apartments.

Town websites are good for turning up rentals the booking engines do not have. Here is Boppard's.

Don't know what you mean "worry" about the conversion - if that's "changing money" nobody does that anymore. Most people just withdraw cash from their own bank accounts using ATMs in Europe (and the ATM's spit out Euros at the official conversion rate of the day.) There's normally just a small atm fee for this imposed by the bank in Germany. My bank waves its own fees for using foreign atms - maybe yours does too.

"Airbnb is outlawed in some places"
That context of information is totally wrong, it has nothing to do with a company but with the business model of home sharing.

Background: A lot of German cities try to keep rents in center areas as cheap as possible to allow low income families to stay in central areas. The existing usage plans for areas are ignored by actual usage of some landlords. Therefore community adminitrations enforce the regulation which is valid since decades but fully abused by some landlords. They use their apartments in living areas for renting them 100% to tourists. Each apartment for tourists means one household of poorer people on the street or further outside.

Additionally AirBnB is raising communication campaigns to incite landlords against their communities. This behaviour I see as extremely hostile behaviour against German communities, e.g. Berlin.

For all these reasons I also ask travelers to use hotels / hostels to travel soical responsibly.

All of this information is very much appreciated for sure! I did not know there was a way to link a previous inquiry..

All of this information is very much appreciated for sure! I did not know there was a way to link a previous inquiry..

"That context of information is totally wrong, it has nothing to do with a company but with the business model of home sharing."

Fair enough but news reports in English on this topic always mention Airbnb - to the exclusion of other purveyors of apartments, usually - and adjectives like "outlawed", "banned" and "illegal" are tied to that one company. No surprise that their readers use the same language to discuss the issue.

"AirBnB is raising communication campaigns to incite landlords against their communities."

Right - maybe not against citizens but against local codes anyway. Airbnb lobbies for changes in the codes like many companies do and it stands out as the primary opponent of these codes. So it is no surprise that reporters latch onto Airbnb as an identifiable enemy in this conflict and report accordingly. It's like McDonalds taking all the heat for fast food manipulations or other perceived misdeeds when other smaller fast food corporations behave in the same way (but don't get the bad press.)

"For all these reasons I also ask travelers to use hotels / hostels to travel soical responsibly"

EVERYWHERE? I think that's a little heavy-handed... and that the answer to this moral dilemma depends on the place. I understand your concern for certain metropolises where, for whatever reason, the housing markets are very tight. But not every town is the same, and not all have severe housing shortages... in some locations (Boppard for example) there are healthy numbers of apartments that would very likely go vacant without tourists, at least at certain times of the year. Many of these rentals are tiny places within larger single-family homes that were recently purpose-rebuilt for short-stays by tourists as ADDITIONAL living space, maybe on an upper floor that the owners were no longer using - so tourists that stay there do not subtract from existing housing. A fixed-income, retired, empty-nest couple on a fixed income might be the typical property owners.

One apartment I rented in Neustadt-an-der-Aisch was only 17m square! Not the sort of place you could really live for long but nice for a few days. Nonetheless the owners rented not only to tourists but to short-term German renters working in the area temporarily, etc - and I think such workers AND tourists qualify as part of the community that benefits from this service.

And when it comes to real BnBs, where you're sleeping inside the same space with the owner and having breakfast in their kitchens, that's not a situation where an owner would ever want to open residency to just any long-term renter who qualifies financially under the law.