We are 4 women in our 60's who are doing our third bike and boat tour. We end up and start in Passau. We like to go to an interesting city and stay for 4 or 5 days. We did this one year in Bruges and one year in Amsterdam. We like to shop, eat, cook,
not drinkers, culture and scenic. We are thinking Prague or Budapest or Vienna . We usually do an airbnb and walk a lot. Also how to get there from Passau. We live in Mich usa and will be flying into probably Munich or Frankfort. Suggestions please??
Any of those places can be connected by train, with Prague being less direct (requires a connection by train but still only 5.5 hours; or www.flixbus.com has one direct bus about 4x/week).
Looking Up Train Schedules and Routes Online gives you the Deutsche Bahn train schedule link and tips for using it. It also sells most tickets to/from/in Germany with advance discounts.
If you want to start with a night or two in the small town Cesky Krumlov, it's also served by train (2 connections) but you could switch to a local shuttle like www.beanshuttle.com at Linz.
Be aware that link for European travel of Flixbus has changed: https://global.flixbus.com
I think the original poster was asking about cities not transportation to cities :).
My recommendation is Vienna (although to be honest, Prague or Budapest would clearly meet your requirements). Vienna simple offers more of what you want. It has a wide variety of shopping, eating, museums and other cultural attractions plus music if you wish all pretty much contained in the compact historic center.. Public transportation is excellent and easy to use and the historic center is pedestrian only and offers a wealth of shopping and restaurants and is just plain pretty.
Suggest you get ahold of a copy of the RS Vienna Guidebook. It's a good one.
Can I ask what Bike and Boat tour you went on and would you recommend it? We are considering the Passau to Budapest in the summer and have never gone on one - you ladies sound like have a lot of knowledge/experience with this kind of travel. I am also wondering if there is enough time to enjoy the towns or sights along wth way. Any information would be greatly appreciated. Thanks