Small Town Germany?

Little tricky apporach: Have a look at Deutsche Bahn network maps. So you can find small towns connected to ICE, IC and regional train network.

For short impressions you can enter town names on German National Tourist Board page.

Try cities like Bamberg, Heidelberg, Dresden or Lübeck for example.

More + = better

Munich - Nuremberg
Regensburg++, Landshut, Eichstätt

Nuremberg - Berlin
Bamberg++, Coburg, Weimar++, Erfurt+, Naumburg, Wittenberg++

Berlin - Hamburg
Schwerin+, Ludwigslust, Lüneburg, Wismar+, Lübeck++

Hamburg - Frankfurt
Lüneburg, Celle, Harz Mountains (Quedlinburg++, Goslar++, Wernigerode+, Wolfenbüttel, Einbeck, Stolberg), Hann. Münden+,

Small towns near Frankfurt that I enjoy visiting and that you might enjoy too:
Limburg, Marburg, Eltville, Idstein, Büdingen, Gelnhausen, Seligenstadt, Kronberg, Bad Homburg.

Depending how extensive your trip is in accessing small towns, I suggest these:

Lüneburg, Celle, Soest/Westf, Marburg an der Lahn, Sigmaringen an der Donau, Ulm, Augsburg,

Ingolstadt (not so small), Potsdam, Wetzlar, Bad Nauheim, Rheinsberg/Brandenburg, Minden, ,

Naumburg an der Saale, Weimar, Meißen, Halle, Schwerin, Bad Ems, Babelsberg, Hameln, Jena, etc....all worthy of your time.

Most of these I have visited once, twice, or repeatedly.

Hi, Michael. I get that you are naming Munich and Frankfurt for airport purposes... but maybe you can explain something... why are you defining your small-town itinerary by the other very big city destinations? There are many good towns that you are completely excluding on the basis that they do not happen to lie between those big cities. Only in the event that you are actually visiting/staying in those big cities you have named would you truly need to restrict your choices in this way. Perhaps that's your plan - you will actually stay in the big cities, stopping in or day tripping to the small ones that might be nearby?? Which would make this a big-city itinerary, really...

There are small places all over the country that we might suggest which would have both train stations (as you require) but also hotels, apartments, ATMs, cafes restaurants, etc. If you want to get to know these places, then the evenings, the nights and the morning hours are sort of important to the experience, IMHO. When I have done small-town itineraries, I only passed through whatever big cities were required to reach the small ones.

Wow, some of (read most) of the places suggested don't come anywhere near my definition of small.

Try these:

Near Nuremberg - Bad Windsheim, Marktbergl, Bubenreuth, of Markt Bibart. Bigger places would be Roth, Ansbach, or Neustadt on d Aisch, but I consider those cities. Near Munich try Aying, or Holzkirchen. Bigger? Look at Furstenfeldbruck or Starnberg.

Best thing I can suggest is get off the at the smaller stations and take a walk. You're bound to find a place you can tell folks you've seen that they've never heard of. And even the smallest places have multiple trains coming thru. The worst that can happen is you end up waiting around on a train platform and end up writing a new Country Western song.

Small towns in Germany are close enough that you can usually stand anywhere and see the next one. If you can figure out how to dump the luggage, or are content to backpack, you can easy walk between them. For example, you can get off in Bad Windsheim and walk all the way to Rothenburg odT. The path follows the roads, and it's pretty well marked. That takes you thru the small towns of Illesheim (site of a still active military base), Burgbernheim (which is nice), Steinach Adens (where there's another train station), Nordenburg and Schweindorf. It's mostly flat, with fields and some small forested spots.

Great choices, also consider doing the Romantic Road. It runs from Wurzburg to Fussen/Garmisch and includes some wonderful medieval towns like Rothenburg on the Tauber, Dinkelsbuhl, Donauwurth, Augsburg, Oberamergau and more. Tours are available from Munich.

Nuremberg is interesting, Bamberg a possibility.

Wow, some of (read most) of the places suggested don't come anywhere
near my definition of small.

No, but they are some of the most beautiful places of the country, and in the rare case that an American Rick Steves aficionado decides to depart from the usual Frankfurt/Rothenburg/Beer in Munich/"the castles"/Salzburg route it makes sense to mention them, and not some obscure little places.. or even more places in the American sector (Bavaria). And a town like Wismar surely feels more authentic and small than the overrun places like Füssen or along the Middle Rhine.

Thanks for the tip on Wismar, can easily be done as a day trip from Stralsund, the terminus on a regional line which I took from Berlin Hbf. going to Neustrelitz a couple of years ago....also a nice, peaceful, historic small town too.

Bacharach in the Rhineland is a nice small town. My wife and started our 2006 Germany trip there. Goerlitz is no longer i n Rock's book but we were there last year and I enjoyed it a lot.