Solo Travel Thru Germany - July 2025

I will retire May 2025 (65 yo) and will be starting my year-long travel throughout Europe in June.

Do you have a dual citizenship that allows you to travel Europe beyond the 90-day visa-free limit?

Another solo female here.

This isn't really an answer to your question, but have you considered Hamburg in place of Frankfurt? Lots of interesting museums, history, and other interests you indicated. From Hamburg, Bremen is a very easy day trip, Lubeck is also terrific. I thought of Hamburg as there is an easy train from Hamburg to Copenhagen. (a fun stop en route, probably overnight, is Odense for Hans Christian Anderson history)

I've done solo trips to Berlin and included Potsdam for multiple day trips and Dresden. From Munich, Nuremburg is popular, some like the castles in Fussen, and Regensburg. You can find lots of articles online with suggestions and transport. Some discussions on this board also. Lots of options - I tend to choose day trips for ease of transport.

Congratulations on your retirement! I agree about visiting Hamburg. I'm another female who traveled solo through Germany (back in 2022), and loved my visit to Hamburg.

Hamburg also a good place to take off for Copenhagen. Any train trip from Germany to Copenhagen is going to pass through Hamburg so you might as well stop there for several days and enjoy it. It really is a very vibrant and cool city! And there are plenty of places nearby to visit.

Fom Munich you could visit Nuremberg (lots of Nazi history there), but also Regensburg and Bamberg. Salzburg is another easy trip from Munich that is well worth a visit.

From Berlin, you could head to Dresden, Potsdam, and Leipzig. Berlin itself has an incredible amount of things to do and places to see. When I was there in 2022, I stayed in Hackescher Markt, at the Adina Apartment Hotel Hackescher Markt. My room was a studio since I was by myself but they also have 1-2 bedroom apartments with fully equipped kitchens, washers and dryers and so on. They do have hotels in other Berlin locations as well, but I personally really liked this location. The staff was friendly and courteous, and the rooms were very well prepared, large, clean and nice. Breakfast is available although given the kitchen facilities, I just ate in my room in the morning. Price was reasonable for what was offered.

Also, the hotel is very convenient to the U-Bahn, S-Bahn, and trams, and is an easy walk to the major museums. The DDR museum is only a few blocks away, along with the TV Tower, and Museum Island is a quick 5 minute walk. You can easily walk to Lindenstraß from there, There are several grocery stores a few blocks away along with a couple of wine shops, many cafes and good restaurants. I would definitely stay in this location again.

I need feedback on other cities to visit for day trips

I'm here to offer some ideas that challenge the long stays in Munich and Berlin. The problem with booking a week plus in each is the issue ORDtraveler raised... you are tethered to big cities that LIMIT your day trip choices. Potsdam was suggested... no problem there if you are in Berlin. But Dresden? You will spend nearly 4 hours just to transport yourself there and back. And that's assuming you are staying at the main station rather than a pleasant Berlin neighborhood that requires connections. Some worthwhile destinations, like Dresden, cannnot be handled in such a minimal time frame. Other day trip options that are closer in might not be what you are looking for.

I feel similarly about Salzburg (also close to 4 hours) as a day trip from Munich. With all it has on offer, it deserves a night or two minimum. Regensburg (3 hours round trip) is a more doable day trip,. I think though still a bit far.

You mention historic buildings... Regensburg and Salzburg are well-preserved older cities that ought to catch your attention... Regensburg itself is a UNESCO World Heritage site. I think actually staying in one or two old-world cities like these in addition to the rebuilt WW II bombing targets will provide a fuller introduction to Germany than you will otherwise get.

Another fine old-world town - Bamberg, north of Nuremberg, is also a UNESCO World Heritage site. Bamberg happens to lie on the main Munich > Berlin railway as well. Bayreuth, just 1 hour from Bamberg, is also special and has one of Germany's most outstanding historic buildings - the Margravial Opera House (also UNESCO WH.) Nuremberg has gotten a couple of mentions here as a day trip option from Munich... Let me mention it too. It was very thoughtfully rebuilt after the war, wonderful, walkable place loaded with museums of all kinds where 2 days might not be enough. A day trip from Munich to Nuremberg might shortchange the city... but the great thing about Nuremberg is it's the PERFECT travel base town. Stay there for several days and you could in fact do day trips by train - day trips of reasonable length - to Bamberg, Bayreuth, Regensburg, Würzburg and Rothenburg, if they all interested you. Oh, I forgot Bad Windsheim's Open-Land museum, a collection of interesting local historic buildings where the little people of this region lived and worked over the last 600 years. You might do a half-day outing from Nuremberg to see it... it's also a trip of reasonable length.
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I do not understand why you cannot get much helpful information on some of these fine destinations out of Rick's materials. But Tripadvisor should be helpful. Anyway, do some more reading on these and on other novel suggestions you might receive, especially if the suggestions are near your basic travel trajectory. And stay flexible on the base-town choices... You might have a better shot at seeing the kinds of places that interest you most,

@Sam... I do not have dual citizenship (US only). I'm planning my 1st 90-days in the Schengen countries and then 90-days in England, N. Ireland and Turkey. Hopefully, my next 90-days in the Schengen I'll get to see all the remaining countries I want to visit. Then it will be off to SE Asia for a year.

Thanks all for the wonderful suggestions!! Since I'm in the planning stage and the itinerary is flexible, I will definitely add a few days for some of the suggested cities. Shout out to the female solo travelers. :-)

Congratulations! Rather than thinking of your itinerary as country by country, I would suggest plotting your "must see" cities and seeing how they connect. It might turn out to make more sense to hit southern Germany during a different part of the trip. Seat61.com is great for this.

Shout out to the female solo travelers.

Ha ha, thanks, vernelld! I've been traveling solo for the last 30 years, although my longest one has only been 6 weeks, so you have me beat there. I'd love to see your full itinerary once you have it put together!

One other option you might consider if you rule out Hamburg (and since you're coming from Brussels) is to stop in the Black Forest on your way to Munich. It's a beautiful area and is relatively unknown to American tourists so you will mostly find Germans traveling there. There are some charming towns to visit, including Gengenbach, which is where I stayed. The town is very charming with beautiful half-timbered houses (it's frequently called a "chocolate box" village) and has a lovely Altstadt, with quite a few restaurants and cafes to choose from. Gengenbach makes a good base as it is right on the main train line, and gives you the options of some interesting day trips, including taking a day trip to Strasbourg, France, which is a quick 40 minute train ride away.

One nice benefit if you stay there is that you receive a KONUS card, which entitles you to free public transport throughout the Black Forest region. There are many charming villages in the region that you can visit along the Black Forest Railway, and there is also the Vogtsbauernhof (open-air museum) that is a joy to visit and easily accessible by train.

The town church (Saint Marion) is quite beautiful, and the medieval gates to the city are really interesting. The Benedictine Abbey is also worth a visit, and behind it are some cloistered gardens that were a joy to wander through. This was one of my favorite places. It was peaceful and inviting and I could have stayed for hours. There were little signs of inspiration scattered around, and some children from a nearby kindergarten playing on one side.

Also don't miss a walk through Engelgasse and Höllengasse streets (near the TIC). Here you will find cobblestones and half-timbered houses, flower pots and cats resting on doormats and quaint dolls in the window. I felt like I had walked back in time when I strolled through these quaint and narrow streets. There is also a nice walk you can take that will get you above the town with some absolutely beautiful views of below. The TIC in town will have maps showing you how to get there. it was a really nice walk and as I said, the views are just lovely!

Will you be using the D-Ticket while in Germany?

What a great way to celebrate your retirement! I haven't spent much time around Berlin or Frankfurt, but I return to Munich most years and love it.

For accommodation, I love to stay in Lehel. It's walking distance to most of the tourist things you'd want to see, full of interesting bakeries, cafes, and restaurants (popular ones! Reservations are important even for neighbourhood pubs at dinner), and close to the English Garden. The transit connections are great, with trams lines and the U-bahn. I've stayed at both the Splendid-Dollmann (can be quite expensive) and Hotel Opera and enjoyed them both. Hotel Opera was less elegant but on a quieter street. I love spending time walking around and enjoying the shops and cafes of Haidhausen but haven't found a hotel I like as much in that area yet.

For day trips:
- Chiemsee is easy to reach and should be beautiful at that time of year. Why not visit Ludwig II's attempt to recreate Versailles at Herrenchiemsee?
- Pop over the border to Kufstein in Austria which is the perfect size and distance for an enjoyable daytrip. The fortress is very interesting to visit and the town is charming (plus it has many opportunities for that most delicious of Austrian sweets, topfenstrudel, with or without vanilla sauce)
- Salzburg, if you've not been before, is always great though I find the summer volumes of tourists a bit overwhelming

In Munich, a few of my favourite things are:
- Wandering through the park at Nymphenburg Palace, then into the beautiful surrounding neighbourhood, and finishing at the beer garden/restaurant in the Hirschgarten
- the Sudetendeutsches Museum. It's quite new, wonderfully done, and looks at the history of German-speaking peoples in the Czech lands, right through to their expulsion at the end of WWII (when many of them resettled in Bavaria)
- Watching the surfers in the English Garden. Like small children, I never get bored of this (also, generally wandering around the park)
- Visiting the Munich Readery, a fantastically well-stocked English-language bookstore (most appreciated on long trips, when I've gone months without seeing English bookstores)

One of the most useful books I've found for Munich is the Monocle Travel Guide to Munich (from 2017, I think?) because of the suggested neighbourhood walks it includes. These outline not just buildings and places of interesting but also good cafes and restaurants to visit - perfect for a slow exploration of the city.

Have a marvellous trip!

Great that on this trip you are spending time, equal time, in both Munich and Berlin. I did too, my first time in Germany.

The camp near Berlin is Sachsenhausen. Take the regional train from Berlin Hbf in the direction to Stralsund (itself well worth visiting) and get off at Oranienenburg. One time in that direction I saw 80 % of the coach empty out, all 20 somethings of various nationalities, didn't know why until I saw the sign Oranienburg . They must have been part of a tour.

I was going further to Neustrelitz, a town connected to Prussian-German history.

There is nothing wrong with staying in one place for 7--10 days if you are fine with the day trips you want to take. I often stay for a week in a small town/village. But I think that you miss out on a lot of what Germany has to offer by staying just in big cities.

When you are finished with your final time slot for Berlin, I hope you do have 10 full days. You will have ample time to do 2 or 3 day trips depending on your interest.

Potsdam is the first (obviously) place. There is a lot to see in the Greater Potsdam area, aside from the city and Schloss Sans Souci. Tourist areas in Potsdam are the Dutch Quarter and the Zentrum

If you want to do a day trip from Berlin, where foreign tourists are absent, I suggest Rheinsberg, very doable by train from Berlin.

If you're interested in WW2 war , military sites and memorials, I can recommend 2 places doable by train from Berlin....all depends on your interest level.