train tickets in Germany

The train is generally the best way to get between cities and then use a taxi or local bus in the city.

Do you buy individual tickets each day or is there one train ticket that covers multiple days.

Use the Bavaria Ticket for each of your trips

Assuming that is for 2 adults, that is 32 EUR for the whole day. You must start after 9 am week days, but anytime weekends and holidays and use only regional trains. You buy the ticket out of a vending machine and write your names in ink on the back of the ticket.

Hint: If you are going to look up schedules and fares on the Bahn schedule and fare webpage, you need to use the correct spelling for the towns. You got Salzburg correct, but it's Augsburg and Füssen. Since you probably don't know how to make the German character ü, just use ue (Fuessen). Actually, the Bahn website is more tolerant than I, and will let you get away with Fussen. If you type Fussen, you'll get a pull-down with some suggestions including Füssen and Füssen Bahnhof. Use either one.

For your trip to Salzburg, if you want to make the trip with a Bayern-Ticket, you have to use regional trains (usually Meridian). The Bayern-Ticket is not valid for the more expensive long-distance trains like the ICE, IC, EC, or RJ (Austrian RailJet), but regional trains get there in about the same amount of time. The Bayern-Ticket can be used any time on weekend days, but only after 9 AM on weekdays.

About the only way to get to Füssen (at least the fastest) is by all regional trains, so use the Bayern-Ticket or a ticket called the Regio-Ticket Allgäu-Schwaben which is €2 cheaper for this route.

Munich-Augsburg is a very short route. A regional ticket, for €15,30 per person, will be cheaper for 1 or 2 people than the Bayern-Ticket. For one person, a Full Fare ticket for an ICE at €22 will be cheaper than the Bayern-Ticket for 1. The ICEs take 32 minutes vs 44 minutes for the regional trains.

Of course that is for one-way. For RT in a day, use the Bayern- or Regio-Ticket

Welcome to the forum, ipida2.

Augsburg is an easy day trip from Munich by direct train. It's about 45 minutes one way on the regional trains (RB or RE trains, which are the ones you need to use with the Bayern Ticket day pass, or the Regio-Ticket Allgäu Schwaben - click on link to see coverage area.)

Salzburg is a little more problematic. There is a lot to see and do in this city. To get there and back by direct regional train is not hard, but it is time consuming. I would plan to leave early and come back to Munich late as you will have to be on the trains for about 3.5 hours altogether. That subtracts a lot of time from your day in winter when the daylight hours are in such short supply. And if you go on a weekday, that Bayern Ticket day pass is not valid until 9:00 am. So I will just advise you to spend a night in Salzburg if you want a more relaxed and satisfying visit. It's a nicer place to stay than Munich on the whole anyway, IMHO.

Füssen is also problematic as a day trip. Altogether, your time on trains and buses will be in the neighborhood of 4.75 hours. The "castles" are not right in Füssen - hence the bus rides. Once you reach the final bus stop, you have a lot of time walking to see both Hohenschwangau and Neuschwanstein (see map with time estimates.) So basically it's a lot of transit time for N'stein's overpriced, 30-minute tour, even more if you're doing H'schwangau as well. If these places are important to you, I'll advise you again to make time for them by staying a night in Füssen, which will provide you a chance to enjoy this attractive town as well as the only Füssen-area "castle" that was once a historical castle - the Hohes Schloß - with roots back in the 13th century.

N'stein and H'schwangau are palaces built much more recently. N'stein was built as a palatial residence just before the turn of the 20th century. The fake castle exterior you see in all the glossy photos deceives a lot of unsuspecting visitors who have assumed it's a genuine historical castle.

My fare advice, above, was primarily for doing trips one-way. For RT day trips, Bayern- or Regio-Tickets do work best.

As for Augsburg, it's close enough to be easily done as a day trip. As long as you can find the Regio-Ticket on an automat, it's cheapest. If not, and you can find the Bayern-Ticket on the automat, you might as well buy it, because the Regio-Ticket will cost you €2 more, ergo the same as the Bayern-Ticket from an automat, if you buy it from a ticket counter.

Spending nights in Salzburg and/or Füssen is nice, but if done as overnight trips from Munich, 1) these are one night stays, which are time-inefficient, and 2) you might end up having to pay for a night in two places.

We made a trip from a town outside Munich to Salzburg in the first week of January, and managed to do it in a day. Of course the main things I wanted to see in Salzburg were the fortress and some sites associated with SOM. We left using a Bayern-Ticket on a weekday, but we might have bought local tickets to cover our travel before 9 AM, I don't remember. I remember getting to Salzburg in time to visit Maribell Palace (do-re-mi step, Pegasus statue) on the way to the old town, where we had lunch. We looked at some SOM venues in town - including the Residenz where they hung the big nazi flag and the square where Maria caught the bus. Then we went up the incline and took the tour of the fortress. After that we came down the front, over the drawbridge and went around to see Nonnberg Abbey, where Maria was a studying to be a nun. Actually, the Abbey was closed to visitors - all we could see was the church, which obviously was not the church from the movie. After that my wife shopped a little, and we caught a train after dark back to Munich. Depending on your interest in other things, it can be done in a day.

As for Neuschwanstein, I never had any pretense that it was a medieval castle. I knew the first time I went there that is was built around the same time as the Brooklyn Bridge and the Eiffel Tower. It is never- the-less a beautifully impressive edifice and an interesting look into the life of an eccentric king. As long as you realize this going in and still want to see it, go for it.

I did Neuschwanstein in a day once from the Oberallgäu, which took about as long by bus as from Munich by train. We arrived just before noon, got our tour reservations for a few hours later and had lunch at Hotel Müller before going up to the castle. After the tour, we came down and looked at the shops in Hohenschwangau before returning on the bus to the Oberallgäu. This was just before New Years. Eight months later we were again staying in the Oberallgäu and made another day trip, this time in late summer, to see the Hohenschwangau "castle". On that trip, with more daylight, we were able to spend some time seeing the town of Füssen as well.

Bottom line, I think that Neuschwanstein is well worth a visit, and both the castles and Salzburg, depending on what you want to see, can each be done in a day.

I agree with Lee generally that one-night stays tend to be inefficient. I tend to avoid them as well. Still, in terms of efficiency, it's an inefficient itinerary in my book when you need to spend a disproportionate 8.5 hours on trains and buses over the course of two consecutive day outings. You will have only about 30 minutes on each of the two tours you will take in Füssen; nearly 5 hours on trains and buses for that seems pretty inefficient as well.

As Lee says, it depends on your priorities. If Ludwig II is really important to you, and if you can't or don't want to stay overnight, then Füssen/N'stein/H'schwangau in a single day is not impossible, and one of your options. Alternatively, with your limited time, you might just consider Nymphenburg Palace, which is Ludwig II's birthplace and located right in Munich. You can be there in a matter of minutes, and you could easily spend 2-3 hours seeing all there is to see. (And once you're done there, you have time for other options in Munich.)

https://www.tripadvisor.com/Attraction_Review-g187309-d242773-Reviews-Nymphenburg_Palace-Munich_Upper_Bavaria_Bavaria.html

https://www.schloss-nymphenburg.de/englisch/palace/index.htm

And if Ludwig isn't necessarily all that important to you, well, there's a lot of additional history to explore at Nymphenburg Palace.