Train vs Car Rental

We lived in Germany with our own car and loved spring driving vacations in rural areas.

For Christmas Markets now (we have been on 5 such trips) to towns in potentially bad weather (ice, snow, rain, fog, etc.) we might have an accident in a car or get caught in a traffic back-up in addition to parking hassles. I would not like the odds.

We travel to Germany twice a year. We have had a few problems with trains. We have never been more than 2 hours late. We tend to travel by train in the late morning after a casual breakfast and that seems a relatively low incident time.

We are planning trips to Germany twice next year. We will definitely take the train.

Just because there are problems doesn't mean they don't work anymore, they just don't work as well as they should. I had a car in Italy and it was a hassle, I wish I had trained.

You might send a message to the Man in Seat 61 and check his temperature on whether he'd ride trains in Germany these days.

We go to Germany & Austria every other year for the Xmas markets. We would never rent a car. We use the train and will continue to. Parking is terrible in the areas where the best markets are.

We are the rare ones who like having a car. We didn’t have problems with parking. Most hotels we stayed at either had some spots at the hotel, or a parking garage unusually only a block or two away. We like the freedom to come and go when we want, and stopping at markets as we travel along that maybe weren’t on our agenda. We felt the small cost for parking was worth the convenience of having a car. The constant hassle of dragging luggage around a train station is not for us.

how unreliable the German train has become

This view is too undifferentiated. Regional trains are still very reliable. Which trains do you plan to use?

Some locations are much faster trips in a car than a train

Not necessarily in December. Last year Germany had first severe snow fall end of November - so be prepared to drive under winter conditions. Winter tyres are mendatory by law.

If you rent a car ensure before validity of your driving license in Germany and check necessity of IDP (same page) to have legal driving permission.

You don't mention any planned itinerary, but for going town to town the train is usually the best option.

Also, don't overestimate the problems. Most trains are not delayed.

If you plan on doing any drinking of Glühwein at the markets, you will want to take trains and not drive a car.
The trains are reliable enough, just in the summer the tracks are getting repaired and sometimes they are late. It sure doesn't put me off on riding them.

The trains are overloaded at present because it's SUMMER. Germans are huge outdoors enthusiasts. Hikers, bikers, and all their equipment, along with summertime tourists, are currently packing the train carriages. But when it turns cold, much of the crowding will end, and this should also ease some of the delay issues.

You don't say what places you plan to visit, exactly, so only general tips are possible. I just completed a visit that was heavy with train travel and did not experience any serious delays... but I did avoid areas where announced construction work was taking place. I also choose my train schedules carefully to minimize changes of train and to ensure adequate layover time for any connections I needed.

The argument that train travel means lugging your stuff with you wherever you go is pretty easy to dismiss with the right sort of planning. Because Christmas markets are literally everywhere, it is possible to pick a good base town and make spontaneous day trips WITHOUT baggage to other nearby towns with markets. A 10-day trip like yours could be likely be organized around just two base towns, which would mean that even if you "overpack" in Rick Steves' eyes, you would only have to move your stuff 2-3 times. Not that I recommend overpacking... Rick Steves' packing-light travel advice is second only to the Ten Commandments, IMHO.

I just returned from 3 weeks in Germany. We used both public transportation and a rented car.
We travelled by train, trolly and bus in Berlin, Munich and Nurenberg. Except for a cancelled train from Berlin to Munich and delays and rerouting in Berlin caused by a tree fallen across the rails, public transportation was mostly "OK". In Furth we were stranded by a bus driver about a mile from our hotel...he allowed us to board and then dropped us off in the middle of nowhere when he was done for the day. We also had a few long rides when we managed to catch a bus running in the wrong direction.... right bus, wrong destination. Not much of a problem once you figure it out. We might have made our use of public transportation more challenging by staying outside of city centers...in Munich we stayed in Feldkirchen (Hotel Bauer, very nice), in Nuremberg we stayed in Furth, in Berlin we stayed near the Spree/Ost Bahnhof where there was a bridge out that added to the walking.
There were very few problems getting around. We could have done it without a cR, but without the car we would not have been able to do as much. From Nuremberg our side trips to Regensburg and other locals would not have been possible without adding days to our trip. With the car, we drove there, to Gelhausen, through the Black Forest, deep into the woods, up to vineyards, on all sorts of off the beaten track's roads and to tiny towns that are serviced by local busses, but they do not come often. I consider a car to be essential to the experience. Parking was never problem anywhere. Sometimes we had to plan a bit, or walk a lot, but there was always a place to park. In Miltenberg, we parked in our hotel and in Furtwangen, we parked near the cows.

The single disadvantage of a car is if you like to try the beers and wines. In St. Goer my wife enjoyed several nice Rieslings while I drank a couple alcohol free pils, Karlsberg...not too good. If you must, the Bit is an excellent choice. The car allowed us to cover far more ground with far less planning and much less standing around waiting.

I agree with Mack. Sometimes it's handy to have a car, but using the train in Germany will always be more productive. As others have said, the rumors about German trains have been vastly overstated. I used trains to go all over Germany for 4 weeks just 2 years ago and other than one or two late trains, I had no problems.

I did rent a car in one place where it would have been very inconvenient to use the train or bus, but that was when I wanted to visit some ancestral places, and having a car was much easier. I rented it for four days.

My suggestion would be to use trains for major distance locations, but if you are so inclined, rent a car in those places where you feel it might be more productive. What is your planned itinerary?

We might have made our use of public transportation more challenging
by staying outside of city centers...in Munich we stayed in
Feldkirchen (Hotel Bauer, very nice), in Nuremberg we stayed in Furth,
in Berlin we stayed near the Spree/Ost Bahnhof where there was a
bridge out that added to the walking.

Hotel location is a major constraint when planning to use the train system and other means of transport. IME on this forum, most people seem overly eager to book their hotels right way, often before considering the more complicated questions... like what specific sights will I visit, and how easy or difficult to reach will these sights be to reach from this place or that place. Locking in a hotel up front on the basis of rave reviews for their nice sheets or their stars of approval in guidebooks might feel good on the surface, but this can create real logistical problems on the ground (like the bus route problem you mentioned.)

In big cities I often place severe limits on my use of bus/tram/subway transport. If my wish list of sights ends up requiring too many trips on these things, some of those sights get replaced with others that are more reachable by train/S-Bahn.

The single disadvantage of a car is if you like to try the beers and
wines.

This is a significant concern, but one of several significant concerns for renters, IMO. Even non-drinkers who have all the coverage and all kinds of spare cash will find that a fender-bender or worse can require hours or days for handling police and insurance matters. Renters sometimes get pricey demands for payment from the rental company when the car is dropped off and later their inspectors find a tiny scratch somewhere. The roads in Germany are good, but the driving task is always more challenging with road signage in an unfamiliar language, and navigating in unfamiliar locations with an unfamiliar car in a new driving culture adds to one's task. Jet-lag is a factor too, for some... and it can affect driving skills for more than just 24 hours sometimes. Also, exceeding the limit anywhere by a few km/h can land you a traffic citation with a fine, courtesy of radar control and the local authorities, in your hometown mailbox. Then there is the famous "Stau" or traffic jam which delays your driving trip for unpredictable amounts of time.

The choices to stay where we did was all very deliberate. In 35 years of German travel, I have always opted to stay outside of (most) city centers. Whether by car or public transportation, a few extra minutes of commute time to locate in a quieter and often more pleasant situation is generally worthwhile. I am attracted to smaller family run hotels and restaurants that tend to be located in outlying areas.
The noted situation of being abandoned by our bus driver occurred because our entire day of travel was delayed by a train (DB) cancellation in Berlin....there's not a lot that can be done about that except to deal with it. We arrived from Berlin 2 1/2 hours later than expected. It had nothing to do with prematurely booking the hotel or the choice to stay where we did. If we had the car at that point, it would not have been a problem.

Sorry, Mack... I did not mean to imply that I understood your planning or your specific circumstances whatsoever... I was bouncing off of your comments to make general comments about how others who will be using public transportation might approach planning.

Hi Jackie,

Years and years ago we always rented a car. One year we drove from Switzerland to Germany in December to visit Christmas markets. At some point in the mountains of southern Bavaria we encountered snow. It changed our travel plans. The drive was slow and tedious. The scenery was beautiful but the driver had no time to enjoy the scenery. The passengers (3 adults) were not able to fully appreciate the scenery due to the treacherous road conditions. There were very few vehicles on the roads. We had in intended to stop near Fussen so our friends could tour the Neuschwanstein castle. We didn't. Just kept going. Once we got to Munich hours later we were relieved to find a parking garage and go to our hotel near the Karlsplatz. There was parking close to the hotel. After a lovely evening visiting the market on the Marienplatz we walked with our luggage to the parking garage as we had hotel reservations for that night in Augsburg. Oh No! The parking garage was closed on Sunday. We could not get to our car until Monday. (Lesson for us: carefully read the signs posted in the parking garage, in German of course.) So we took the train which meant lugging our luggage from the east side of the Marienplatz to the main train station. We took the train to Augsburg and and back again on Monday to free our car. The rest of the trip was uneventful but we did encounter snowy/icy road conditions a couple more times on that trip. On a trip to German Christmas markets the following year, we encountered a bit less snow but some hard driving rain which made visibility very poor. YMMV.

The past 25+ years we have taken public transportation when traveling in Switzerland and Germany. Both my husband and I are more relaxed travelers as no one has to drive and no one has to navigate. I thought we would miss being unable to travel to out-of-the-way places and would lose spontaneity. For me, these concerns were unfounded. There are usually buses to get me to get me to the places I want to go if the train doesn't go there. If we had realized how easy it was to take pubic transportation in Germany, we would have started to do so years earlier.

All that being said, we have read about delayed trains in Germany this year. We are traveling there in October. We will have a DB 49E tickets. We are researching the routes we want to take. We have become pretty adept at finding our way around train stations and switching train platforms quickly with our luggage. We are aware we may encounter delays and cancellations even on regional trains and have adjusted our expectations. For us, other than needing to change locations four times in three weeks, our days are flexible. Flexibility will be our strength, I hope :)

Whatever you decide to do, drive or take pubic transportation or a combination of the two, I hope you have a magical, wonderful trip!

Traveler Girl

There are plenty of places in Germany that are difficult to reach by public transportation, or as the Maine farmer said “You can’t get there from here “, BUT it is doubtful that those are places you are planning on visiting.

Thank you all for putting perspective on the train. We have used the train on most of our European trips so I was wanting a perspective on whether they were really so bad. I loved all of the information!

I will post a new thread with our potential itinerary so I can get as much feedback as possible. I'm afraid it may get buried in this one and not get seen as much.

Please add a link in your new thread to this thread. It helps others to overlook what was already discussed.

Thanks MarkK for the suggestion of adding the link to the other post.

Here's the link to that postChristmas Market Itinerary...what do you think?

My trip in Austria, France and Germany ended on 2 August with the flight back to SFO.

While it's true the German trains are unreliable, I still don't use the rental car option. I stick with the trains, problems and all but plan around it. You learn how to do that.

I go over in the summer and it is indeed packed on the trains , try Hamburg Hbf. for defining crowded , totally a place to avoid for changing trains such as going to Schleswig-Holstein: even in eastern Germany where I spent days traveling, it was crowded going out to "backwater" places.

Since my experiences in the summer will be presumably different from yours in the winter, maybe your train experiences might be more pleasant and not as taxing as were some I had.