Traveling in Germany without a reservation

Month of the year? Region of Germany? Budget? Interests? Heat tolerance? Noisy room tolerance? I certainly wouldn't do this in July or August.

Or June. Or September. Unless you accept the possibility if having to search for accommodations and neither of you are fussy about where you end up. How do you plan to get around? Car rental? Trains/buses?

We were in Germany in May-June of this year. We travel as 2. We look on booking.com and on hotel sites a day or so in advance. We are not unwilling to go to hostels in private rooms (most hostels now have private rooms, although most have the bath room down the hall, which is fine with us). We were able to find a single room in Leipzig, München, and Frankfurt at reasonable prices with a single day of lead time. We are not picky about rooms, as we do not travel to far distant places to sit in our room.

We were in Leipzig and Berlin in July, 2010. In both luxury hotels, the air conditioning was not able to keep up with the sweltering heat, and we slept in our underwear with no sheet, rather like the 1960s in New York City. Last year, our even higher level of luxury, in a Frankfurt suburb, had Asian split-ductless air conditioner retrofits that provided American-like meat-locker comfort, thank you very much. Hotel was sold out.

Depends on the time of year. We played it by ear a few years ago in October when we didn’t know exactly where we would end up each day and didn’t have a problem. We only had reservation the first and last couple nights.

Fortunately, the Germans have such high standards that you will probably get a decent room no matter when you book, but there are a lot of people out there booking online, and when they find a perfect room at a reasonable price, they don't say, "that's a good room at a decent price; I'll pass on it and let some last minute booker have it". No, they take it and you get what they didn't want.

And using a booking website assures you of getting one of the most expensive places in the town. Booking charges a 15% commission, and most really economical places don't have 15% extra built into their rates. It's only the most expensive places that can afford Booking's commission. I've compared the places listed on town websites with what is shown on Booking for the same town, and I usually find 2 to 3 times as many places on the town website as booking shows, and those are usually the most economical place in town.

Just travel to back roads and see what happens.

That's the most haphazard way to find interesting places. Use the internet in advance. If you just wander aimlessly, you might pass a few miles away from the most interesting place around and never know you missed it.

I actually enjoy this type of travel from time to time, though I would also recommend to try and find an accomodation before actually arriving in the respective area (e.g., check the tourist information website, which will also have some of the cheaper accomodations). As long as you are flexible, you will always find some accomodation; but sometimes, you might discover that there is a trade fair or sport event that drives prices up in a 50 km radius. No problem if you don't mind changing your destination in the last moment.