Trip planning

How much time do you have?

Those are all fabulous cities with lots of sightseeing options. I'd recommend creating additional posts in the Hungary, Poland and Czech Republic forums to request hotel and sightseeing info on Budapest, Warsaw, Krakow and Prague (if desired). For hotels, please give us a target nightly hotel budget and tell us whether you are solo or part of a group (of how many people?)

For sightseeing suggestions, please provide info on your interests. There are just so many options in those cities, each of which could keep you busy for 5 nights or longer. They are all heavy on museums related to World War II and/or the Cold War as well as art museums. Budapest, Krakow and Prague have a wealth of neat architecture. (Much of Berlin and Warsaw was rebuilt after WWII destruction, but they have very important museums and historical sites.) You can start with Rick's top sightseeing picks, which are posted on this website. Click on Explore Europe, then choose one of your countries, then the appropriate city under "Places", then At a Glance.

All tours of Auschwitz are conducted by camp/memorial personnel, so it is possible simply to take a public bus from Krakow to the camp rather than paying considerably more for a tour, but I assume tours provide some commentary during the bus ride. Tickets to Auschwitz sell out well ahead of time, so you'll need to take care of that purchase in advance if you don't opt for a bus tour. Since tickets sell out so early, I'd be a bit concerned about choosing a bus tour, for fear it would sell the tour before buying entry tickets and then find tickets sold out, resulting in a cancelation. I assume that doesn't happen often, but if it happened to me, I'd be very disappointed.

Journey planner for trains to / from / within Germany: https://int.bahn.de/en

Prague is best connected to Dresden (same rail track to Berlin) and Regensburg in Germany.

Broad question. You can find planning tips including hotels, transportation, and probably tours as well for the common destinations you listed (minus Berlin) here: https://store.ricksteves.com/shop/p/eastern-europe-guidebook

Additional train information...

https://www.seat61.com/international-trains/trains-from-Berlin.htm
https://www.seat61.com/international-trains/trains-from-Warsaw.htm
https://www.seat61.com/international-trains/trains-from-Krakow.htm
https://www.seat61.com/international-trains/trains-from-Budapest.htm

Welcome roodster123. Is this your first time traveling to Europe? What is the number of nights you have for your trip? Thats a good way of starting planning. Your destinations, all big cities, are fairly distant from each other. So that travel between them will eat up most of a day. Effectively this makes two nights being only one full day anywhere. A visit to Auschwitz from Krakow will also take most of a day.

There's a ton of previous posts on hotels, rail travel and tours on this website, and people willing to help., But spending some time with a good guidebook might generate a lot of other questions as well as addressing some of the basic travel info you might need to know. Can we assume you are familiar with multi-city airline booking (in one city and out another for a round-trip fare)?

Thank you all. It would be a solo trip most likely. I am familiar with multi-city plane travel, less so with trains, but I can figure it out. I'll take the advice and start with the separate forums and a guidebook, and come back if there are more questions.

I would also like to add my welcome, roodster123. In 2014, I decided to take my first international trip (Italy!) and figured I should join a tour. In searching for tours, I found this website and figured out, "Hey, I can do this on my own," as you apparently have already discovered.

Things that were helpful to me in getting started:

1. Rick Steves' book Rick Steves' Europe through the Backdoor which provides a lot of practical advice in the first part of the book (and the second part of the book provides overview of countries).
   1. Videos on the Rick Steves website about practicalities of travel, including trains
   2. The kind people on this forum who volunteer their thoughts for free

I don't have a recommended itinerary for you -- more than I can do sitting in the airport in Atlanta, but depending on your time, it may be a little tough to connect all of those. Our ability to offer guidance really is significantly tied to the duration of your trip.

Happy planning!

Okay, my first stab at the order would be like this: Budapest 2.5-hour train to Vienna 6-hour train to Krakow (or you can fly RyanAir in about an hour – my choice) 2.5-hour train to Warsaw 5-hour train to Berlin (or you can fly LOT in about 90-minutes – I think I would still take the train but it’s a tossup) 5-hour train to Prague.

Check the train prices with the company in the country at both ends of the trip. For instance, most often MAV and the Czech company are quite a bit cheaper than the Austrian company.

Then my absolute bare minimums not knowing anything about what interests you. And to be honest, all are a day too short.
- Budapest 4 nights (1 extra because it arrival city)
- Vienna 3 nights (not even on your list, but you can’t be so close to
Vienna and skip it and it makes getting to Krakow a tad easier).
- Krakow 3 nights
- Warsaw 3 nights
- Berlin 3 nights
- Prague 3 nights

Next resources
Budapest
https://community.ricksteves.com/users/50322
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/hungary/restaurants-in-budapest-revisited
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/hungary/list-of-budapest-events-july-through-october-25
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/hungary/rs-forum-favorite-hotels-and-their-cost
https://community.ricksteves.com/travel-forum/hungary/concerts-in-budapest

Vienna
Go to the Austria forum and follow Emily’s posts.

Wow, thank you all. You've given great info. I've ordered the books, and will start working on this.

RS videos are great, but a lot of his destination videos are pretty old. For instance the Budapest one if more than 15 years old. But I love videos for travel planning. To that end here are two of my favorite Budapest videos:

Favorite Tourism Video of Budapest https://youtu.be/1nd5AtZIrTk?feature=shared
Anthony Bourdain describing how visually pleasurable Budapest is https://youtu.be/0nd9DuDGCz0?si=aa0c19KaJHEtabkX
Favorite Guidebook because its small and does the essentials and you can carry it with you (small) DK Eyewitness Budapest Top 10 https://a.co/d/6JD82mf