What would you do Northern Germany

There is plenty to do in northern Germany, so I wouldn't feel compelled to fly into or out of a different area or country unless there was a really significant financial advantage or I had a burning desire to include such other location in this itinerary.

You have to be careful about choosing distant gateways for purely financial reasons. It's ill-advised to book onward flights or non-refundable trains in advance for the day of your arrival since delays are possible. Therefore, you're probably going to pay full-fare for that onward transportation or need to spend the night at your arrival city. And at the end of the trip you'll usually burn at least half a day (more if flying) to get back to your departure point if it is other than the last city on your itinerary. This means the perceived financial advantage of grabbing a cheaper flight may not be real.

I'd start by visiting a flight-search website; I use Google Flights but there are other options. Start with Columbus, but do check the other viable origins. Last fall someone from Cincinnati stumbled on give-away fares to Europe, so you just never know.

See what it will cost to fly into and out of any combination of Bremen, Hamburg, and maybe Berlin. (To mix and match cities, choose the "multi-city" option.) I hear you about Berlin; love the place, worth a lot of time. But it's only about 2 hours by train from Berlin to Hamburg, and I see advance-purchase, non-refundable rail fares as low as 19 euros for June 2 (date chosen randomly). For the right fare differential, into or out of Berlin might make sense. For the right financial pay-off you could spend the first night or two in the Berlin area and just do something like see Potsdam. Then on Day 2 or Day 3 you'd use your cheapo advance-purchase train tickets to get to Hamburg, Bremen, etc.

I haven't seen much at all of northern Germany (others here have and will surely come along and give you a bunch of good ideas), but I do have one suggestion: Schwerin. It's a very pretty historic town with a castle perched in a man-made lake. Worth about a full day if you want a relaxing visit, and it would be a good place to decompress after a long flight. It's less than 2 hours from the Hamburg airport. I'm not sure what same-day rail tickets would cost. Tickets for tomorrow are available at 19 euros.

Edited to add: You can explore train schedules and fares on the Deutsche Bahn website. Is schedule for your travel period aren't available yet, choose the same day of the week as far out as the schedule will go to see advance-purchase rail fares.

Edit #2:

I've just played around a bit with Google Flights. You can give it an origin airport and choose "Germany" as your destination. Then plug in your dates. I didn't have specifics, so I checked for a 2-week period in June and a 2-week period in July. When you get down to specifics, things may look different, but my quick research suggests (note caveat; you need to replicate with actual travel dates):

• Pittsburgh is probably your cheapest origin. Detroit is next cheapest. Forget about Ohio if you want to fly into/out of Germany.

• Cheapest gateway in northern Germany varies with your US origin. From Pittsburgh, it looks like Frankfurt - Hamburg - Berlin. From Detroit, it's Hamburg.

• June is likely to be cheaper than July, but there's a great deal of variation by date within some months for some origin/destination combinations.

• I did not look at flight duration/number of connections.

• I set "Europe" as the destination in June from each potential origin and didn't find anything that looked enough better than the German cities out of Pittsburgh to be worth the hassle--perhaps $100 cheaper into Amsterdam. But if the flight times are a lot better...

• I did not try multi-city flights (into/out of different cities).

Lubeck is a great day trip and don't forget Wunderland in Hamburg

http://www.miniatur-wunderland.com/

Susan:
My wife and I have been to Bremen and Hamburg on prior genealogy-related visits. If you're flying Iceland Air, you'll have several choices on where to enter Europe. You didn't say if you will be in Germany for one or two "weekends", so I'm going to assume it is near the end of your visit, if it is early in your visit you could reverse the order of things. If you've not been to Berlin before, you might want to fly into Berlin spend the first day and night (day 1) and two more days and two nights and another day (days 2-4), later on the 4th day take the train to Rostock spending that night and part of the next day in Rostock day 4-5), then take the S-Bahn to the beaches at Warnamünde (day 6), returning to Rostock for the night, then take the train to Schwerin for a 2-4 hr stop (store luggage at the station), (day 7) back on the train to Lübeck, spending the night the next day and night there day 7-8). The following day take the train to Hamburg and spend the arrival day, that night and two more days (day 9-11), take the train to Bremen, gather for reunion plus visiting the city (day 11-12) drive for a day trip to Bremerhaven for the Museum (day 13) . (We visited the museum and found it wonderful), return to Bremen for final family gathering and fly from Bremen to Reykjavik (day 14). If this schedule doesn't have you in Bremen when you need to be, you fly into Bremen and work your way to Berlin, departing Berlin for Reykjavik. If your schedule permits you may want to contact Die Maus (a German genealogy society in Bremen) http://www.die-maus-bremen.de/en/datensammlung/emigration/ and see if you could visit there.

PS If the day or two you plan to spend in Iceland is part of the two weeks, I dunno. We flew Iceland Air and stayed in Reykjavik two days, we had terrible weather both days so our experience was. . .well, not so good.

Hi,

I would fly into Hamburg and out of Berlin if you're doing open jaw. If not, then in and out from Hamburg. For places to visit in North Germany, I suggest also Lüneburg, if you want to se a small town...well worth it, one of my favourite towns in all of Germany. It survived the war intact, was quickly occupied by the British when they got to the lower Elbe area in 1945. North Germany has lots of places worth visiting depending on your interests and priorities. Most of my trips to Germany have focused on the northern Germany starting with my first in 1971. You say this summer. If you're there in June, ie the last week in June, is the time to visit Kiel because of Kieler Woche. What is interesting in the north are the small towns in Holstein, such as Eutin, Plön, Ludwigslust, Lüneburg.

I fly into and out of Columbus frequently due to family there. I use Air Canada. It is the most efficient and cost effective way to get there. The flights from Toronto to Frankfurt are only 7 + hours and the flight from Toronto to Columbus are on the small commuter planes. See if they have flights into Hamburg or Berlin.

just me
let the flight with least travel time at a price you find agreeable be the factor to influence your decision

The Auswandererhaus (Immigration/emmigration museum) is in Bremerhaven. They also have the Klimahaus, a very interesting interactive, modern museum about our climate.

What would you do Northern Germany

I would rent a car and explore the Baltic coast.
That's a map of Germanys highlights according to baedeker, Germanys most popular travel guide:
http://i.imgur.com/9BcKenL.jpg

As you can see, there's a lot to see between Hamburg and the Polish border. The region is actually Germanys most popular summer destination, not just because of the great beaches, but also because of the medieval, preserved Hanseatic towns (four of them, Lübeck, Stralsund, Wismar and Greifswald, are World Heritage Sites), castles like this or this, steam trains which go straight through old towns, beautiful islands and posh 19th century seaside resorts.

I too played around with some airports and June dates and see a lot of Delta possibilities from Pittsburgh to both Amsterdam and Düsseldorf for less than $750 in June with decent flight times. I'm used to west coast fares so I don't know what your normal fares look like.

Also I like Martin's suggestion a lot but if you find your self dipping down and making a bit of a loop, stop to see the beautiful city of Celle and spend some time at the concentration camp where Anne Frank was, Bergen-Belsen.

If you fly in to Amsterdam and out of Düsseldorf (or vice versa) you could design a whole other trip. More to think about...

I really enjoyed the few days I spent on the island of Rügen off Germany's Baltic coast. I stayed at the beautiful beach resort town of Binz, even though it was just a little too cold to swim, but still worth it. Even if you're not there during beach season, Rügen is worth a visit. I also wanted to see Stralsund and Schwerin, but weather and traffic problems unfortunately disrupeted that plan.

Susan:
You mentioned Reykjavik so I’m assuming Iceland Air is one of the carriers you’re looking at. On looking further at Iceland Air I see they only fly from Reykjavik to Hamburg in Germany (as noted in your post). Unless you have a desire to see Reykjavik or unless you’re saving a lot of money, I’d look for other carriers for the flight to Europe. Staying in London, Dublin or Amsterdam, etc. for a “few days” is an option but it could be somewhat costly and should be examined closely (lodging, meals and transportation), and these few days I’m guessing would have to be at the sacrifice of those days in Germany.

Driving from Columbus to Chicago isn’t a great deal further than driving to Detroit, so you might check Chicago for flights. However, buy the time you pay to park in Detroit or Chicago, it might be about the same cost as taking a “budget” flight from Columbus to Boston, Detroit, Chicago and nowadays Charlotte, for a non-stop to Europe. (Assuming someone could take you to the Columbus airport thus avoiding parking fees). In any case, fly non-stop from the US to where ever the carrier’s gateway city is in or near Germany (Amsterdam, Brussels, Copenhagen, etc.), then taking an intra-Europe flight to either Bremen or Berlin to start your trip. At the end of your visit fly (or take a train) to the city where you arrived in Europe for the flight home. We've done this several times and didn't have to book the intra-Europe flights months in advance and the flights within Europe didn’t break the bank.

PS As an example I checked “CheapOair” and found a round trip flight Boston to Berlin for US$950 for two people. I’m not suggesting this is right for you, but by going to a larger city to depart the US, you have many more flights to choose from.

Susan, if you do drive to an out of state airport to start your journey you might cost out what we do for our 100 mile drive from our home to LAX. If we are gone for longer than a week we almost always rent a car to and from the airport (2 oneway bookings through Costco travel). For us it always is a lot less expensive than paying for airport parking.

Our exception is if we need to be in LA for an early morning flight which doesn't usually happen from the west coast to Europe. In that case we see if an airport hotel has a park and fly special and leave the car for a week or two with the hotel. This is more common for us with domestic flights.

Lots of good ideas here, so thanks for posting Susan.
A couple more ideas and thoughts: If you fly into/out of Copenhagen and take the train connecting it to northern Germany you get the memorable experience of having the train load onto a ferry. You get off the train car (loaded into the lower level of the ferry) and get to spend some time on the sea. The ferry has restaurants, shops etc so there is plenty to do and see.
We have used Hannover as a base for day trips before and really enjoyed it. We have stayed at the Mussman Hotel. http://www.grandhotel.de/en/ It is just across the pedestrian square from the train station which makes it perfect as a base. Spring for one of the suites- like a luxury apartment that include an opulent bathroom with a shower equipped with lights and music. An excellent breakfast is included.
One of the most memorable day trips we made from Hannover was to Helgoland. http://www.helgoland.de/en/welcome.html
It is unique for the history, the views, the invigorating opportunity for small hikes and has plenty of restaurants and shops.
If you like music and the timing is right, the opera in Bremen is very enjoyable. A great small venue with a nice restaurant attached.
We have been to Berlin a couple of times and barely scratched the surface of what there is to see and do. Our first time was only for a couple of nights, but we did one of the day-long walking tours and really felt like it was a solid introduction to Berlin. It was a good foundation for future visits. http://www.brewersberlintours.com
Finally. You will LOVE the museums at Bremerhaven. Every part is significant, authentic and meaningful. I particularly liked the opportunity to walk through the ship with the enactments of what it was like for my grandparents to make the voyage to the US.
Have a wonderful time!

Thank you everyone for your thoughts and ideas! There is so much to choose from!