Venice to Vernazza to Murren

www.bahn.com can give you the routing. Some sort of pass may be justified in Switzerland. The rest with advance purchase tickets bought from the appropriate national railway companies.

Do you realize how long the train journey is between Vernazza and Murren??? That's a whole day of your vacation complete shot just sitting on the train.

straen,

As the others have mentioned, you're looking at some long travel days, but the trips are certainly possible. The travel times will vary somewhat depending on which trains you use, but here's an approximate idea....

• Venice to Vernazza - about six hours, with 2-4 changes
• Vernazza to Mürren - the shortest trip is about 7H:49M with 6 changes. That's a lot of changes, but they're all fairly easy.
• Mürren to Füssen - the shortest trip is again ~7H:49M with 5 changes (that's for a departure from Mürren at 10:06).
• Füssen to Zell Am See - shortest trip is about 5H:12M, with 3 changes.
• Zell Am See to Munich - about 3H:36M, with 1 change.

If you have the time to fit in four long travel days and one shorter day, it's certainly doable.

Thank you for your responses. Goodness, that is a great amount of time spent on trains. On the one hand, we are trying to see the travel time as "part of the experience", but so many transfers! For all you hear that trains are the easy, convenient way to travel, this doesn't sound all that convenient. We may have to re-think and either consider renting a car for a portion of the trip or adjust our itinerary.

Rick's readers make a similar Cinque-Terre to Berner Oberland trip by train all the time. You can also do it with only 5 changes and 8:19-hour travel time, if you prefer. I would not rent a car for this, especially with a second-country drop off fee. At least the first and last legs (Vernazza-Levanto and Lauterbrunnen-Muerren) would have to be done by train, any way. This is a very good reason to pack light for your whole trip. The last time that I crossed Switzerland with 6 changes, each connection went so quickly and smoothly that I never "had time" to stop for lunch.

straen,

"We may have to re-think and either consider renting a car for a portion of the trip"

Travel by train is in many cases the fastest and most efficient travel method, even with all the changes. This is especially true when using the high speed trains which travel at up to 300 kmH. Using rental cars comes with a different set of issues, including the drop-off charges that Laura mentioned. There's also the need for compulsory International Driver's Permits in some countries, ZTL (limited traffic areas) in Italy, speed traps including the Traffic Tutor system, compulsory highway tax vignettes for some countries (hefty fines if you get caught without them), CDW charges, high fuel costs, tolls, parking and last but not least, automated fuel pumps at unattended locations which may only accept "Chip & PIN" credit cards.

The itinerary might work better if it was arranged something like this......

• Venice to Vernazza - as I previously described. It might be possible to shave a bit of time of by travelling through Florence rather than Milan.
• Vernazza to Mürren - as I previously described. I normally travel from Monterosso, and have travelled that route a number of times. It's a long day, but not particularly difficult.
• Mürren to Munich - the shortest trip will be a departure from Interlaken Ost at 09:00, arriving 14:59 (time 5H:59M, 2 changes, the last leg via Bus). If you don't mind a slightly longer travel time, there's a departure at 08:00, arriving 15:11 (time 7H:11M, 1 change at Karlsruhe). Keep in mind that you'll have to allow sufficient time to travel from Mürren to Interlaken Ost, roughly an hour when all is considered.
• Füssen - if you're only interested in seeing the Castles, you can easily do that as a day trip from Munich. You can either make the time-specific reservations for the Castle tour yourself, or travel with a tour firm such as Radius Tours (office in the Munich Hbf) and they will make all the arrangements and you'll have a guide along on the trip.
• Zell Am See - one possibility here would be to travel from Munich to Zell Am See about three days before departure (travel time is about 3 hours, so fairly easy). Spend two nights there and then return to Munich for one more night prior to your flight home.

By reducing your travel times and not spending two nights in Füsssen, this should make the itinerary a bit more relaxed. Some find tuning will still be required, but this will provide a general idea.

Thank you so much for taking the time to answer with such great information and detail! We do appreciate all the help!