Car rental in germany or train?

Check out the website www.bahn.de to see whether the villages you are planning to visit are serviced by train or bus and how frequent the service is. Generally speaking, while you can get anywhere by public transit in Germany, frequency and ease of service might not work well for you if you're planning to visit small places in rural areas. It is not necessarily a function of how small the villages are but how they are connected to the next major centre. Sometimes you can get lucky that the places you plan to see might be very small but are on the same train line as other busy centres and you get good connections. At other times, you might have an obscure place with no tourist attraction or major centre close by and you get one bus in the morning and one in the evening and that's it.

There are roughly 5,500 train stations in Germany; you can check the following rail diagrams for the two states you'll pass through - Baden-Württemberg and Bavaria. Both states have daypasses that allow 2-5 passengers to travel all day (after 9 on weekdays) for about 30 Euros on the regional trains. http://www.bahn.de/regional/view/mdb/pv/planen_buchen/liniennetzkarten/2010/MDB81278-streckenkarte_bawue_09_2010.pdf http://www.bahnland-bayern.de/content-startseite/streckennetzplan-pdf

Based on over 100 days of rail travel in Germany in the last ten years, I can tell you that you probably don't need to rent a car, and you'll save a ton of money if you don't. Germany has over 32% of all the rail miles on the western continent. It's hard to find places not served by rail, and buses serve almost everywhere else. Basel to Feussen would be a pleasant scenic train ride along the north coast of the Bodensee. With a little planning, you definitely don't need a car for the Romantic Road, and Heidelberg is a convenient train ride from Wuerzburg. And, of course, Basel is a quick, high speed run up the Rhein from Heidelberg.

I would suggest looking at the lonely planet guide (chances are your villages are not in Rick's). It really varies how well-connected small towns are. I don't think the train is always cheaper than the car at all. It depends on the distances you plan to cover. If the villages are in the same area (probably so) then you can probably travel using the Landes tickets. These allow unlimited travel for two people traveling together for around 25-30 Euro per day. The catch is that it has to be within a single province. http://www.bahn.com/i/view/overseas/en/prices/germany/laender-ticket.shtml
In that case the train could really be a steal. The other thing to consider, is that picking up a car in one country and dropping it in another will cost you a fortune. If you are picking up and dropping in Basel, then you would not need to worry about that. You can check out rental prices at Autoeurope.com. They are a lot cheaper than renting directly, but their prices are a lot cheaper if you want a one week rental as opposed to a couple of days.

"I don't think the train is always cheaper than the car at all. It depends on the distances you plan to cover." Did you know that you can travel literally from one end of Germany to another for as little as €29 pP? You have to book three days in advance (92 days recommended) and commit to a time and train. These Sparpreis tickets include travel on express trains (ICE/IC/EC). Laender tickets allow up to five people to travel on regional trains in one "Land" (state) all day long. Most Länder Tickets today are €29. However, on weekend days, you can use a Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket for €39 for 5 people on regional trains all across Germany, regardless of state borders. On weekdays, use the Quer durchs Land Ticket (QdLT), for similar travel, for €42 for the first person, €6 extra for up to 4 cotravelers.

Marie, Much as I like public transportation in Germany as an institution and take whatever local public transportation (Nahverkehrsmittel) available to get out to the village, the outlining suburbs, ie., the German version of the "boonies," there were times I was glad to have been driven, not only, as pointed out, in regards to time and flexibility, but also the convenience in getting there, and you see things that you did not expect, such as memorial plaques, battlefield sites, war cemeteries indicated by the green signs (Kriegsgräberstätten), etc., which you would not see or have the chance to stop off and see when riding a bus. With a car you can cover more villages in given area. What city/town is near these "VERY" small villages?

For small villages, I would go with the rental car. Much as I appreciate Lee's boosting of the public transportation system in Germany, here's the perspective of someone who lives in a medium sized village with no bahn access, near the border of two different länder. It is extremely inconvenient to get around soley by public transportation between some villages unless they lie on the same bus route. And even then, it can be very time consuming and you have to plan your activities around the bus schedule. If this is a trip to visit your husband's family roots, in what you describe as "VERY SMALL VILLAGES", they likely lie off the high traffic transit routes, which makes a car all the more convenient.

I live in the area, you'll want to rent a car. The trains that would connect you to the small towns (if there even is one) would be such a milk-run the connections would be crazy. Rent a car and enjoy the area.

Marie: You're getting a lot of marginally useful advice based on personal anecdote. I mean, you're traveling east from Basel into Bavaria, then west to Heidelberg, then back to Basel, a trip involving hundreds of miles. Yet someone claiming to "live in the area" with no clue about where you're going, exactly, tells you the train connections are no good. It has to be your decision. Do German trains go where you want to go at times when you will be able to use them? To give the matter serious consideration, YOU must do the legwork using your own circumstances to find out. For me, the answer has almost always been "yes", and the disadvantages of dealing with rental agencies, door dings, traffic jams, parking fees, etc. have always weighed heavily in favor of the trains. But it is certainly conceivable that your destinations require a car, or that you have specific accommodations in mind that are located at a distance from rail stations, and that nothing else will work well for you.

If you can get there by public transportation, that is possibly cheaper. But...is it the best way for YOU?? Only you can assess that. How many people are traveling? How tight is your schedule? You will have more flexibility with a car. It is very easy to drive in Germany. I have been to Germany twice. Both times we used a car. We traveled around the first trip. We went back last September/October for a week and stayed in one place the entire time. We had a car for that trip too. We were in a small town and even though the train went there, we decided it would be too limiting for the places we wanted to go. The two days we went to Munich we took the train. So...time vs. possibly money. You might want to price a car out to see how much it is. It might not be more.

As I said, you can get everywhere by public transit. But sometimes it is just not convenient, especially if you are on vacation with limited time. I grew up in a rural area of Germany and with no drivers licence till age 18 I often opted to do longer distances (20 km) by bike because it was much much easier than to rely on the very infrequent bus connections. I know Germans who don't own a car and swear on the ease of use of DB. But even they occasionally rent a car to get to places that aren't well serviced. When I visited my family on my last trip to Germany we did everything by train except for one trip. If it takes over 3 hours to do a 90 km trip each way by train/bus it's out of the question to do a day trip. And this wasn't a village but a small and fairly well known town. Using Fuessen as an example on how train and bus services work in rural areas of Germany doesn't quite work. It is a major tourist destination and does have better service by public transit than other "normal" villages. The OP didn't give any names of destinations so we can't give a definite answer to her question only suggestions on how to make her decision.