Germany/Austria/Czech Itinerary check

Don'cha just love seeing an itinerary that's not "Day 1, fly into Frankfurt, train to Rhine, see Rhine, drive to Munich"? Okay, that may be a bit of an exaggeration....

It looks like you have a very relaxing itinerary. The only suggestion I might have is to maybe shave a day off of Munich and use that to take a day trip from Salzburg to Hallstatt. But that's up to you. If you have any questions about the train, check with Lee, he's the resident German train guru.

that sounds great, but personally i would shave a few days off here and there and not miss Berlin!

Diana, I would say you are about perfect. You have arguably an extra day in Salzburg, Munich, and Prague, but each is taken up by a specific activity other than "seeing the city". I have not been to Berlin, but I cannot imagine how you would shave time to travel there and see anything. Also have not been to Hallstat, but from what I have seen in pictures and read, can't imagine more than a half day. If it works into transit plans and you could leave luggage at rail station in Hallstat, it might be worth slipping in. But, as a day trip, I don't see it.

Just a comment about transportation.

This trip is ideally set up to use P2P tickets and Länder-Tickets. Per you plans, from Nürnberg on your travel is all in Bavaria, where four people can share a €28 Bayern-Ticket (€7 each) for unlimited travel all day (after 9 on workdays) on regional trains.

For your days in Nürnberg and Munich, you can get day tickets for the Nürnburg metro (VGN) and the Munich metro (MVV) for even less than the Bayern-Ticket. Note: the Nürnberg day ticket (TagesTicketPlus) is valid for up to 6 people, but only 2 can be 18 and over. You would need two tickets for 4 adults.

If you travel on a weekend day, you can go all the way from St Goar to Nürnberg using a €37 Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket (like a Länder-Ticket, but for all of Germany, independent of state borders). On a weekday, you would need three Länder-Tickets (Rheinland-Pfalz-Ticket, Hessen-Ticket, and a Bayern-Ticket) if you go via Mainz, Frankfurt, and Würzburg. That would be about €85 and would require use of regional trains (~5½ hrs). If you purchase in advance on the German Rail website, you could get four SparPreis-Tickets for as low as €89, total. These tickets would allow you to travel in nicer express train (for part of the way) and save about an hour's time.

Note: for travel inside Nürnberg, a TagesTicket for two adults is less than their share of a Bayern-Ticket, thus a better deal. However, for Nürnberg to Rothenburg ob der Tauber, the TagesTicket is €14,30, slightly more than half a Bayern-Ticket. Use the Bayern-Ticket to Rothenburg.

You should be able to go from Munich to Prague in about 6 hours on regional trains using a Bayern-Böhmen-Ticket (€33 for four) to Pilsen and local Czech Rail tickets (about €6 per person) from Pilsen to Prague. See my webpage for more information.

Also, although Salzburg Hbf is in Austria, not Bavaria, it is considered a border station. The Bayern-Ticket covers travel into the Salzburg Hbf, but not for transport within Salzburg, itself.

Agree with the others, a nice pace for a 23 day trip. You've allowed yourself enough time for the occassional rest day.

If you haven't booked a place to stay in GaP yet, check out the Fraundorfer:

http://www.gasthof-fraundorfer.de/englisch/index_e.html

Try to request one of the three rooms facing the street on the 3rd floor. You can't see it from the picture, but each of those windows has small balcony, and your view is a spetacular vista of the Zupspitze and the surrounding mountains.

To do a day trip to Berchtesgaden from Salzburg, you have two choices of transportation. There is a bus, the Watzmann Express, that goes from the Salzburg Hbf, mostly through Austria, to Berchtesgaden Hbf. The round trip fare on that bus, using an RVO Tagesticket would be €9,- per person. That would give you round trip on the Watzmann Express plus unlimited use of buses (except the special mountain buses from Hintereck up to the Nest) in Berchtesgaden (it would include the bus from the Berchtesgaden Hbf to Hintereck and back) for the day.

However, if you take the train (only a few minutes longer) from Salzburg Hbf to Freilassing, then the train (often the same Salzburger S-Bahn w/ no change in Freilassing) to Berchtesgaden, a €28 Bayern-Ticket, available from automats at the Salzburg Hbf, would also cover all of your transportation, train and bus (except the mountain bus), for the day.

There is a bus, RVO 9606, that goes from Garmisch-Partenkirchen to Hohenschwangau and Füssen via Oberammergau. Sometimes there is a change of buses at Echelsbacher Brücke, sometimes it is direct to Füssen. Again, the Bayern-Ticket will cover your travel.

You can also take the train from GaP to Pfronten and a bus from there to Füssen Bhf using the Bayern-Ticket. You'd get to see some of the Tirol that way, but you'd probably have to change buses at Füssen Bhf to get to Hohenschwangau. The bus from Oberammergau stops in Hohenschwangau on the way to Füssen Bhf.

Wow! This is tons of good information! Thanks for all the help and advice. Now to start the search for places to stay...

I, too, feel that your suggested itinerary is a little slower paced than what I would do, but pretty good. You're definitely not rushing it. You seem to have a pretty good order so as not to spend time backtracking.

There are so-o-o many things to see in Germany, you'll never see them all in one trip. It's wise to concentrate on a smaller area. Throwing in a distant venue, like Berlin, would just complicate it. No need to go that far.

I'm not sure you are spending too many days in Munich. Twice I've been there for two full days, but I never went to the Deutsches Museum or to Dachau and still had plenty to see. Last September I spent a long day in the Deutsches Museum and still skiped a few exhibits and hurried through others. Dachau didn't take an entire day, but it took most of a day. Do the Deutsches Museum earlier in your stay and, if you run out of things to do, use a Bayern-Ticket and go to Nördlingen. It's about a two hour trip, one way, another walled city, but a little less touristy (no Christmas shop) than Rothenburg.

At the foot of the Kehlstein (below the Eagles' Nest) is the Dokumentation Center, a museum devoted to the rise of Nazism in Germany. It's built over the remains of the bunkers of the former SS base there and you can go into the bunkers. Between the Eagle's Nest and the Dokumentation Center, you can easily use a day, particularly if you are traveling RT from Salzburg. And there is more to see in Berchtesgaden, like the town itself and Königssee. I've spent two days there twice.