Germany trip

You can save a lot of money if you book train tickets in advance, however your trip dates are close enough now that you may not save that much. Go to Bahn.com and type in your routes, the "sparpries" is the discount price you get for booking a specific train in advance, and the other, larger price is the cost of a fully flexible ticket that you could just buy at the train station right before departure. For long train rides, I prefer to buy seat reservations as well. They are optional, but traveling with a group it's much nicer to be able to sit together and to not have to move if you end up in a reserved seat. As for hotel reservations, I prefer to make them in advance too, that way I know I'm getting a good price and location. Some people don't. You probably will be able to find something in these places this time of year, but how much will you be paying for it? It's hard to say.

It is very easy to get around by train. Sometimes transfer times look short, but the schedule allows all the time you should need unless there is a physical problem. For many short train trips, use either the Lander ticket (such as the Bavaria ticket), weekend ticket or Quer-Durch-Land ticket. These are good on regional trains at reduced rates for your group of 4. There are details on the bahn.de website, also on this and other forums. With the advent of the internet, it has become so easy to reserve rooms in advance (no sending letters back and forth for weeks like in the olden days!) If you can fix your itinerary, then I would certainly reserve rooms.

thankyou all for the helpful comments, Seanna