Reformation Trek & Rick's Favorite Cities

Nineteen towns in two countries in 7 days? With Salzburg, Austria thrown in if possible? Oh, and two more major cities in Germany? Have you even looked at a map to see how far the cities on your list are apart, or checked a train schedule to see how much time it would take to rail there? Trains only run at certain times, and you'll spend a lot of time waiting for a train, finding your accomodation, packing and unpacking, and doing it all over again the next day/night. You also need to allow for a travel day at each end of the trip -- so if you're talking about 7 days/nights total, you'll only have about five on the ground. Use viamichelin.com to look at driving times and start weeding out towns that maybe aren't quite so important to you. You can't do everything in seven days.

Steve: I count 22 cities in 7 days. That wins the Helpline Prize for Most Ambitious Itinerary of 2008. The prize is a 7-day supply (length of your trip) of Red Bull and No-Doz.Here's a link to itinerary planning tips that will help you determine the non-compressible minimum travel times between your destinations: Determining Travel Time Between DestinationsAfter you consider the travel times, maybe you could get back to us with a slimmed down list and we'll see if we can help further.

LOLROF; thank you for that dose of "reality." Help me out this way . . . we will be coming off a Mission Trip to Romania (eight days) and wanted to do Germany/Switzerland on the way back. If you had a 7-8 days/nights, what would some of your suggestions be for Germany/Switzerland. One of Rick's books mentioned only two cities (Munich/Switzerland) for five days, but we travel every year, and could never spend five days in just two cities. Any suggestions would be great--thanks.

"On the way back" to where? Where do you plan to fly out of? (And by the way, Switzerland is a country, not a city.)

Steve: Your idea of a historical themed trip is great. Let's take Martin Luther first and try to prioritize, you have to prioritize because you've got two historical figures, only 7 or 8 days, and a fairly big geographical area to traverse:Martin LutherWittenberg, of course Worms Augsberg Eisleben That's 4 for Luther and you've only got 7 days total.I wasn't familiar with Hus but Wikipedia mentions Jan Hus, the Czech religious reformer. Since you only mention Germany and Switzerland, I take it you're passing on the Prague and other Czech Republic locations associated with Hus on this trip and want to go to places in Germany or Switzerland associated with Hus: and the one that comes to mind is Constance/Konstanz where he was tried and executed, which is in the southwest corner of Germany near the German-Swiss border.So, we've got one for Jan Hus:Konstanz/ConstanceSteve, your homework assignment is to go to a map of Germany and locate these 5 points (try Google Earth, it's a free download). You'll see that Wittenberg is south of Berlin in northeast Germany and Constance is on the German-Swiss border. Next go to Google Earth or www.viamichelin.com and determine the driving times starting in Wittenberg. Then add a realistic estimate of the time it will take you to locate parking, find the churches or other landmarks you want to see associated with each man, return to the car, and drive to the next destination. Then you'll have a basis for deciding if you can do more than those 5 in 7 days. If you think you can, then add more locations and repeat this process.