Seeking Tour That Cover ALL of Germany

With all due respect, what you ask is not possible. You can hardly cover all of Germany in a lifetime, let alone a tour. I am sure that you have specific cities in mind. You might make a summary of what you want to see. If you have enough time, you might be able to combine a couple tours to see many major tourist towns. We lived in Germany for 6 years and hardly got a start. Kathrin (Quokka? here) has 84 cities on her Virtual Tourist page and I am sure that she is looking for more. http://members.virtualtourist.com/m/m/f86bd/ If you want to travel on your own, take a look at the Michelin Travel Guides as a more complete sampling of places to visit. They have recommended driving tours. Regards, Gary

Thank you, Gary! Specifically, the current Germany tours eliminate either Frankfort or Berlin/Hamburg. Two of which I feel are major cities of note. As you mentioned, it isn't looking like a possibility given what I'm finding -- and in a two week period of time.

Do you have to be on a tour? Traveling around Germany is very easy with the trains and you can book all kinds of tours in the cities you are visting. Berlin, Hamburg, Frankfurt, Dresden, etc. all have excellent tours. Use these cities as bases to tour the smaller towns if you are interested in those. Why not tell us your desired cities and the good folks on here can help you work out an easy route. Frankfurt is a good base for visiting the Rhine, Würzburg, Heidelberg, Idstein, Büdingen, Bad Homburg, etc. Berlin can be a good base for visiting even Dresden, as some of the Berlin tour companies have day tours going there for a reasonable cost. While there, you can visit Potsdam or take a boat ride through the Spree Wald. In northern Germany, you could stop by Lübeck or Quedlinburg, or visit the North Sea. Erfurt is another city that doesn't get much mention here, but would be well worth a stop.

Expanding on some previous thoughts, have you bought a Rough Guide To Germany, or a Lonely Planet Guide To Germany. We use the Rough Guide. You can curl up in a soft warm chair and plan your own tour. There's really no need to depend on someone else to get you around. Public transportation works well and everyone is used to helping tourists. You might even run into little surprises that you wouldn't otherwise find. Those will be the things you remember with pleasure.

Check out Globus and Trafalgar tours.

Do a tour that bests suits your desires. Then go to Berlin on your own. I'm sure there are day tours that you can take there.

Thank you everyone. This is a tremendous help. I guess it feels a bit safer to be traveling with a guided group but if transportation around the country is fairly easy I may give it a shot. Will be traveling with my 14 year old son who has been studying the language for several years. My ideal 9-12 day trip would consist of: Hamburg, Berlin, Dresden, Munich, Neuschwanstein Castle (and as many others as we could fit in), Stuttgart, Baden Baden and on up through Frankfurt and into Dusseldorf - a roundtrip if you will. I will definitely get the books mentioned and take a deeper dive into the culture as well. Public transportation is my biggest fear. I'm a midwesterner and while in traveling for work have no issues with public transport but I am also fluent in English!

OK, my first suggestion for 9-12 days is to cut down significantly from your wish list. You have 9 distinct points listed. You would spend most of your time in transit from one location to the next, and you would actually see very little. Only you can answer what is a priority for your trip, but for starters, I would dump the obvious outlier of Baden-Baden. If you want a spa treatment, you can find other (and in my opinion, more interesting) spa towns throughout Germany. Otherwise, there's nothing particularly special about Baden-Baden, except all the Russian tourists, ridiculously expensive stores, and Rickniks. Two cities that I would definately keep, however, are Hamburd and Berlin.

Angela, my suggestion to you would be to segment the country into regions and then visit one big city and one rather rural place in that region. While the coastline of Germany is pretty long cultures, dialects and all change every 50 miles for a first visit I would focus on Hamburg as city and Lübeck-Travemünde as seaside resort. The absolute minimum stay would be 2 nights in Hamburg and 1 night in Travemünde. Then on to Berlin (3 nights) and the Spreewald (http://wikitravel.org/en/Spreewald) for 1 night. You'd then have to skip all the authentic and real castles of Thuringia and Saxony and do the more touristy and much younger ones in Bavaria (as Rick Steve only promotes those). Stuttgart is great if you or your son wants to see the Porsche or Mercedes-Benz museum (and/or plants). If that's not a must then skip it for now and do Baden-Baden instead. From there day-trip to Freiburg i. Brsg. If you want to spend a day and a night in Frankfurt it would be up next. Then take a regional train to Braubach in the Rhine river gorge, then on to Koblenz (scenic cable car ride on a good day) and side-trip into the Mosel river valley (if you'd like). Next stop is Cologne (2 nights) and from there or Düsseldorf back home... again, IMO.

If Berlin and Hamburg are tops on your list, then I would get a couple of books that cover all of Germany - Fodor's is good - and concentrate on northern Germany. Save Bavaria and the Rhine for another trip.

Angela Time to talk to a travel agent. Call some in Angela and ask questions regarding their experience in visiting and booking Germany tours with tour operators. Do not use the ones who do not have experience. Again your time frame does not allow you to see all the regions of Germany. Or in a tour you will spend all of your time on the bus. Narrow the number of places you want to visit. And there is a reason that most of the tours only see central and southern Germany. Oh, you might search the Germany Tourism website to see if they have Germany travel agent specialists who could put together an entire trip with trains, hotels, exact
places to visit, etc instead of the tour. Good luck! Bobbie

Fabulous input everyone! What a valuable message board. Many many thanks. I've got my work cut out for me but once I prioritize, I'm certain we can make the most of it based on specific interests.

Don't put too much pressure on yourself to see the whole country in one trip. I would recommend Bavaria, Berlin, and the Rhineland based upon our 2006 trip along with several business trips I have made to Germany. All readily connected by train. (Rhineland might get a little tricky, getting to Burg Eltz which is actually in the Mosel Valley.). Don't be afraid of driving in that region though, we did and it was not bad at all. Germany is one of the easiest countries to travel in. Don't feel obligated to visit a city because it is a major city.

Don't put too much pressure on yourself to see the whole country in one trip. I would recommend Bavaria, Berlin, and the Rhineland based upon our 2006 trip along with several business trips I have made to Germany. All readily connected by train. (Rhineland might get a little tricky, getting to Burg Eltz which is actually in the Mosel Valley.). Don't be afraid of driving in that region though, we did and it was not bad at all. Germany is one of the easiest countries to travel in. Don't feel obligated to visit a city because it is a major city.

Hi Anglea, I agree with Tom and Bobbie. There are tours out there that can be booked with the help of a Travel Agent. A professional can help you get everything you want and takes care of all the details that leave you with a headache. Plus a lot of the time they can get you some things you didn't even know were available. I am certain there are some fabuolus Travel Agents in your area that could give you exactly what you are looking for and more and for the budget you are looking at. Check with your local Better Business Bureau and call a few to see who you like. You'll be glad you did. Good Luck and enjoy your trip with your son. Sounds like a wonderful way to bond with your teenager! Andrea

Is this close to what you're looking for? http://www.cosmos.com/Product.aspx?trip=26040&source=toursearch http://globusjourneys.com/product.aspx?trip=2ZD

Agree with most that seeing the entire country in one tour is probably unlikely. However, if you have two weeks there is one tour co that has one that does pretty much everywhere. It's GermanyTravelTours.com and the tour is called:Classics and Fairy Tales. If you feel more comfortable on a tour, then go for it. Check it out.

as others have said this is too much for a 9-12 day trip. maaaybe a 14 day trip but that's pushing it. if you're going to stuttgart for one of the car museums, you can pretty much skip baden-baden. stuttgart is also a spa town with a number of different mineral water baths. baden-baden is a nice town but not interesting enough for it's own trip if you're already set on stuttgart. if you don't have to do stuttgart, freiburg in the black forest might still be a better option than baden-baden. i haven't been there yet but i've heard it's wonderful and it also has a mineral bath. don't worry about language being a barrier for taking trains/public transit in germany. it's not. everyone who works for deutche bahn speaks english, the ticketing machines function well in english, and this is also true of all local public transit ticketing machines. the bahn.com website famously is wonderful in english and for figuring out your trip, and you can buy all your tickets online. since most of the places you want to go are large cities connected by fast trains, i'd get a german rail pass and only maybe rent a car from munich for a day excursion to the castles near there. you don't want to be driving in these big cities anyway and parking will cost money.

Thank you everyone. This message board has been phenomenal. I very much appreciate all of the input. - Angie