Upcoming Trip to Belgium, Germany and Switzerland

Cheryl
We really enjoy the Bernese Oberland in the high Swiss Alps. Stay in Lauterbrunnen and discover both sides of the valley upto Murren and Vengen and Grindelwald this can be done in 2 days. The trains and lifts asre terrific. check to see if theyre opebn prior to travel. Have fun!

Cheryl
We really enjoy the Bernese Oberland in the high Swiss Alps. Stay in Lauterbrunnen and discover both sides of the valley upto Murren and Wengen and Grindelwald this can be done in 2 days. The trains and lifts asre terrific. check to see if theyre opebn prior to travel. Have fun!

I am afraid, but I think this is totally unrealistic (unless you have a good connection to Scottie @ the enterprise who will "beam" you from location to location). Sorry!

Going from Brussels to Bruges is the least of your worries but you will proably already spend one day. The trip from Brussels to Berlin will at least take 8-10 hours and how much time have you planned for the German capital? From Berlin back to Cologne from where you can connect to regional trains bringing you down to the Rhine River Valley takes the same time (at least). Then you have to plan for some time to visit the castles and so on and so forth.

In my opinion you should at least scratch either Berlin or Switzerland from your list otherwise it will be impossible to manage; even then there will be little time for you to discover all the sights in an enjoyable timeframe.

Good luck!

Cheryl, you do not say how many days you have to visit all of these places. That info would be helpful

Does the "3 country/6 day EuRail pass" you have 6 days to do all this? In that case i can only agree that I cannot see how this would be humanly possible. And even with Scottie's help it would be an insanely busy trip ...

If the arrival/departure in Brussels is fixed scratch Switzerland and Berlin from the list and you could have a great time.

Or did we misunderstand something here and you're actually staying longer?

Let's see.

Take the train from Brugges to St. Goar.

Get off the train, look down the hill. St. Goar - Check.

Look farther down the hill. Rhine - Check.

Look up the hill to your left. Rheinfels castle - Check.

You have an hour before the next train.

Get on the train. Go to Baden-Baden. Get out. There's the town. Black Forest - Check.

Get back on the next train and go to Basel. Switzerland - Check.

One, maybe two days. That gives you four more days. Go to Berlin.

Cheryl, You've gotten some discouraging comments on this itinerary. Let me see if I can give pracitcal advice. I don't think you will have fun if you are traveling from destination to destination without really seeing anything. I think it was probably a mistake to purchase the 3 country 6 day pass, but you probably can return it. If you bought it from this website I think you have 30 or 60 days after the expiration to return it.

If I were you - I would spend 2 days in Brugge, and 3 days on the Rhine and forget the rest.

The BO in Switzerland is probably my favorite place in Europe, but Early May is not a great time to visit there.

Let me second that comment and add to it- the Berner Oberland is too expsensive and too dead at that time of year to justify traveling there in your limited time.

Ok, so you have 9 days total. Try and figure out where you want to go and how many days to spend there. I do think the 3 country pass sounds expensive for the short time you will be here. Have you thought about just Belgium and parts of Germany? This would be plenty for 9 days. You need to figure in your travel time between places too. For a cheaper alternative to your eurail pass, there are things called Länder tickets that will allow you to travel around in the different "lands" at a very cheap price. They are on slower trains, but you get far better scenery. Lee is our resident expert on the trains.
(lands in Germany are like states)