Germany, castle to coast.
Beer halls in Munich, the working port at Hamburg, Rhine castles from the water and the long day out to Neuschwanstein. What each one is like, what it costs, and where to book it.
Seven that carry a first trip.
These are the ones people come home talking about: the glass dome above the Bundestag, an hour on the Elbe among the container cranes, a castle in the Alpine foothills with a queue that keeps moving.
Berlin: 1-Hour City Tour by Boat with Guaranteed Seating
One hour Berlin Spree river cruise past the Reichstag and Berliner Dom with guaranteed seating and multilingual audio guide devices. From $25.
From $25 per person
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The castle that started the fairytale.
Ludwig II built Neuschwanstein into a hillside above Fussen and never lived to finish it. The coaches leave Munich early, the shuttle drops you below the gate, and the timed ticket sets the shape of the whole day. Most of these runs fold in Linderhof or Hohenschwangau on the way back.
Which city do you build the trip around?
Almost every first trip picks one base and takes day trips out of it. Berlin, Munich and Hamburg each hand you a different country. Here is what each one actually gives you.
Capital, rebuilt
Berlin
3 hours 30 minutes (approx.) · from $24 · 9,624 reviews
Government glass bolted onto Reichstag stone, boats along the Spree past Museum Island, and a nightlife map that runs on its own clock. It also has the widest set of days out, from the palaces at Potsdam to the lakes in the south east.
See what Berlin books →
Alps at the door
Munich and Bavaria
1.5 hours · from $23 · 2,304 reviews
Marienplatz at eleven for the Glockenspiel, the Viktualienmarkt for lunch, then a beer hall table you share with strangers. The mountains sit close enough that Neuschwanstein and Berchtesgaden are both single days out.
See what Munich books →
Water and warehouses
Hamburg
2 hours · from $47 · 6,979 reviews
The port runs straight through the middle of the city. Barges under the Speicherstadt arches, an hour on the Elbe past the container cranes, the Elbphilharmonie plaza for nothing, and the Reeperbahn once it gets dark.
See what Hamburg books →
Germany does evenings properly.
Harbour cranes lit from the water in Hamburg. A night watchman with a lantern working his way through the Dresden old town. A Cologne brewery cellar where the Koelsch keeps arriving until you put the beer mat on top of the glass.
Beer is a meal here.
Munich pours a litre at a time under chestnut trees. Cologne pours 200ml at a time and keeps going until you stop it. These are the halls, cellars and brewery yards worth booking a seat at.
Half the country looks better from a boat.
The Spree past Museum Island, the Elbe through a working port, the Rhine between vineyard slopes with a castle every few bends. Short hops, most of them, and usually cheaper than the bus tour.
Half-timbered, and still standing.
Bamberg kept its whole old town, bridges and all. Nuremberg put its castle hill back together stone by stone. Dresden rebuilt the Zwinger from photographs, and Heidelberg never lost its bridge. These are towns that repay a guide who knows which lane to turn down.
The Nazi era and the divided city.
These tours go to the places where it happened: the camp memorials at Dachau and Sachsenhausen, the rally grounds outside Nuremberg, the line the Wall took through Berlin, and the ministries that policed the East. Entry to the memorial sites themselves is free. What a tour adds is the journey out, and someone to explain what you are standing in.
Pick the city, and the week follows.
Germany spreads its good days across a lot of towns. Berlin for the twentieth century. Munich for the beer halls with the Alps behind them. Hamburg for the water. Dresden and Leipzig for Saxony, Cologne for the cathedral and the Koelsch, Heidelberg for the castle above the Neckar.
Choose the day, not the Bundesland.
Walking tours where the guide does the reading for you, boats, museum tickets that skip the queue, bikes, brewery cellars, and a man with a lantern who tells you what happened on this corner in 1503.
Some of the best of it is an hour away.
Sanssouci from Berlin, Neuschwanstein from Munich, the Bastei bridge from Dresden, a waterfall in the Black Forest from Freiburg. Every one of them works as a single day, and the seat back is part of the ticket.
A week that actually works.
You cannot do Germany in one go, and trying is how people end up spending the week on trains. This is the order we would give a friend landing in Berlin on a Friday.
Days 1–3
Berlin, at the pace it deserves
The dome above the Bundestag while the jet lag is still useful, an hour on the Spree past Museum Island, the museums on the island itself, then one afternoon out at Potsdam for the palaces.
Start in Berlin →
Days 4–5
South to Bavaria
Marienplatz, the Viktualienmarkt and a beer hall table on the first evening, then one long day out: Neuschwanstein for the castle, or Berchtesgaden if you would rather have mountains.
Plan the Bavaria leg →
Days 6–7
West to the Rhine
Cologne for the cathedral and a Koelsch at the counter, then the stretch of river between Koblenz and Ruedesheim where the castles arrive one after another.
Finish on the Rhine →
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