Germany

I recommend validating assumptions (=rules, "I've heard... Have read...) before building an itinerary on that basis. Many people end up building an itinerary this way and end up coming up with costly time wasting itinerary that does not help you reach the goal of your trip. Think of building a house piecemeal without considering how everything end up as a unit.

Airfare start understanding your market. Use fare alert like Kayak. Enter Tulsa to all the possible airports (not just FRA) you can fly in or out of. Choose daily update. What you will observe is not only the possible routes, the variation of the fare. The alert email also gives you plot of best fare trend to empirically help you where in fare cycle you might be buying tickets. For fare alert purpose, you need to enter round trip. But for your actual flight, you probably want to do multi-city (fly into one city, out of another) to eliminate backtracking time and cost. Multi-city fare alert is not available, but the price is somewhere around the round-trip to either airport.

Itinerary what you described is basing yourself in certain location. The prerequisite for using that strategy is when you are in a area with multiple destinations close to each other and there is a logical base location. Munich is one such place. If the destination is middle of nowhere, at least in the sense of reaching anything else around, that strategy works poorly. Halstatt, a gorgeous lake side village, is one such destination. That is why you don't want to follow rules without validating assumption.

One good place to start is by grasping what are the major points of your interest in the area. Several guidebooks have one page summary of what are key "general" attractions in the area. Fodors and Ricksteves have such sections. Because you have very specific interests outside what is covered in usual guidebooks, you probably need to consult specific resources such as visiting someone in your field using your professional network.

Frankfurt is probably as cheap a flight as any other. You might check the London flights and then to another city (such as Stuttgart) if you don't want to go to Frankfurt. This may or may not work better than flying to FRA and taking a train.

If you like cars, then Stuttgart might appeal with the Porsche and Mercedes museums.

Get the Fodor's Germany book. (after all, this is the Fodors website). The Eyewitness guide is good because it has great photos. Rick Steves is only good for those areas he covers - popular places but only a small fraction of the country.

Staying at least 2 nights in a place is preferred, but it may not fit what your interests are. Instead of Vienna, then perhaps Salzburg which wold be less travel. Alternately, leaving from Vienna might work out for you.

We just did a similar trip to Germany last Sept. Our first time in Germany. I was also overwhelmed by everything when I started planning but the more you read the more you'll decide on what is important to you. We flew into Munich, spent 4 nights, picked up a car, drove to Rothenburg for 3 nights and then to St Goar on the Rhine for 3 nights. Flew home from Frankfurt.

The couple we met up with in Munich had started in Vienna, drove to Munich with a stop in Salzburg. In Munich we did a day tour to Neuschwanstein that included a bike ride in a beautiful valley. Posters here insisted how easy it is to go to Neuschwanstein on your own but we loved the tour & bike ride. http://www.mikesbiketours.com/munich/Castle-Tours/neuschwanstein-castle-tours-bus-bavaria.html

We also visited Dachau from Munich. From Rothenburg we did day trips to Bamberg, where we did a walking brewery tour, and Wurzberg. We really enjoyed coming back to Rothenburg in the evenings and strolling the town. A must do is the Night Watchmens Tour in Rothenburg.

One of the biggest decisions was where to stay on the Rhine or the Mosel, and then which town. I researched many and for convenience we decided on St. Goar on the Rhine. We did a day cruise on the Rhine, visited castles & vineyards. It was an easy drive from St Goar to the Frankfurt airport.

It was a wonderful trip, never long enough and we can't wait to go back. Part of the fun is planning.

Thanks for the immediate advice thus far!

Your best bet in terms of flights will likely be Frankfurt, but you should try Munich or Berlin. There are sometimes better prices on flights to Brussels or Amsterdam, both of which would be reasonable train distance to Germany.

There is a lot that you could see, so you'll have to do a good job of narrowing this down so that, as you say, you have a few days in selected locations as a base, rather than hustle around every day.

Based on your interests, you might consider an open jaw into Frankfurt where you can see the Rhine area, view castles. There are wine regions in the nearby Mosel Valley. Munich might make a great stop for you as a good base to tour Bavaria, but also catch some city life. Munich has the BMW museum near the 1972 Olympic site, which makes for an interesting stop. From there you could head towards Vienna, stopping in the Salzburg area on the way. It's hard not to mention Salzburg to someone with a background in music education. Then just fly out of Vienna. That's just a rough sketch of a possible journey. It's going to be hard to get it wrong as long as you give yourself enough time to enjoy yourselves wherever you land.

Love this program for scoping out poosible flights.
You can peruse different destination cities, dates, allow none/one or more stops, allow or disallow airport changes and monitor weekly.
You CANNOT buy from this site, but must go to the indicated carrier to firm up a deal.
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Decide "where" first then figure out how to get there. Keep your planning "open jaw" (fly into one place, out of another). Contact gemütlichkeit travel, gemüt.com about a rent car.

For the car lover, the Porsche and Mercedes museums are in Stuttgart. BMW factory and museum are in Munich. For the music lover, Mozarts home city is Salzburg. They have a BIG music festival, I think in August. The rest of the year there are lots of free and paid concerts all over town in concert halls, restaurants and churches. The Salzburg Tourist Information office at Mozart Platz keeps a list. It is probably on their website too.

Flying out of Tulsa, I assume you will connect through Dallas or Atlanta. Spend a little time with Kayak each day and you will get a good idea of which day of the week to fly to get the best rate. One thing that is critical to me flying out of Seattle is trip time. If we go over the pole we can be in Europe in @ 9 hours. If we go through a US port it take 17 or more to get there. That is a bone cruncher that affects a couple of days of our vacation just getting over jet lag.

if you have 2 weeks, personally i feel that you would be better sticking to central and southern germany [and possibly Salzburg] rather than trying to add in Vienna, which with its environs, is worthy of a trip all by itself.

depending on flight availability, you might fly into Frankfurt, explore the Rhine, see the museums in Stuttgart, drive to Salzburg and spend a few days there, then drive back up to Munich and fly home.

Yet another thought for you to consider. Are you locked in to going to Europe during the "high" season, 6/1 - 6/16? Summer is the most expensive time to go, the shoulder seasons(Spring and Fall) are less expensive and Winter is the cheapest. If you are able to go when the kids are in school you can cut a lot off of your expenses on airfare and hotels. If youlook a fares you can pretty much pick a destination without a huge cost variance from say London or Frankfurt vs Munich or Stuttgart.

Not really committed to a specific date, however if I ever get an orchestra teaching job (which is a whole other story) it will limit us to going in the summer months, when classes are out. Personally, I hate the cold so I'm leaning more towards warm sunshine, regardless of the cost.

We won't be flying out of Tulsa, as it considerably more expensive than just driving down to Dallas and leaving our car with in the DFW area. (This may change, because now that I'm thinking about it, the last thing we want to do is drive home after flying home. hm...) It is beginning to look like we'll be flying with Lufthansa, for several reasons.

Thanks so much for taking time to add input, I'm so new at travel that I am feeling slightly overwhelmed.

Even though we live in Houston, we always fly via DFW to Frankfurt on American Airlines. We have all of our credit cards linked to our frequent flyer account so we can accummulate miles that are used for upgrades and free tickets.

I think you'll find flights into the UK are not that competitive anymore due to the much higher airport taxes recently initiated by the British Government.

We have traveled to Germany many times in May but most recently have taken our trips in September which we now prefer. The weather is better and warmer than May. Even early June can be wet and cool.

We have done both 2 and 3 week trips, always beginning and ending in Frankfurt. If you are intersted in our itineraries, you can click on my name for trip reports and a link to our photos.

http://www.chambermusicians.org.uk/mittenwald_violin_making.htm

This is a lovely village that is not that far from Munich. You will want to go to Garmisch and it is south of there and the most beautiful drive. You can take the train there and walk all over the village. When you walk through the town you will see the violins hanging on porches to dry. I am trying to think of music things for you. Great food and drink all through Germany. We have flown into Munich from Orlando most trips but did Frankfurt last trip because it was cheaper and wanted to see some different places. We stay in Garmisch most trips. We left Garmisch and drove to Rothenburg Ob der Tauber for two nights. Loved the night watchman tour. We then drove on to Frankfurt for our return flight.