tidy

Three of us will be traaveling from Berlin to Dresden, Nurnberg, Munich, Rothenburg, Wurzburg Bacharach and then Frankfurt. I know that we will use a car for most of the trip. Is it best to pick up the car when leaving Berlin or take the train to Dresden and possibly even Nurnburg and then pick up the car. The car seems appealing because it allows us to make stops at possibly Bamburg, Meissen etc. Also, since there are 3 of us it may as cheap to drive. Thoughts??

Dukey1

Where, if anyplace, are you going to base yourself in Bavaria? Nurnberg? Munich? And how many nights?

Cowboy1968

Driving out of Berlin and to Dresden is not hard to manage. The freeways get very close to the city center in Berlin, so depending on where you will pick up the car, you usually won't have to drive more than 10-15 minutes on regular city streets till you get to the inner city orbital freeway and out of the city.
Dresden-Nürnburg can be made a very nice one day "road trip", either via Bamberg, which is a tiny detour, or thru the Erzgebirge (Ore Mountains) along the German/Czech border and/or thru Northern Bohemia and via Karlovy Vary and Marianske Lazny.

It will be more a question of costs, i.e. how much will those hotels en route charge for parking. And how does that eventually add up and compare to costs for train tickets.
viamichelin.com gives you a rough idea how much gas will cost for your trip.

dfourh

Very good advice from Cowboy1968 - - it's a matter of costs and some practicalities. I generally loathe driving in Germany, except on small roads through small towns with lots of time, because there are vastly TOO many cars in Germany now for the infrastructure to handle, but your particular direction out of Berlin might not be to arduous. Still, if trains to your goals are easy and reasonable, you might want to put off getting the car till later in the trip.

Ingo

Berlin - Dresden is easy and cheap by train or bus. Deals on www.bahn.de or www.berlinlinienbus.de

Whether getting a car in Dresden or not depends on what you plan to do/see - like Cowboy said. If you want to visit castle Kriebstein (open only on weekends in Nov, closed in December) along the way to Nürnberg or a place in the Erzgebirge mountains (although I'd say a couple of hours on the day driving to Nürnberg is too short for the latter) then rent a car in Dresden. Also, consider the road conditions - often snow in Nov/Dec.

Train Dresden to Nürnberg is VERY easy and inexpensive. See www.bahn.de ! Quer-durchs-Land-Ticket is 42 Euro for the first person and small surcharge for additional persons. Driving is *way* more expensive.

Ingo

Btw, Meissen is definitely very easy to do from Dresden by train. Commuter trains S1 run every half hour, takes about 40 minutes.

tidy

Cowboy, thanks for the option ideas. We will have been to Prague this May so porbably won't dothat, I hate hearing that some of you don't like driving in Germany, I don't think I'll share that with my husband since he will be doing the driving. We live in Colorado so the snow is not too worrisome. I will continue to give this some thought. Time is a bit short so if we do the train we may need to forgo Meissen unless we took the train there and then possibly picked up a car ( I would need a place to store luggage while visiting Meissen). The other choice of course is train to Dresden, check in and the train back to Meissen. If any of you have been to Meissen what are your recommendations of what to see.

Ingo

Meissen at this time of the year:
- Tour the porcelain manufacture
- See castle Albrechtsburg with museum/exhibit and the cathedral
- Christmas market
- see Frauenkirche by the market and
- have lunch or whatever in one of the restaurants in the old town, Vincenz Richter recommended (behind the Frauenkirche), and try local wine

That should keep you busy for most of the day.

Ingo

PS: I think snowy road conditions will worry and slow down everyone, even someone who lives in Colorado. Accidents and resulting traffic jams are not unknown on motorways in Germany, and the motorways between Dresden and Nürnberg are some of those most affected by snow.

PalenQ

start the car at Berlin - and then stop by Lutherstadt-Wittemberg - a lovely old historic city south of Berlin that makes a great short stop - see the church door where Martin Luther allegedly nailed his demands to launch the Reformation - lots of Luther-related buildings and just a nice old town. Easy parking right on the edge of town, by the train station.

tidy

PalenQ, Thanks for this info, I actually had 2 friends rave about Wittenberg. If we stopped there I don't think we would stop at Meissen then. Both of our friends loved Wittenburg and neither were thrilled with Nunnberg.