Germany in May 2011
 

Planning a holiday in Germany in May 2011. This is our first holiday in Europe. We are from India. We are 2 adults and 2 children below 10 years. We are interested in doing a mix of city and small scenic town/villages. Looking forward to good wholesome German food - not something pricey and touristy. Can someone recommend an itinerary for approx 10 - 15 days. We are budget conscious and would like to stay in places that are safe & clean with attached bathroom with easy accessibility to train and local restaurants/chain stores. Are the B&B and youth hostels safe for family? Are there any mid-price chain hotels that we could consider? Could you please highlight the dos and donts whilst travvelling in Germany. Also, would appreciate some info on the usage of trains?

>safe & clean
Not an issue anywhere.
>Are the B&B and youth hostels safe for family?
Yes
>Are there any mid-price chain hotels that we could consider?
IBIS, but any B&B is nicer and cheaper.
>usage of trains
Just like at home just that opening the doors in between stations is strictly prohibited. ;-)

As a starter: www.bensbauernhof.com

Welcome to Germany!

As logos said, it is safe and clean anywhere in Germany.

Accomodation:

Hostels are a very inexpensive way to stay overnight. In Germany, we have "Jugendherbergen" which require a membership. Many of this hostels have excellent locations, and many have family rooms (reservation recommended). For further information: http://www.jugendherberge.de/en/

There are also private hostels, especially in the big cities. There are some website to find these hostels:

http://www.hostels.com/
http://www.hostelworld.com/
http://www.hostelbookers.com/

Hostels are safe and clean, but sometimes it gets noisy at night. Hostels are very popular for school trips - so expect large groups of teenagers.

In Germany, you can find inexpensive hotels too. There are some chains of cheap hotels like

www.ibishotel.com
http://www.hotelbb.de/portal/en

but usually you can find small privately owned too which have more atmosphere.

For hotel search, I recommend this site:

www.hrs.de

In large cities, you may use

www.hotwire.com
www.priceline.com

Eating:

Inexpensive eating is very easy in Germany. Especially in the pedestrian zones in the city centers you find an abundance of inexpensive eateries. A good bet are the food courts within the train stations - in some stations you find up to two dozen eateries (sometimes even one with Indian food). In cities, there are many restaurants which offer an inexpensive lunch of the day (at 5-6 Euros) for office workers.

Or just go into a grocery store or supermarket, buy some supplies and have a picnic in a public park (take plastic plates, cups, cutlery, bottle opener and corkscrew with you).

Itinerary:

Germany is quite large, and if you have only 10 to 15 days, you have to restrict yourself to a part of the country.

These are reasonable options:

- Berlin, Romantic Road Towns, Munich, upper Bavarian castles. An open-jaw flight would make sense.

- Starting from Frankfurt, you can do the Rhine Valley, Cologne, Aachen, Trier, Monschau in order to see Roman heritage, great museums, castles, scenery and picturesque villages.

- Another option would be Berlin and the picturesque Harz towns Wernigerode and Quedlinburg - especially if you have just 10 days.

With children I would spend my time in Munich, countryside of Bavaria, and the Rhine Valley area.

I would spend at least 3 to 4 nights in each location to keep from having to pack/unpack too often. There is a youth hostel somewhere on the Rhine that is in a castle, I'm sure your kids would love it, I think it was in St Goar.

Train travel works great and is very efficient and fast. bahn.de has information on the German train schedule in several languages.

Thanks to all of you for helping me make our plan. As things stand now, we plan to do Prague for a couple of days and then move to Germany.

We are very keen on visiting the local markets - for the sausages, beer, meats and cheeses. Ofcourse, marzipans too. I would like to take some stuff back home. Would this stuff stay well on the long flights back home? What do you recommend taking back? Any particular varieties and where are they available. Anything else that I must look out for in Germany?

Also, what is the system of booking B&B's in Germany? We would require one double room with a king size bed. Would the kids be allowed to stay with us? or do I have to book a quad room? Are there are farm stays? I am keen on experiencing one for maybe 2 nights.

Will be continuously posting my queries as my planning gathers more momentum.

Thanks once again to all of you. Please recommend some towns to stay alongwith B&B's and private hotels.

Warm regards,
SKPKCP

>>>Also, what is the system of booking B&B's in Germany?

The term B&B is not known in Germany. It would be called "Hotel garni" ("garni" means "without restaurant") or "Pension" (a "Pension" is a small, family-operated hotel that often serves lunch and dinner too). Booking is the same as with other hotels: Either use a booking system (like www.hrs.de) or contact them directly via their website, telephone, fax or email. In any case, you need a reservation confirmation.

Unfortunately, quad rooms are rare in Germany. Some hotels have them, usually called "Familienzimmer" or "apartment". Another option would be two extra beds ("Zustellbett") in a double room - which works only if the room is large enough. For the extra beds, you pay a small fee. The third option would be two double rooms.

>>>Are there are farm stays?

Yes, of course. Look here:
http://www.landtourismus.de/443.html
http://www.bauernhofurlaub.com/en/welcome.html
http://www.urlaub-bauernhof.de/index.shtml?en_homepage
http://www.bauernhof.com/

>>>We are very keen on visiting the local markets

Local markets are not daily, but only on designed dates (e.g. Wednesday and Saturday or Tuesday and Friday) and then usually only from 9:00 to 12:00. Check out. The great exception is the Viktualienmarkt in München which is open every day (except Sundays) from 7:00 to sunset (BTW, this is the best market in Germany).

>>>Would this stuff stay well on the long flights back home?

In every supermarket, you can by marzipan which is wrapped and boxed (Niederegger is the largest brand). I especially recommend the simple variety of small pieces of marzipan which are covered with chocolate. They will last for months if not years. There is also a marzipan-filled chocolate by Ritter which is very durable and tasty. If marzipan is not covered with chocolate, it dries out quickly.

Another lasting German specialty is ham. I particularly recommend Black Forest ham (Schwarzwälder Schinken) which is smoked in fir smoke. It has a smoky, forestry taste. At some places (supermarkets, butchers, market stands) they sell it in medium-sized pieces which are vacuum-sealed in plastic and do not need refrigeration. Adler is a good brand.

You can also take smoked or dried sausages. They will also last for months without refrigeration. However, check the customs regulation in your home country whether you are allowed to bring meat products.

There are other food items which might be interesting, e.g. chocolates, cookies, jam, honey. Just look and taste!

You should also try smoked fish when in Germany. Germany has excellent smoked fish, e.g. salmon, trout, eel, herring, halibut and dozens of more varieties. You should also try salmon roe and trout roe. Unfortunately, these do not survive transportation. However, in every supermarket, you find canned fish, especially marinated fish.

Dear Echnaton,

Thanks a ton for your very, very informative post. We just love the ham and I am really looking forward to trying out the lovely stuff.

Please could you recommend some :
Romantic Road Towns
upper Bavarian castle towns
Rhine Valley towns

Also, advise me if you know any good Pensions or private hotels that are clean and comfortable with a decent breakfast.

For my info - Hotel Garni do they serve breakfast since there is no restaurant.

We will only use the public transport i.e. train, bus & ferry. Do we have to buy tickets as per the regions or does one ticket work for all. Do we need to buy tickets for children? How is the luggage stowed in the train? Do we keep our bags with us? Are there any baggage restrictions?


Sorry to ask so many questions. But, I am in the process of doing the ground work and just trying to get to know how things work.

Thanks once again.

Warm regards,
SKPKCP

take a look at some of the trip reports on www.bensbauernhof.com for some good ideas for inexpensive lodging

Thanks Bigtyke. I have looked at this site. They have quite a few good reports.

One more request - could anybody advise us the small towns/villages in each state that we should visit and where we can be based in each state.

Warm regards,
SKPKCP11

One more - is there any site that has a list of pensions / hotel garni in small towns/villages in different regions of Germany.

Virtually every town in Germany has its own website. Most also have a tourist section on the site.

The general form for the websites are www.(town name).de

Some sites have English versions, but be advised that not every English site has all the accommodations that the German version does.

"Please could you recommend some :
Romantic Road Towns
upper Bavarian castle towns
Rhine Valley towns"

Best Rhine Valley base town: probably St. Goar for your purposes. Why? Three castles visible from town, one tourable (Rheinfels, great for kids, who are allowed to climb around the ruins.) Transport: train station is right in the center of town, with the train hub for the region (Koblenz) just to the north, and a ferry gets you across the river to the town of St. Goarshausen. Just north of St. Goarshausen lies Burg Maus, where there are two free-flight falconry shows daily: http://www.burg-maus.de/voell/burgmaus/bildgalerie.php (A bus or taxi, or a bike ride, can get you there.) Use the ferry + train to reach Braubach if you want to tour the only never-destroyed castle on the Rhine, Marksburg: www.marksburg.de St. Goar is a stone's throw from other popular villages (Oberwesel, Boppard, Bacharach) on the same side of the river.

We really enjoyed our stay in St. Goar's "Rhine View" apartment with a well-stocked kitchen and 2 bedrooms - the owner, Mr. Huppertz, speaks good English, keeps bikes and sodas in the downstairs storage room for guests, and will escort you (two blocks or so) from the station to your apartment. Base rate for short stays is 44 Euros/night.

http://www.mittelrhein-ferienwohnung...any/index.html

Apartments are REALLY the way to go with kids. Here are a few more choices in St. Goar:

http://www.st-goar.de/586-1-fewos.html

EVery place in Germany serves a decent breakfast - it is usually included in the room rate.

I will post again on Saturday because I have to leave for a business trip to Passau.

Thanks Russ for your thorough update. Please could you clarify if 44 Euros/night is the tariff for the the apartment or per person per night.

Would St. Goar be a good base to cover the Upper Bavarian castle towns and the Romantic Road towns.

Echnaton look forward to receiving your update.

I did look up some of the sites but most were in german. Gets difficult then to decide on the location of the place etc.

Nevertheless I will continue with my search.

Warm regards and thanks to all.
SKPKCP11

Hi SKPKCP11,

You may want to start using google's language tools to translate websites. Just go to google, then on the right side of the big box, see "language tools." Go there and use the "translate web page" box. Paste the webpage url there, and it will translate it. The translation may not be great, but it should be good enough for you to muddle through it. I use it all the time!

Have fun!

s

Thanks Swandav2000. I did try it ! Very good tip. Any tips for keeping which places as the base - we are considering St-Goar. Hope it is not a tourist trap. We also do not want to stay in a place where everything is shut by 6 pm. How is Eschweeg as a place?

Hi again,

Sorry, I haven't done much local travelling since I moved to Garmisch two years ago -- I generally run to Switzerland, lol!

I have been to St. Gilgen on the Wolfgangsee, but I only toured around that one lake -- on foot and on bike. I travel really slowly!

Wish I could help more.

I will say that I also use google's "images" search engine to help me see which place (usually among many) I should stay in. That's one way to get a look at a place before you arrive.

Anyway, have fun planning!

s

Hi All,

Back with some more queries :
1.Are we allowed our big suitcases in the intercity or inter-town buses and trains?
2. We are keen on spending 1 or 2 nights on a farm – just to experience them. Which do you recommend and do they usually arrange for pick-up from the train / bus stand since they are located in remote areas.
3. We are planning to arrive into Munich and fly out from Frankfurt. We will be flying standby - any recommendations for pensions / garni that are close the railway stations.
4. Any suggestions for itineraries, we are considering to be based as St. Goar for a couple of days. Any cheaper bases will do.
Regards,
SKPKCP11

"Thanks Russ for your thorough update. Please could you clarify if 44 Euros/night is the tariff for the the apartment or per person per night."

Base rate for two in the two-bedroom Rheinblick apartment where we stayed is actually 45 Euros now; 10% is added for short stays under 5 days. Kids run 5 Euros more per night, so figure 60 Euros per night for your family, roughly.

The base rate given for almost every apartment I've looked up in Germany is for two people and assumes a stay of at least 3 nights, sometimes 5 or 7. Rentals in Germany are very well priced and popular for that reason with German families, so it's always good to book early.

This place is more expensive but it appears to have a fetching little balcony overlooking the river and appears to be located very close in.
http://www.rijnzicht.de/UK/index.htm

"One more - is there any site that has a list of pensions / hotel garni in small towns/villages in different regions of Germany."

www.accommodation.de is one I've used with good results that focuses on Germany and has English pages; apartments and B&B's are listed by state and by region within each state. Bavaria is particularly well represented. Like bigtyke, I would also refer you to Bavaria Ben's pages:

Bavaria: http://www.bensbauernhof.com/accommodationsbavaria.html
Farms: http://www.bensbauernhof.com/farms.html

"2. We are keen on spending 1 or 2 nights on a farm – just to experience them. Which do you recommend and do they usually arrange for pick-up from the train / bus stand since they are located in remote areas."

Like many private B&B operators, most farmhouse innkeepers do offer "Abholservice" (pick-up) and "Bringservice" (return) to a nearby station or bus stop, but I'm sure some do not. Check before booking.

"3. We are planning to arrive into Munich and fly out from Frankfurt. We will be flying standby - any recommendations for pensions / garni that are close the railway stations."

The ones in St. Goar I mentioned are a stone's throw. But St. Goar is a very healthy train ride from FRA, and if you are looking for speedy airport access, you'd want to be closer - like in Mainz. There's a cluster of hotels near Mainz's main station; I've stayed at the Ibis, 1/2 block from the suburban Mainz Römisches Theater station, and reached FRA in about 20 minutes.

"4. Any suggestions for itineraries, we are considering to be based as St. Goar for a couple of days."

From St. Goar, catch a K-D cruise boat north, or ferry across the river and catch a train, to Braubach for a tour or Marksburg Castle: www.marksburg.de . Then head north to adorable Linz via Koblenz for a look around. Here's the town's brochure:

http://www.linz.de/pdf/Linz_Prospekt_2007.pdf

Take a train north to Remagen for a tour of the WW II museum housed in the supports of the former "Bridge at Remagen": www.bruecke-remagen.de

Rent bikes and ferry across the river, then north a couple of km to Burg Maus castle for the free-flight falconry show there: http://www.burg-maus.de/voell/burgmaus/bildgalerie.php (you can also catch a taxi or the very occasional bus to get there, but it's a long walk for most kids.) Shows take place daily at 11 and 2:30, closed Mondays.

You can use the Rheinland-Pfalz daypass (28 Euros) to move your family around this area at will by train. It'll get you north as far as Bonn, south as far as Karlsruhe, and west along the Mosel River to Trier if you wish. It's good any hour on Sat or Sun, after 9 am on weekdays. This pass makes impromptu outings cheap and easy. The pass is also good on buses in the region, should you wish to make a journey to some town without a rail station.

You can pick up pocket timetables for different routes out of Koblenz (Koblenz-Bingen along the west bank, Koblenz-Wiesbaden along the east, Koblenz-Trier along the Mosel, etc.) and make decisions as you go. Also, each station has a DB ticket machine which will print out one or more itineraries for you with no ticketing obligation; you can take a train to Bacharach, for example, and upon arrival, print out some possible departure times for your next journey before hitting the streets.

Concerning your train questions: You can get the train (and bus, tram,...) schedules on http://reiseauskunft.bahn.de (you can switch the site to English).
In long-distance trains (IC, ICE), your kids travel for free as long as they are with you, but they must be listed on the ticket. If you want to be certain to get seats, you should make reservations (I don't if I travel alone, but with a family, it's a safer option - especially on Fridays and Sunday afernoons).

Local transport differs, depending on the region. In most regions, however, there are tickets covering all local transport (local trains, busses, trams, etc). I guess you should ask again when you have concrete plans.

I am back trying to finalize our plans and to bother all of you once again. We are looking at keeping St. Goar as one of our base. Kindly confirm that this place is not a tourist trap where everything is pricey. Also, can someone recommend another 2 places where we can keep our base and also where to stay in those places.

I see from some of your earlier posts that you want to explore Bavaria from your base. St. Goar is no where near Bavaria, it is located on the Rhein river. May I suggest that you simply look at a map, find the places you want to visit and then pick a town in the middle of them. Something medium size that will have some activity in the evening?

If you do want to be near the Rhein, then consider either Mainz or Frankfurt. Both offer plenty to do in the evenings, wide choice of accomodation, lots of restaurants for every taste and budget, and lots to do in case of bad weather. Both cities offer quick and efficient transportation to whatever other cities you want to visit.

For interesting towns near to Frankfurt, have a look at Büdingen, a medieval walled town, Idstein, which is a beautiful town on the Fachwerk route, Bad Homburg, with the Saalburg, a reconstructed Roman fort and Hessen Park, a large open air musuem that your kids might like and you can also tour the palace of Kaiser Wilhelm.

MHgirl: The OP asked about "small towns/villages in each state that we should visit and where we can be based in each state"; I don't think he intends to see Bavaria from St. Goar.

SKPKCP11: Tourism is a major part of the economy in the Rhine villages, and St. Goar is no exception, but the town is not overhwelmed by tourism, and I do not think of St. Goar as overly "touristy"; there is a cuckoo clock shop and a place that sells beer steins, and there are numerous places to eat, but prices there are pretty normal for Germany. There's a little Italian place called "Alla Fontana" that I usually patronize; it has a nice atmosphere and reasonable prices on a side street just off Heerstrasse, the pedestrian zone. The Hotel am Markt has traditional German food; I haven't eaten there in many years but have heard positive comments. Here's the menu:

http://www.hotel-am-markt-sankt-goar...cialities.html

I'm returning to St. Goar in about 6 weeks for a short stay after many previous visits, and I don't like "touristy" places.

I like the St. Goar hostel very much, and it's relatively cheap, but I would advise you not to book there because in May there's a good chance that it will be booked by a visiting group of school kids; teachers in Germany take their kids on week-long outings that involve hostels, and the kids raise Holy Hell day and night. If you want some sleep, get an apartment, which will probably be just as cheap.

MHgirl suggested Mainz, which is good place to spend a final night or two before flying out and which would allow for an outing to Frankfurt or Büdingen, as she suggests. Budget accommodations are hard to find, however, for a family of 4.

Hotel Am Markt website is no longer functioning.

It's working on my Firefox browser.

= tourist trap
That website in 5 years old

"Would St. Goar be a good base to cover the Upper Bavarian castle towns and the Romantic Road towns."

No, it wouldn't be a good base for Bavaria, thus my earlier post today.

Thanks to all of you for your quick reverts.

I assume St. Goar would be a good base for covering Rhine Valley towns.

Please advise me a base and a place to stay (Apartment / Garni) for each of the following areas :
Black Forest
Romantic Road Towns
upper Bavarian castle towns
Munch & Berlin or their suburbs
While recommending bases for our stay in each area please bear in mind that we will be travelling by rail.

Also, recommend a garni in St. Goar.

Thanks once again to all for your very useful info.

Kind regards,
SKPKCP11