Suggestions for trip to Germany in September
 

Travelling to Germany in Sept. for 6 nights. Flying in to Frankfurt and departing from Dusseldorf.
Will travel by train or bus or boat in between. Any ideas for best stop offs.

How about this:

Arrive in Frankfurt airport, take the train to Mainz or Wiesbaden. Spend 2 nights, including a Rhine river cruise between Wiesbaden and Koblenz, and a day in Mainz center.

Then train to Heidelberg, 2 nights. See the cathedral.

On the last day, rent a car and take a scenic drive in the countryside that includes lunch and a day in Trier (visit the Roman Ruins).

End up in Koln (Cologne), 2 nights. Enjoy the Dom and city center, have a Kolsch.

Cologne is only about a half-hour from Dussledorf, an easy drive on your last day.

I've copied something from another current thread on this topic - that said your train and boat travels are in a compact area and i do not think a German Railpass would be a great deal for your plans - investigate the Lander or Regional passes that cover all transport (not the boat i think but not sure) in a region and are dirt cheap - you cannot travel on express trains however.

Author: PalenQ
Date: 06/20/2008, 11:53 am

I can tell you about the trains - fantastic service in those areas and easy to use. With that amount of travel you want to at least consider one of the following railpasses - the German Pass for Germany only; France-Germany railpass for both countries

eurail select pass - for any 3, 4 or 5 countries - say France, Benenlux (Belgium, Netherlands and Luxembourg as one country for this purpose and Germany - can add on Austria or Switzerland or both.

Folks under 26 can get seriously discounted Youth Passes and adults traveling together discounted Twin or Saverpass for putting two names on one pass. Anyway i always refer folks to two great sources that have tons of information on trains in these countries apart from the usual pass prices and 'add to cart button' - www.budgeteuropetravel.com where you can download their free 2008 European Planning & Rail Guide which is a great primer for learning about European trains - rail maps, itineraries like you are looking for, etc. and www.ricksteves.com which also has a lot of good content not typical of usual sites that merely sell passes.

Given that you'll be there during Oktoberfest season, best to reserve hotels now!

http://www.galttech.com/research/tra...-2007-2008.php

Thanks everyone, so far. We will be back home before Oktoberfest begins so that shouldn't be a problem. I like the sound of your suggestions capxxx. Will have to do a bit of research on them. Really don't want to have to drive over there though, so will look at trains instead.
Thanks again
Any other ideas anyone or suggestions for nice hotels, preferably located near train/bus stations, but not in seedy areas.

Hello Martina:

When you arrive in Frankfurt, you could take a cab for a 40 minute trip to the Hotel Krone in Assmannshausen. This small luxury hotel is directly on the Rhine with great views from the terraces of rooms in the main building -- fabulous restaurant. From there you can take a river cruise toward Koblenz and continue your travels as you wish. I typically use the Krone to decompress before flying home, but it certainly would serve well after a long overnight flight. Just make sure your room will be ready in the morning. Good luck. Gradyghost

Good advice to skip Frankfurt and hop a train from FRA to one of the Middle Rhine towns. St. Goar is perhaps the best base if traveling by train - you can ferry across from there to St. Goarshausen which has its own train station and allows you to travel the east bank easily. St. Goar is also blessed with the most scenic setting on the Rhine - 3 castles visible from town.

On 9/13 in Oberwesel and on 9/20 in St. Goar you can catch one of the more spectacular fireworks festivals on the planet - the "Rhine in Flames" show. These very popular events include "burning" castles, live music, and lots of riverside food and wine - lots of fun. I would definitely try to book near one of these events if they fall within your period of travel.

www.rhein-in-flammen.com/index.php?id=746

I agree that taking a train from the airport to a Rhine Gorge cutesy town - and i think you cannot go wrong with any of them - is something more folks should consider than going into Frankfurt, one of Europe's least dreamiest cities IMO

Two different train stations at Frankfurt Airport

Fernbahnhof - long-distance train station for inter-city and ICE trains that stop only at main cities

Regionalbahnhof (name? has S-Bahns into Frankfurt's main station and also regional trains to places like Mainz and Rhine towns on the western bank - change at Mainz i believe to take the sideline that stops at places like Rudesheim on the east side of the Rhine Gorge.

Thanks Guys
Think we will go directly from Frankfurt airport by train to one of the towns on the Rhine, maybe St. Goar and think we will skip Heidelberg this time. Thinking of spending 3/4 nights there and take day trips each day and then go by train to Koln (Cologne) for the last 2/3 nights. We have to be at Dusseldorf airport at 8.50am on Saturday (13th) morning, so it will either be getting an early train from Koln or spending the last night in Dusseldorf. Any recommendations? Had a look at a website showing trains etc. but most of it was in German. Any other hotel recommendations either for the St. Goar/Oberwesel/Assmannshausen/Goarshausen or in Koln?

Hello Martina:

Regarding your outbound trip, I'm sure you know that there is train service to Dusseldorf airport, I think mainly through Dusseldorf Hbf. Thus an early train from Koln should be doable. Once at the airport, there is an overhead tram to the terminals. Gradyghost

Thanks Gradyghost
Yes, I think we may do that. I looked up a hotel called Ibis in Cologne, but it was fully booked. The location sounded great as it was right at the train station and the Dom. I'll keep looking. Thanks. Martina

Hello Martina:

This past October, we starting our tour of northern Germany in Koln. We stayed at the Meridian Dom Hotel which is just across the plaza from the Dom cathedral and an easy walk to Koln Hbf. The hotel is pricey but the location terrific -- an easy walk to the restaurants on the Rhine. Gradyghost

The Auf Schonburg in Oberwesal is an unforgettable castle accomodation. We just returned and felt it was a once in a lifetime experience for our family. It is a little pricey (we had a large room overlooking the rhine, with beds for 4 @ 220E including breakfast), but more than worth it if you can do it. They may already be booked- so don't waste time...

Düsseldorf airport has TWO train stations. You can check train connections on bahn.de
You don't need the German letters Ü and Ö to run a query.. use "Cologne" as start, and "Dusseldorf airport" as destination.. works that way, too.

One station at Düsseldorf airport is right underneath the terminal buildings but for suburban trains only, which require a change at Düsseldorf main station when you travel from Cologne.

The other airport train station is on the airport's Eastern perimeter but on the main line coming from Cologne. From there you take the SkyTrain to the terminals. This would be more comfortable for you, since the SkyTrains run every 3 minutes or so, while a change at Düsseldorf main station may require a longer wait for the next suburban train for the airport.
It has been a while since I used the train/SkyTrain connection, but back then you could already check-in at the station before you boarded the SkyTrain. May depend on which airline you travel with.

You can travel from Cologne main station to that latter DUS airport station on the main line with direct regional express trains:

RegionalExpress (with final destination Emmerich)
0731 dep Cologne main station
0808 arr DUS airport (main line)

or

RegionalExpress (with final destination Hamm(Westf))
0751 dep Cologne main station
0828 arr DUS airport (main line)

If you haven't already made reservations that can't be changed, don't go directly to St Goar. Be sure to include it, but there are some great places south of St Goar that you will miss. Bacharach is a walled city with some wonderful old buildings, and there is a youth hostel in an old castle above the village. Also on the other side of the river is Rudesheim, with "Wine Alley" and the Niederwald Monument on the hill above with a cable car to get there. Thre is a ruin or castle at every curve. Try starting in Mainz and get a boat tour up to St Goar. Then proceed from there. Mainz in itself has a wonderful Cathedral and the Guttenburg Museum where the first bible was printed as well as the "Old City". It's worth a stop

Thanks again everyone, so Dickscar would you recommend actually staying in Mainz for the 3 nights and do trips from there instead of staying in the St. Goar area and doing the trips from there. I would prefer to have the 3 nights in the same hotel rather than having to move each time, not that we will have that much luggage, but just for convenience.

"Dickscar would you recommend actually staying in Mainz for the 3 nights and do trips from there instead of staying in the St. Goar area and doing the trips from there."

Mainz is a very nice city - I used to live there - but it isn't a "cutesy town" or a village. It was almost entirely rebuilt after the war save for a few blocks around the Cathedral and is mostly pretty modern. Also, it is well-removed from the scenic part of the Rhine. If you take a boat tour from there, you'll spend almost two hours on the flat, fairly industrial-looking stretch of the river that lies between Mainz and Bingen, where the truly scenic part of the Rhine begins.

What you and most visitors want to see lies between Bingen and Koblenz. Mainz is good if you have to overnight after or before a flight from FRa, but with 3 days, I would definitely not base in Mainz. You're much better off spending 3 nights in St. Goar or Bopppard, which have the best transport connections, or in Bacharach or Oberwesel, all of which are lovely towns with scenic settings and proximity to castle tours. If you want to be in a larger city for some reason, I'd pick Koblenz, which is much closer to the best sights.

If you'd like to visit Mainz, I'd suggest stopping there on the way to one of the other towns - there are hundreds of lockers at the Mainz station where you can stow bags while you look around.

Rudesheim gets overlooked as one of the cuter Rhine Gorge towns and it is as cute as any - it's just that it has a reputation as being overrun with tourists - mainly because it's a stopover town for so many tour-bus groups.

Yet this riverside town whose intimate lanes are yes lined by restaurants and hotels has a lively atmosphere because of tourists milling around. It's a great people watching town and the tourists cannot obscure the sweet views of the Rhine gorge, and Bacharach on the opposite bank.

Actually i think the nearby Mosel Valley is far far more gorgeous than the tiny Rhine Gorge.

Thanks again everyone,
Been looking at available hotels in St. Goar, but very little available for the 3 nights i need 7th, 8th and 9th Sept. Are you familiar with Hotel Rheinfels. I saw it on hotel.de It's shown as a 2.5 star rating, but seems very central, very close to the train station and accross from the ferry. I think I may have to book it anyway, as there was only one other hotel in St. Goar itself available on those days and this seemed the better of the two.

Why limit your search to St Goar - there are lots of towns just as cute IMO - can't go wrong with any Rhine Gorge town IMO

The Rheinfels is high on a clifftop adjacent to Rheinfels Castle. It's a hefty uphill walk from the train station.

Have you tried this?

www.st-goar.de/612-1-host-directory.html

Try the "holiday flats" option - we enjoyed our stay at Walter Huppertz' apartments; the "Rheinblick" has a nice view of the river and is very close to the station. Any of the properties on the Heerstrasse, a pedestrians-only street filled with cafes, bakeries, etc., have easy access to trains and river boats.

Oberwesel or Boppard or St. Goarshausen are all close by and may work for you too.

In general, I'd start West down the Rhine on local trains. Stop in Bacharach or St. Goar. Take the KD line boat ride from one to the other. Cross the ferry to Marksburg Castle. Explore Reinfels Castle ruin and stay in Burg Stahleck hostel overlooking the Rhine.

Continue down Rhine, then South at Koblenz on local trains through Mosel Valley to Trier and maybe Luxembourg. Stop in Cochem, see Cochem Castle. See Burg Eltz, hike to the Castle.

Back up to Bonn and Koln. If you are lucky, you can visit Bonnfest - like Octoberfest only better (less touristy, goes all night). After Koln, you will be close to Dusseldorf to catch your flight.

This looks like a Castle tour but it's really a cleverly disguised wine tasting tour. Both the Rhine and Mosel valleys have great wines (I prefer the dry whites,"troken" or "halb-troken") and this is the best time of year to be there.

This is also a festival time of year. If you have a chance to visit one, do. Only Octoberfest is a tourist zoo, most are well attended by generations of locals and very fun.

For nice accomodations that are affordable try pensions. In my opinion they are more comfortable than most hotels although you may have to use the bathroom down the hall.

Bonnfest was in early September when I went. I know it was before September 11th because I was in Germany on THE Sept. 11th and had already been.

Yeh for the castle of your dreams head to Burg Eltz perched high above the Mosel above Moselkern (train station and K-D boat dock from Koblenz or Cochem)

the rare area castle not destroyed thru the ages or by Napoleon i guess, along with Marksburg on the Rhine.

the 'Mother' Mosel is a very different river than the 'Father' Rhine - a lazy damned up river vs the roaring fast-flowing Rhine. To me the Mosel is way cuter than the cute enough Rhine Gorge and Cochem would be the perfect fairy-tale wine town to domicile in - it also has a castle of your dreams poking above a vineyard-carpeted hill from the town center (but Ersatz, only being built in the form of a medieval castle in the later 1800s i guess.

Hello everyone again and "Thank You". Well, I've booked the Rheinfels hotel for the first 3 nights. It seems there are two hotels with similar names in St. Goar. The other Rheinfels is Schloss?(spelling) and is near the castle. How far would Cochem be from either St. Goar or Koblenz. It would probably be possible to take it in on one of our day trips. Sounds like its somewhere not to be missed!

Cochem is about an hour by train i would think from St Goar and just about 30 mins from Koblenz. You can also stop at Moselkern en route and hike thru the woods up to Burg Eltz (or take a mini-bus or taxi from the station up there) - an easy day trip and at Cochem you see the fantastic Mosel valley at its finest.

We were just in the rhine/ mosel area. We stayed 2 nights in Oberwesal (near st. goar), and one night in Cochem. You could definately do a day trip to Cochem. Like the previous poster said, you could also visit Burg Eltz. Google maps said 30 minutes to Cochem by car, I think it was more like 45.

We prefered the towns along the Rhine. For some reason when we went, the Rhine was a little quiet, and Cochem was full of tourists.

You can also take a boat to Burg Eltz, or rather Moselkern and then hike or bus or taxi up the few miles to the castle - so famous in Germany that it once graced the old 500 mark banknotes in pre-euro days

but K-D boats leave but once a day May-oct or so from koblenz around 9am, put in at Moselkern a few hours later - you can return by train from Moselkern or hop the boat as it makes it way back from Cochem to koblenz.

Unlike Rhine K-D boats this is a tiny boat so is a much different type craft - but shortly after leaving Koblenz and passing under the autobahn bridge high above the wondrous and deep vineyard-carpeted Mosel Valley begins in all its glory.

We visited a place called the Wine Institute in Bernkastle, where for a few euros we were encouraged to taste some 150 different wines. It was a fantastic experience! Of course, most of the wines in this Rhine-Mosel region are white, and although I much prefer red, there were some awfully good whites. And, the ones we liked best weren't the most expensive. See if this link to Bernkastle works for you.
http://www.metacafe.com/watch/139238...astel_germany/ - 70k

In Assmannshausan, we enjoyed a very good red!

Enjoy your trip!

I would second Russ's suggestion of the Rhine in Flames. My wife and I were there for it last September, and it was great! Best fireworks I've ever seen, illuminating the castle over St. Goarhausen (not sure if it's being held in the same place this year). All enhanced by liberal consumption of great wine. I didn't realize it beforehand, but later that night, around midnight, they staged a reprise of the show in Koblenz where the Rhine & Mosel join, and the view must have been great from the Deutches Eck.

I'd also second PalenQ's recommendations about the Mosel valley & Cochem. If you can't find lodging in the smaller river towns, I can recommend Koblenz. I know others aren't fond of it since it's larger and not quaint like Cochem, St. Goar, etc. But - it has great water or rail connections up either the Rhine or the Mosel, and it also has more to do at night since the sidewalks don't get rolled up at 8pm. It's also one of the few towns in the area with a brewery (Konigsbacher, I think).

For years on bike trips i once conducted we would stay two nights in Koblenz and i got to know this town and like it a lot

There is a neat restored Altstadt and the river fronts, on the Mosel and the Rhine are neat - full of strollers like previous poster said

and at the confluence of the Mother Mosel and Father Rhine is an old statue in honor of German Unity

before the waning days of WWII it had an equestrian statue of Kaiser Wilhelm sitting on top of it and, as the owner of the campground where we stayed right at the confluence but across the river from the statue said, an American GI for fun blew it to smithereens - a new statue now graces this very famous spot for Germans.

Across the Rhine from the confluence is an old fort (Ehrenbreitsen ??sp??) that sits high on a cliff - a little pedestrian ferry goes over to its base and then there is a chairlift up to the top or a steep path - this is now one of Europe's most famous youth hostels in one wing and some kind of military or regional museum in the other part.

Don't neglect Koblenz IMO

Yes and Koblenz with its train and ship connections makes a fine base and a great one yes for folks not seeking quiet and solitude from sunset on

Thanks again to you all. Sorry I've been away for a few days but I have booked a hotel in Koln for the last 3 nights. It's Four Points Shearaton near the station and quite close to the Dom. It's seems nice anyway. Will do some excursions from there and will be able to sample some of the city life too. Looking forward to it now.

Though i consider Cologne to be a classic few-hour stop at most for the average tourist since the city to me is blahly modern due to extensive war damage if you look around you can ferret out some charms - especially the lively riverside walk ann taking a Rundfahrt boat cruise on the Rhine - basically a boat up and down - at night some have bands and meals on board. Watching the Rhine can be fun - the non-stop parade of both ocean-going ships and barges and passenger craft.

And there is a vestpocket rebuilt Altstadt with the usual beer gardens, restaurants, etc.

That's one of the problems with some of the larger cities in Germany, Austria, etc. Many were bombed heavily during WW2 and have been rebuilt.

ttt

Bonn (& Bad Godesburg and Drachenfels) is one fine day trip from Cologne - Bonn does have some romance, the Mozart House (i think it's Mozart) - a well riverfront and neat buildings from recent decades when it was West Germany's capital.

>Mozart House (i think it's Mozart)
Pal, that's bad, really bad.