Germany - Berlin day trips by car / autobahn

hello all!

I'll be visiting Berlin with a friend of mine at the end of July and will be staying there for 4 nights and driving or flying to Munich after. Two questions arose:

1. Are there lots of places around Berlin where we could travel by car as a day trip or 1/2 day trip?

2. I'm thinking of renting a car while there (something sporty and fast) - how long does it make sense to rent it for, a day or two? Any interesting/scenic destinations accessible by autobahn where some spirited driving is possible?

Thanks in advance, everybody! :-)

Keep in mind that the autobahns around Berlin experience a lot of staus due to the size of the city plus road work. You may spend quite a bit of time stuck in traffic.

Somewhat nearby are the cities of Magdeburg, Leipzig, and Dresden. A little further out is the fascinating and pretty town of Weimar. You could also venture into Poland if your rental contract allows it, but I don't know what towns in the Polish border region are very interesting.

Fast driving is going to be hit or miss. You are hitting Germany during peak tourism season, which means lots of people like you wanting to hit the German roads, plus tour buses, plus countless trucks on the road (except for Sunday), plus many Germans are also on holiday during this timeframe.

Hmmm .... sounds like that might not be the best idea then. Thanks for the suggestions - I'll take a look at the cities and see what can be done in a day. :-)

From personal recent experience... if you want to drive fast on the Autobahn you should

- go somewhere remote and out of the way, like East Frisia (a long way from Berlin!), or

- travel in the middle of the night

While in theory there is no speed limit (except where otherwise indicated) in practice it's rarely possible to drive at anything much more than about 130 kph.

If all you are looking for is a drive on the autobahn from Berlin, then a suggestion is to just head up the A11 towards Szcz...?/Stettin, Poland (unsure of the Polish spelling), and then farther on the A20.

Greifswald and Stralsund are about 2.5hrs from Berlin, both very pretty towns unscathed by the war (Stralsund is even on the UNESCO list).

Thanks again, everybody! Greifswald and Stralsund sound like exactly what I need, I'll research them tonight, might make a great daytrip out of them.

I don't think I can drive to Poland as it seems like any exotic car rental company is vastly opposed to an idea, so it'll likely have to be within Germany.

While in theory there is no speed limit (except where otherwise indicated) in practice it's rarely possible to drive at anything much more than about 130 kph.

Not in my opinion, I have been driving at least 200km/h from Flensburg to North of Hamburg (I drive this stretch on average once a month during weekend), or North of Berlin towards Rostock.

Of course you can't expect you can drive the whole way through from point A-B at 200km/h but there are certainly places where you can let your car fly.

Be aware that in Berlin the Autobahn is an innercity road if it comes to speeding penalties. It can become quite expensive and painful easily!