Best Route from Berlin to Munich
 

Hey everyone,

I decided to fly into Berlin, take in the sites there a bit, and then travel to Munich for the last leg of my trip in late November.

What's the best way to travel from Berlin to Munich? Train? Car? Is there a nice scenic train I could take? Should I rent a car to experience the auto-bahns? Take some kind of bus?

What do you all think?

Thanks in advance!

Take the ICE (train). This autobahn is not much fun overall as it tends to be rather crowded. The train route is quite scenic.

Train tickets can be booked at www.bahn.de (click the flag on the top right of the window to switch to English). For late November there are still cheap tickets (Sparpreis) available for 59 eur one way, ICE throughout and no change of trains. This takes around 6.5 hours.

Alternatively, there are often also cheap flights between both cities. Check air berlin and lufthansa.

I concur with cygnus on not driving - I might want to do the drive in a different season, but in November there's always the chance of inclement weather (at which time the autobahn speeds may be restricted).

Taking the train offers city-center to city-center transportation on very comfortable trains (ICE), while flying offers overall less travel time (keep in mind that TXL is close-in, while MUC is a fair distance from the city center, although the S-Bahn offers good connections to central Munich).

Take the ICE train. It's actually quite a scenic journey once you get into Bavaria. Germany really does train travel well. If you've got the time, I would personally spend a few hours in Nürnberg. It's on the route. And you can you put your luggage in a DB locker at the station. The walled-city sits right next to the station, so you can do it all on foot. It's one of my favorite cities in Germany. Plus, I love the local sausage (Nürnbergers) -- you get them three in a roll for about 2 Euros-- it's pure indulgance....No... make that divine decadence! :p.

I'd rather recommend stopping for a couple of hours in Bamberg, one of the very few cities in Germany that have not been smashed to bits in World War II and rebuilt post-war (which applies to Munich and Berlin and also Nürnberg). Bamberg has a well preserved, mostly baroque old town centre, the cathedral, the palace, the town hall on an island in the river... And try the local beer. More about the city: http://www.bamberg.info/en/sehenswertes/

+1 on the recommendation to visit Bamberg.

Wow. Thanks everyone. I'm definitely taking the train! I did want to stop off somewhere... 6 hours is a loooong ride! I'm definitely going to look into Bamberg and Nurnberg! :)

Is there some train pass that would allow me to train hop from city to city in a day, or would I have to book each leg separately? I wouldn't mind visiting both cities!

A standard ticket will allow you to stop along the way as much as you want to within the validity period. However, those are expensive. IIRC Berlin-Munich on the ICE is around 120 Euros. Advance purchase tickets can be as low as 39 Euros on the same journey. I know that you can do up to 2 stopovers (max 48 hours each) on an international ticket for the lowest priced tickets between start and finish. I often snag a 39 Euro ticket Berlin-Prague-Vienna. This can be done online at db.de. However, I'm not sure if this also applies to domestic tickets. One helpful tip: it is also possible to get a cheaper ticket (for travel only within Germany) by purchasing an international ticket.

For example: going from Berlin to Munich. You might find a cheaper ticket going from Berlin to Innsbruck via Munich, than an actual ticket Berlin to Munich. You just have to make sure that the train you're booking is going that way. It also works if you're going to Basel or Zurich from somewhere in Germany, and you only want to go to Stuttgart or Freiburg. Another hint: Austria's oebb.at website often sells the exact same train ticket cheaper than what Deutsche Bahn is selling for the same specific train.

You can do this with the discounted advance-purchase ticket by specifying a stopover as long as the discounted fare is available on both legs.

At least the advanced purchase train tickets are train-bound, meaning you have to take a specific train to get the discounted price. But as SkyBuck said, this can be circumvented by specifying a stopover.

There's so much more to it than I thought!

I'll definitely try all your tips. For those prices, I might spend a day in Vienna or Basel... why not right? :D

Thanks everyone!

Hey guys,

I just tried to book a ticket. I'm traveling with someone and we requested that we sit next to each other, but it says it can't fufill that request.

Should I book without a reservation?

How do the trains even work? You actually have a seat just for you, like on an airplane? Or do you just pick one when you get on like on a subway?

If you're concerned that your reservations would not be next to each other, go ahead and book the ticket without reservations. When you board, just walk through the train and look for a pair of empty seats. Go to the next car(s) if necessary, but stay out of first class if you don't have a first class ticket.

Check the electronic reservation display above the seats (or the little card holders on older trains); if it's blank, you can take those seats. If it shows two station names, the seat is reserved between those stations and you can sit there before and/or after. If it says "Expressreservierung – gegebenenfalls freigeben" there's a chance someone may have reserved it after the reservation data was loaded into the train's computer at its originating station. If it says "Bahn Comfort – gegebenenfalls freigeben" it's an unreserved seat for Bahn Comfort members (like preferred elite seats on airlines). Anything unoccupied 15 minutes after the train leaves the station is fair game, but you may need to move if someone boarding at a later station has a reservation.

What's the downside risk? If the train is crowded, you might end up not able to sit together (no worse than if your reservations were for non-adjacent seats). If the train is totally packed, you might even have to stand until a seat becomes available, and good luck finding two together in that case. However, for high traffic routes/days/times, the booking system will say "please reserve" to alert you to that possibility, in which case it might be best to go ahead and get reservations and then switch on the train if a seat next to one of you is open.

Thanks for your reply, Skybuck!

Is first class usually really empty? For the longest leg of our trip, I wouldn't mind paying extra for first, especially if it gives us a really good chance of sitting next to each other (or at least across from each other in the one-seat side)

And also, thank you for all those signs to look out for, I never would have known what they meant. Typing those into my phone as we speak :p

First class is usually a lot less crowded than 2nd class with the exception of typical "consultant routes" (e.g. Frankfurt - Munich on Monday morning), so your chances of getting two adjacent seats there are higher. In addition cheaper prepaid rates are much easier to get for first class than for second class.