Itinerary · for one

Germany · Berlin to Bavaria

An ICE-spine north-to-south loop · twelve nights, solo, late summer shoulder. Berlin for three nights at the start — Brandenburg Gate and the Reichstag glass dome, Museum Island (the Pergamon, Neues, and Bode in one long day), East Side Gallery on the longest surviving Wall section, Stasi-museum Hohenschönhausen, currywurst at Konnopke”s under the U-Bahn tracks, the Holocaust Memorial. ICE south to Dresden for two nights — the rebuilt Frauenkirche (steeple lit, dome photogenic), Zwinger palace gardens, Brühl”s Terrace along the Elbe, Semperoper at dusk, hand-cut pasta at Bautzner Tor. Local S-Bahn to Saxon Switzerland for one night at Bad Schandau — Bastei sandstone bridge above the Elbe gorge, Kuhstall arch trail, Pfaffenstein summit, riverboat back to Dresden in the afternoon. ICE south to Munich for three nights — Marienplatz Glockenspiel at noon, English Garden surf wave at the Eisbach, Viktualienmarkt for pretzels and weißwurst at breakfast, BMW Welt, Oktoberfest tents at Theresienwiese for one steady afternoon. Train south to Garmisch-Partenkirchen for two nights — Zugspitze cable car at 2,962 m, Eibsee lake walk at the base, day-trip to Hohenschwangau for Schloss Neuschwanstein. ICE back to Munich for one last night before the flight east.

1 traveler 6 bases 12 nights 13 min read

v1 · May 14, 2026

Sep 10 · Day 1 · the first one

Wheels down at BER. Then the long ICE south.

Out of Hong Kong on a Thursday, Berlin by Friday morning — the new BER terminal''s long walkway and the airport-express train into Hauptbahnhof. Twelve nights ahead on the ICE rail spine — three in Berlin for the Brandenburg Gate, Museum Island, and the Stasi archives, two in Dresden for the rebuilt Frauenkirche and the Zwinger, one at Saxon Switzerland for the Bastei sandstone bridge over the Elbe, three in Munich for Marienplatz, the English Garden, and the last weekend of Oktoberfest, two at Garmisch-Partenkirchen for the Zugspitze cable car and a morning at Schloss Neuschwanstein, and one final night back in Munich for the ICE to the flight east. Two countries in one long train spine, no need for a rental car · the DB ICE is the way.

Begin the journey ↓

Sep 10 → Sep 22 · 12 nights · 6 bases · 710 km between bases

Chapter 01 · Sep 10–12 Days 1–3

Berlin · Mauerstadt

Three nights in the capital of memory. Walk the Wall sections that survive, climb the Reichstag glass dome, see the Pergamon Altar and the Nefertiti bust on the same museum island, eat currywurst under the U-Bahn tracks.

3 nights

Land BER (Berlin Brandenburg) · Airport Express FEX 30 min to Hauptbahnhof

Transit WelcomeCard Berlin AB · covers S-Bahn, U-Bahn, tram, bus

Things to do

Reichstag glass dome at sunset · book free entry online weeks ahead · Foster cupola spiral with audio commentary
Brandenburg Gate at the head of Unter den Linden · the Quadriga sculpture on top, the Holocaust Memorial two blocks south
Museum Island long day · Pergamon (closed for renovation? check 2027), Neues for Nefertiti, Bode for sculpture · €19 day-pass
East Side Gallery · the 1.3 km of remaining Wall painted by artists in 1990 along Mühlenstraße
Stasi Memorial Hohenschönhausen · the former GDR interrogation prison · guided tours by former inmates
Currywurst at Konnopke's · under the U-Bahn tracks at Eberswalder Straße · the original Prenzlauer Berg recipe

Stay in Mitte for walking range · or Prenzlauer Berg for cafés + restaurants · skip the Tiergarten 5-star strip

Bookings

hotel Mid-range hotel in Mitte or Prenzlauer Berg · 3 nights pending

flight HKG → BER (Lufthansa via FRA or direct via Cathay) pending

Chapter 01 · the story

Berlin has more chapters than any other city in this trip and most other trips. The Wall came down in 1989 and the city has spent every year since arguing with itself about what to remember, what to rebuild, and what to leave broken on purpose.

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The Wall is not gone. It is broken into pieces and the pieces are arranged across the city like a difficult sentence whose punctuation the planners refused to soften. At Bernauer Strasse a long preserved section runs along what used to be the death strip, photographs of the people who tried to cross at exactly the spots where they tried, a watchtower still standing, the foundations of the apartment buildings whose residents leapt from upper windows in the first days before the bricks went up. The grass between the two walls is mown. It feels wrong to mow it. The Berliners mow it anyway, because the alternative is to pretend it was always grass.

Two blocks south of the Brandenburg Gate, the Holocaust Memorial stands in 2,711 concrete pillars on a five-acre slope, the slabs rising to chest height in the middle so you lose the horizon and the city sound at once. Peter Eisenman left the meaning deliberately unfixed. The children running through it on a school trip are not desecrating it; the architect anticipated them. The field is open at every side and every hour.

On Museum Island, the Pergamon’s Ishtar Gate stands reassembled in glazed cobalt brick — the lions and aurochs that walked Babylon at 600 BC — and a hundred metres away the Bode’s Byzantine reliefs sit in rooms with windows over the Spree. The city is the rare capital that pulls antiquity, modernity, and atrocity into the same walking radius without flinching at the proximity.

Currywurst under the U-Bahn tracks at Eberswalder Strasse is two euros fifty. Konnopke’s has sold it from that exact corner since 1960, through the Wall on both sides. The line is twenty deep on a Tuesday. The city keeps going, which is also part of the argument.

Chapter 02 · Sep 13–14 Days 4–5

Dresden · Florenz an der Elbe

Two nights in the Saxon baroque capital, rebuilt stone by numbered stone after the February 1945 firestorm. The Frauenkirche's dome is back, the Zwinger's pavilions are intact, the river skyline still earns the "Florence on the Elbe" nickname.

2 nights

Get there ICE Berlin → Dresden ~2 hr · Dresden Hauptbahnhof central

Tickets Frauenkirche dome platform ticket separate from the church · €10, book online

Things to do

Frauenkirche · the 1726 baroque sandstone church rebuilt 1996–2005 using original numbered stones · climb the dome
Zwinger palace and gardens · the Baroque pavilions of August the Strong, Old Masters Picture Gallery with Raphael
Brühl's Terrace along the Elbe · the "balcony of Europe" with the baroque facades on the river side
Semperoper · Saxon State Opera, the Gottfried Semper 1841 horseshoe theatre · short guided tour or an evening performance
Fürstenzug · the 102 m porcelain-tile mural depicting the Saxon dukes, on the wall outside the Residenzschloss
Eierschecke (Dresden cheesecake) at Café Schinkelwache · the Saxon three-layer dessert, custard + cheese + yeast base

Altstadt for the riverside walk · or Neustadt across the river for cheaper + bars

Bookings

train ICE Berlin → Dresden · reserved seat pending

hotel Altstadt or Neustadt hotel · 2 nights pending

Chapter 02 · the story

The Frauenkirche came down in the firestorm of February 1945 and stayed a heap of rubble for sixty years. Then the Saxons rebuilt it stone by numbered stone, and you can still see which stones are which in the wall.

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The Frauenkirche on Neumarkt is two churches at once. The pale sandstone is new — quarried from the same Saxon hills the original builders used in 1726 — and the darker stones, scattered like a deliberate constellation across the walls, are the originals, pulled from the rubble pile that the East German government left in place from February 1945 to 1989 as an explicit memorial to what bombing does. Each surviving block was photographed, cleaned, catalogued, and slotted back into roughly the position it had held in the original masonry. The reconstruction took from 1996 to 2005. The cross on the dome was forged in London by the son of one of the British pilots who flew the raid.

Bombing Dresden in the last weeks of the war remains one of the harder questions of the air-war historiography, and the city chooses not to settle it. The plaques in the church name the dead on both sides. The dome is open to climb, 67 metres up, and the view is of an Altstadt that looks medieval and is mostly under twenty years old, every facade a faithful replica painted to match photographs from the 1920s.

A block away the Zwinger Palace stands intact — August the Strong’s 1709 pleasure court, baroque pavilions arranged around a sunken garden, the Old Masters gallery holding Raphael’s Sistine Madonna whose two cherubs at the bottom became internet wallpaper four centuries after the artist died. The Fürstenzug along Augustusstrasse runs 102 metres of porcelain tile depicting every Wettin ruler in succession; it survived 1945 essentially undamaged, because porcelain handles heat better than sandstone.

The Elbe at Brühl’s Terrace at dusk is the picture the Saxons sell to themselves and to visitors — pastel facades reflected in a slow river, paddle steamers drifting downstream — and you stand at the railing knowing that the picture is, in the most literal sense, a reconstruction.

Chapter 03 · Sep 15 Day 6

Saxon Switzerland · the Bastei

A sandstone-pillar national park along the Elbe just south of Dresden. One night for the Bastei bridge above the gorge, an arch trail through the forest, and the leisurely river-boat return.

1 night

Get there S-Bahn S1 Dresden Hbf → Bad Schandau ~45 min

Pace One full day of walking + one half-day · stay at a riverside Pension for the early light on the cliffs

Things to do

Bastei sandstone bridge · the 76 m bridge above the Elbe at 305 m elevation, the view that prints on every Saxony postcard
Kuhstall (Cow Shed) natural arch · 1 hr forest trail to a 17 m natural sandstone arch with the view from inside the rock
Pfaffenstein summit · 2 hr loop trail to a flat-topped sandstone outcrop with 360° views
Sächsische Dampfschiffahrt riverboat · the world's oldest paddle-steamer fleet, return Bad Schandau → Dresden on the Elbe
Lichtenhainer Wasserfall · the small staged waterfall in the Kirnitzschtal valley · short stop along the Schmalspurbahn tram
Quark with linseed oil and herbs · the Saxon staple Quark mit Leinöl, at a Pension dinner

Riverside Pension at Bad Schandau or Rathen · skip the bigger hotels in Dresden if you want the early-light walk to the Bastei

Bookings

train S-Bahn S1 Dresden → Bad Schandau pending

hotel Pension at Rathen or Bad Schandau · 1 night pending

rental Riverboat Bad Schandau → Dresden (afternoon) pending

Chapter 03 · the story

The Bastei bridge spans seventy-six metres of sandstone pillars rising three hundred and five metres above the Elbe. Caspar David Friedrich painted this gorge in 1822 and the rocks have not moved. The fog does the same thing at dawn that it did then.

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The path up from Rathen takes forty minutes through beech forest along a sandstone ravine, switchbacking past pillars that the geologists call Tafelberg towers — flat-topped sandstone columns weathered from a cretaceous seabed that rose ninety million years ago and is still rising. The bridge at the top was built in wood in 1824 and rebuilt in stone in 1851, an arched sandstone span linking seven free-standing pillars across a gorge that drops to the Elbe far below. You cross it. The wind from the river comes up the gorge in a single steady column.

The view east is the one Caspar David Friedrich painted in Felsen im Elbsandsteingebirge — five sandstone columns receding into mist, the river bending away at the bottom. Friedrich walked these paths when they were a day’s hike from Dresden by carriage. The romantic movement found its iconography here: the cliff edge, the small human figure, the disclosed and re-veiled landscape. The fog behaves exactly as he painted it because the gorge is narrow enough and the river broad enough that morning humidity collects in a pool below the bridge and clears upward through the trees by 9am.

The Kuhstall, an hour east on a forest trail through the Kirnitzschtal valley, is a natural sandstone arch seventeen metres across — locals stabled cattle inside it during the Thirty Years’ War, and the name stuck. The arch frames a clean rectangle of forest and sky from inside the rock. Beyond it the trail climbs to the Schneiderloch crack, a near-vertical scramble where iron staples in the rock have been doing the work of ladders since 1824.

Back at Rathen the Sächsische Dampfschiffahrt — the world’s oldest operating paddle-steamer fleet, founded 1836 — slides past downstream with smoke from its coal furnaces drifting over the top deck. The boats are wooden, the engines are original, and the crossing to Dresden takes three slow hours along a river that hasn’t been straightened. The cliffs recede behind you the way they recede in the painting.

Chapter 04 · Sep 16–18 Days 7–9

Munich · Marienplatz and Oktoberfest

Three nights in the Bavarian capital. Marienplatz Glockenspiel, English Garden longer than Central Park with a standing surf wave at one end, last weekend of Oktoberfest at Theresienwiese for one steady afternoon.

3 nights

Get there ICE Dresden → München ~5 hr (one change at Leipzig or Nürnberg) · or Dresden → BER short flight + DB Munich-bound

Oktoberfest Late-September window · Spaten-Hofbräu-Augustiner tents · table reservations needed Fri–Sun · weekdays walk-in possible

Things to do

Marienplatz at noon · the New Town Hall (Neues Rathaus) Glockenspiel cycle at 12:00, the gothic carved figures
English Garden + Eisbach surf wave · 4 km² park, Chinesischer Turm beer garden, and a standing wave with city surfers in wetsuits
Viktualienmarkt for breakfast · weißwurst with sweet mustard, fresh pretzel, Helles at the Markt's biergarten
Oktoberfest tents at Theresienwiese · one steady weekday afternoon, Maß of Helles (1 L), Hendl chicken at table
Asamkirche on Sendlinger Straße · the most ornate Baroque interior in Munich, built by two brothers as their private chapel
BMW Welt + Olympic Park · the museum-showroom and the 1972 Munich Olympics site · cable cars over the Olympiasee

Altstadt for walkability · or Au-Haidhausen for less-touristy + restaurants

Bookings

train ICE Dresden → München · reserved seats pending

hotel Altstadt or Au-Haidhausen hotel · 3 nights pending

activity Oktoberfest tent table reservation (if Fri/Sat) or walk-in weekday pending

Chapter 04 · the story

A standing wave on a river running through a city park. Surfers in wetsuits queue politely on the bank and drop in one by one, riding the Eisbach in the middle of Munich, twenty minutes' walk from the Marienplatz Glockenspiel.

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The Eisbach is a side-channel of the Isar that the engineers diverted into the English Garden in the eighteenth century, and where it passes under the Prinzregentenstrasse bridge a concrete weir creates a standing wave roughly a metre high. Surfers discovered it in the early 1970s, the city tolerated it, the city banned it, the city un-banned it, and now there are bronze plaques honouring the original riders and a polite queue on the bank that moves on the unspoken rule of one wave per turn. The surfers wear five-millimetre wetsuits because the water comes off the foothills of the Alps and stays cold all year. They ride a wave that does not move while a river runs through a city to either side of them.

The English Garden is larger than Central Park and the Chinesischer Turm beer garden at its centre has seven thousand seats under chestnut trees. You bring your own food if you want to and you buy the beer at the kiosk in litre Mass mugs. The brass band on the tower plays Sundays.

At eleven on Marienplatz the Glockenspiel begins its fifteen-minute cycle in the New Town Hall tower — forty-three bells and thirty-two figures, the Duke Wilhelm V joust on the upper level and the Schäfflertanz coopers’ dance below, commemorating the end of a 1517 plague. The crowd is mostly tourists and mostly delighted; the Müncheners walk past on their way to the U-Bahn.

The Hofbräuhaus three blocks east has poured beer continuously since 1589 and the singing in the hall at 9pm is loud enough that the Maß of helles on the table actually vibrates. The brass band in lederhosen plays Ein Prosit on a four-minute loop and the hall sings it back. By the fourth round the room is locked into the rhythm. By the sixth the strangers at your table are introducing themselves. Munich at dusk doesn’t apologise for being exactly what the postcards promised.

Chapter 05 · Sep 19–20 Days 10–11

Garmisch-Partenkirchen · Zugspitze and Neuschwanstein

Two nights at the Bavarian Alps' base camp. Cable car to Germany's highest point at 2,962 m, lakeside walk at the Eibsee, day-trip west to the Disney-inspiration castle of Ludwig II in the Hohenschwangau valley.

2 nights

Get there DB regional Munich → Garmisch-Partenkirchen ~1h25

Zugspitze Buy the combo cable car + cogwheel rail ticket online · €70 round-trip · weather window opens 09:00

Things to do

Zugspitze cable car from Eibsee · 10 min vertical, 1,945 m gain, the Bavarian-Tyrolean border on the summit deck
Schloss Neuschwanstein · day-trip to Hohenschwangau, the 19th-century fairy-tale castle of Ludwig II, Marienbrücke for the photo
Eibsee lake walk · 7.5 km flat loop around the alpine lake at 973 m, the Zugspitze reflected at the south end
Partnachklamm · the gorge walk just outside Garmisch, narrow timber path through the Partnach river canyon
Hohenschwangau village + Alpsee · the smaller yellow castle and the lake below, lunch before the 09:00 castle tour timed slot
Kaiserschmarrn at a Garmisch Alm · the shredded sugared pancake with apple sauce, Bavarian apres-walk dessert

Stay in Garmisch town for restaurants · or Grainau closer to the Eibsee station

Bookings

train DB regional Munich → Garmisch-Partenkirchen pending

hotel Garmisch or Grainau hotel · 2 nights pending

activity Zugspitze combo cable car · book online to skip the queue pending

activity Neuschwanstein castle timed entry · book online 6+ weeks ahead in shoulder season pending

Chapter 05 · the story

Zugspitze is 2,962 metres and the cable car climbs 1,945 of them in ten minutes. The summit straddles the Bavarian-Tyrolean border, the deck has a gold cross, and on a clear morning you see four countries from the same handrail.

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The Eibsee at 973 metres is glacial-fed and the colour of old green glass. The cable car station sits at the western end of the lake and the gondola lifts off at a forty-degree angle, climbing the north face of the mountain in a single span of cable that the engineers strung in 2017 and that holds the world record for the longest free-hanging cable-car run. The car rises through cloud banks that move horizontally past the windows. The valley below shrinks fast.

The summit deck stands at 2,962 metres on the German-Austrian border — the actual border runs through the middle of the restaurant, the till on one side takes euros for Bavarian schnitzel and the till on the other side takes euros for Tyrolean Kaiserschmarrn — and the golden summit cross was carried up in pieces by mountaineers in 1851 and reassembled at the top. On a clear day the panorama opens onto four hundred Alpine peaks across Germany, Austria, Switzerland, and Italy. The Schneeferner glacier, once a permanent ice cap below the summit, has retreated seventy-five percent since 1980. The remaining ice is covered in white tarpaulin in summer to slow the melt.

The Partnachklamm, a kilometre south of Garmisch town, is a gorge cut eighty metres deep through limestone over the last ten thousand years by the Partnach river. A timber walkway hugs the rock face two metres above the rapids — in winter the entire gorge ices over and the walkway becomes a tunnel through frozen spray. In September the water still runs grey-green from glacial silt, and the spray catches your jacket as you walk.

Garmisch and Partenkirchen were separate villages until 1935 when the Nazi state forced their merger to host the 1936 Winter Olympics. The Olympic ski stadium still stands at the edge of Partenkirchen, the original stone tribunes intact, the ski jump restored. Bavaria does not hide its history; it leaves the stadium open for school sports and the discomfort sits there with the architecture.

Chapter 06 · Sep 21 Day 12

Munich · last Maß

One last night in Munich. Hofbräuhaus for a Maß and weißwurst, a last walk past the Frauenkirche, S-Bahn to the airport in the morning.

1 night

Get back DB regional Garmisch → München ~1h25

Last evening Pick Hofbräuhaus or the Augustiner-Keller biergarten · skip dual venues

Last things

Hofbräuhaus am Platzl · the 1589 royal brewery beer hall, helles Maß, weißwurst with sweet mustard and a pretzel
Frauenkirche · the Late Gothic twin domes of the Munich cathedral · climb the south tower for the city view
Last walk through Hofgarten · the Renaissance court garden, the Diana Temple in the middle
Marienplatz one more time · the Glockenspiel at 11:00 if you're early enough
Augustiner-Keller biergarten · the alternative beer hall · chestnut-shaded outdoor tables, Helles from the cask
Last pretzel from a Bäckerei · Hofpfisterei for sourdough or a Brezn from any U-Bahn kiosk for the flight

Same Munich hotel as Chapter 4 · or pivot to a S-Bahn line near Flughafen

Bookings

train DB regional Garmisch → München pending

hotel Munich hotel · 1 last night pending

flight MUC → HKG (Lufthansa direct ~11h or via FRA) pending

Chapter 06 · the story

Twelve days, six chapters, one country that argued with itself the whole way. The last evening is a chestnut-shaded table at Augustiner-Keller, a Maß from the cask, and the slow recognition that Germany is not one place.

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The chestnut trees at Augustiner-Keller were planted in 1812 above the brewery’s underground beer cellars, where the ice was packed in winter to keep the lager cool through summer — the trees were chosen because their dense canopy shades the soil and keeps the cellar cold. The biergarten holds five thousand on a Friday and maybe four hundred on a quiet Tuesday in late September. The beer comes from the cask, not the tap. The bartender pulls a Maß in seven seconds with no foam.

The Frauenkirche’s twin domes on the Munich skyline are the landmark the city refuses to build over — no structure inside the Altstadt ring is allowed to exceed 99 metres, the height of the shorter dome. Walking past it for the last time at dusk you realise the trip has been bookended by domes. The Berliner Dom on Museum Island, the Frauenkirche in Dresden whose darkened original stones still mark the violence in the wall, the Asamkirche’s baroque interior on Sendlinger Strasse, the twin onion domes here. Germany builds in domes and rebuilds in domes. The Wall in Berlin is the inverse — the country’s other instinct, to leave the fracture visible.

The flight is from MUC at 10:35, the S-Bahn from Marienplatz takes forty minutes, the last pretzel comes from the Bäckerei kiosk at the airport gate. The trip resolves into a sequence of contrasts the country itself stages on purpose: Berlin’s Wall and Dresden’s darkened stones, Bavaria’s beer halls and the 1936 ski stadium the planners left standing in Partenkirchen, the Bastei bridge above a gorge Caspar David Friedrich painted two hundred years ago and the surfers riding a standing wave in a Munich park.

A country that argues with itself in public. The argument is the point.

Sep 22 · Day 13 · the last one

Last Helles at the Hofbräuhaus. Then the flight home.

Final evening at the Hofbräuhaus on Platzl, a Maß of helles lager and a plate of weißwurst with sweet mustard. Last walk through the Viktualienmarkt, S-Bahn back to München Hauptbahnhof and onward to Flughafen, Lufthansa takeoff at 11 p.m. Hong Kong by mid-afternoon. Twelve nights — three through Berlin''s memorial-and-museum sprawl, two with Dresden''s baroque skyline, one with the Elbe winding below the Bastei bridge, three under the Frauenkirche''s twin towers and the Munich beer-hall arches, two with Zugspitze on the south horizon. The pretzel and the kraut and the long ICE corridors already half-remembered.

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