Germany Travel Guide

The trains are the point

Germany is a country you see properly from a train window. The fast ICE services join Berlin, Hamburg, Cologne, Frankfurt and Munich at speeds that make domestic flying pointless — Berlin to Munich is under four hours city centre to city centre, with no airport at either end. Book on Deutsche Bahn’s own site or app; advance Sparpreis fares are a fraction of the walk-up price, and they go on sale six months ahead.

For slower travel there is the Deutschlandticket, a single monthly pass that covers every regional train, city U-Bahn, S-Bahn, tram and bus in the country — everything except the ICE and IC long-distance services. It is a subscription rather than a tourist ticket, so you buy it for a calendar month and cancel before the month ends. The price has risen each January and currently sits at about €63 a month, so check the figure before you count on it. If you are staying two weeks or more and moving around regional Germany, it usually pays for itself in the first few days.

A word of honesty about punctuality: the old joke about German trains running to the second has not been true for some years now. Long-distance services are frequently late, and connections of under fifteen minutes are optimistic. Build in slack on the day you fly home.

Driving, and the Autobahn

You do not need a car for the cities, and in central Berlin or Munich it is a liability. You do want one for the Romantic Road, the Black Forest, the Alpine passes and the smaller Rhine and Mosel villages. A US, Canadian or UK licence is accepted for a visit; an International Driving Permit is cheap and worth carrying.

About a half of the Autobahn network has no general speed limit, but the rest does, limits change without much warning, and they are enforced by camera. The rule that matters most is lane discipline: you overtake on the left and only on the left, and you move back right immediately. A car closing on you at 250 km/h is not unusual and will not expect you to still be there. Most city centres are Umweltzonen — low-emission zones — requiring a windscreen sticker; a hire car will normally already have one, but check before you collect it.

Money, tipping and the closed Sunday

Germany remains a cash country by northern European standards. Cards are fine in hotels, supermarkets and larger restaurants, but bakeries, market stalls, small cafés, some taxis and the occasional Gaststätte are still cash only, and a surprising number of places take German Girocard but not Visa or Mastercard. Carry forty or fifty euros in notes and you will never be caught out.

Tipping is modest and done out loud. You do not leave coins on the table; you round up when you pay and say the figure you want to hand over — “make it twenty-five” on a bill of twenty-three. Five to ten per cent is generous. Service is included by law, so anything you add is genuinely a thank-you rather than a wage top-up.

Almost every shop and supermarket is closed on Sunday, and that includes the day before a public holiday in some states. Station supermarkets, petrol stations and bakeries are the usual exceptions. Buy your Saturday groceries on Saturday. Most cities also add a small nightly Kulturförderabgabe or bed tax, typically around five per cent of the room rate, collected at the property and not included in the price you booked.

Two habits worth picking up: drinking-water bottles and cans carry a Pfand deposit of up to 25 cents that you get back at a supermarket machine, and tap water is safe everywhere but is not brought to your table — if you want it, ask for it, and expect to pay for a bottle instead.

Europe’s Entry/Exit System is now in force. Since 10 April 2026 it has operated at every Schengen border crossing and passport stamps have been discontinued. On your first crossing you will have your fingerprints taken and your photograph made at the border, which adds a few minutes; after that the check is quicker. There is nothing to apply for and nothing to pay.

ETIAS — the travel authorisation you may have read about, expected to cost around EUR 20 and last three years — is not in force yet, and the European Union has not set a start date. Its own agency dropped the 2026 target and is still working on a revised timetable; most of the travel industry now expects 2027 at the earliest. When it does begin there will be six months in which you can travel without one, then six months in which only first-time arrivals are exempt.

What this means for your trip right now: you do not need ETIAS. You do need a passport issued within the last ten years and valid for at least three months beyond the date you plan to leave. We will change this paragraph the day the European Union names a date, and not a day before.