🇩🇪 Europe
Berlin, the castles of Bavaria, the Black Forest and the Rhine: Germany is history, beer, nature and cities that run like clockwork.
Germany is Europe's hinge: it sits in the middle, connects with everything and works with a predictability you appreciate when you have come a long way. It is also more varied than the stereotype suggests. Berlin, with its history on display and its alternative culture, looks nothing like Munich, which is Catholic, prosperous and Alpine; the port north of Hamburg and Bremen has nothing to do with the half-timbered villages of the Romantic Road, and the east still carries the marks of forty years under another system.
For Latin American travellers it has one concrete advantage: distances are short, trains reach everywhere and cities are walkable. It is considerably cheaper than France, Switzerland or the Nordic countries, and with a bit of planning on train tickets and the national transport pass, the budget stretches. The language barrier worries people more than it should: in big cities and among younger people English is enough, though in villages and for any kind of paperwork German becomes necessary.
There is something else that sets this trip apart. Germany decided not to hide its twentieth century: the Holocaust memorials sit in the middle of the capital, the concentration camps are preserved as museums and the pavements carry brass plaques with the names of deported neighbours. Travelling the country means running into that, and the uncomfortable honesty of it is part of what makes the trip stay with you. It is also one of the most accessible countries in Western Europe if you want to stay a while: it has a Working Holiday agreement with Argentina and Chile, and its public universities charge almost no tuition.
The local currency is the euro (EUR). Carry some cash, tell your bank before you travel and check the day's exchange rate.
Full converter for EUR →Frankfurt (FRA) and Munich (MUC) take the direct flights from Latin America, and Berlin (BER) concentrates European connections; all three have a train or S-Bahn into the centre in about fifteen minutes. Inside the country, Deutsche Bahn's ICE trains connect everything: Frankfurt–Berlin and Berlin–Munich run around four hours, and booking ahead on the Sparpreis fare costs a fraction of the flexible one. The Deutschlandticket, which costs 63 euros a month as of January 2026, covers all regional and urban transport in the country — not the ICE or IC trains — and if your trip runs several weeks at a slow pace, it is worth doing the maths. FlixBus is the cheap, slow alternative. Worth knowing: delays on the long-distance network are frequent, so do not chain a train and a flight on the same day.
The wide window runs from May to September, and within that June and September are the best months: long days, mild weather and fewer people than in the thick of July and August. The German summer is pleasant but it rains often, so a raincoat is never wasted in any season; and be aware that during the increasingly frequent heatwaves many places to stay and many regional trains have no air conditioning. Mid-September brings the Oktoberfest to Munich, which sends accommodation prices through the roof across Bavaria.
December is the other high season, because of the Christmas markets: they open in late November and close on 23 or 24 December, and the ones in Nuremberg, Dresden and Cologne are the most famous. Come ready for real cold, days that go dark at four in the afternoon and damp. January and February are the cheapest months and also the greyest, with little going for them apart from skiing in the Alps. Spring brings a local quirk: white asparagus season, between April and June, which in Germany is almost a national ritual and shows up on every menu.
German cooking is a good deal more varied than the sausages of the cliché, and above all it is very regional. In Berlin, currywurst and the döner, which was born in that city through the Turkish community and is now the national street food. In Bavaria, the white Weisswurst eaten before noon, the pork knuckles and Käsespätzle, homemade noodles with cheese and fried onion. In Nuremberg, the little grilled sausages; in the Rhineland, Sauerbraten, beef marinated for days. And the bread: there are more than three thousand registered varieties, the bakery is an institution and the Brezel is eaten at any hour.
Beer has its own geography and you should drink the local one: Kölsch in Cologne, Alt in Düsseldorf — rival cities that will not drink each other's — wheat Weissbier in Bavaria and Pils in the north. The purity law of 1516 is still a point of local pride. On the Rhine and the Mosel they make white wine, mostly Riesling, and it is very good. Three practical customs: in the big beer halls tables are shared with strangers and you ask before sitting down, you ask for the bill at the table and you round the tip up by saying the total as you pay, and water is not served free and comes sparkling unless you ask for 'still'.
Germany is a very safe country and travellers rarely run into anything worse than pickpockets, who concentrate in the central stations and on public transport in Berlin, Cologne, Hamburg and Frankfurt. The area around Frankfurt's central station is the visible exception: there is open drug use and it is best not to hang around at night, though the actual risk is low. The numbers are 112 for medical emergencies and fire and 110 for police, and they work in English.
The health system is excellent and expensive without cover, so travel insurance is not optional: the Schengen visa requires one with minimum cover of thirty thousand euros, and even if you do not need a visa you still want it. Pharmacies are marked with a red A and take turns on out-of-hours duty, posted on the door; many medicines sold over the counter in Latin America need a prescription here. Tap water is drinkable across the country. There are no compulsory vaccines, but if you plan to hike in the south — Bavaria and Baden-Württemberg — ask about tick-borne encephalitis and use repellent and long trousers in the woods.
Germany sits in the middle of Western Europe: a good deal cheaper than Switzerland, the Nordic countries, France or the United Kingdom, and dearer than Spain, Portugal or Central Europe. As a rough guide, and not as an official figure because no such thing exists for these categories, a hostel dorm bed usually runs thirty to forty-five euros, a mid-range hotel ninety to a hundred and forty, a plate at a stand or Imbiss between six and ten euros, a simple restaurant between fifteen and twenty-five, and a half-litre beer between four and five. Berlin is markedly cheaper than Munich, Frankfurt and Hamburg.
What changes the budget most is how you solve transport. The Deutschlandticket, which costs sixty-three euros a month as of January 2026, covers all regional and urban transport in the country with no limit — not the ICE or IC trains — and if the trip runs several weeks at an unhurried pace, it makes the difference. For the fast trains, the Sparpreis fare bought weeks ahead costs a fraction of the flexible one. Many churches and a good share of the memorials are free, and several museums have a reduced-price late slot. One detail that surprises people: cash is still very widely used, and there are bakeries, bars and even restaurants that do not take cards, so keep notes on you.
There is a set of unwritten rules worth picking up early. Punctuality is taken seriously and turning up late reads as disrespect. Pedestrians wait for the light even with no car in sight, and crossing on red in front of children will often earn you a telling-off from a stranger. On trains people speak quietly and there are quiet carriages. Rubbish is separated into several streams, and drink containers carry a deposit, the Pfand, which you get back by returning the bottle or can to the supermarket machine. And something that throws people at first: Germans are direct when they speak, they say no without softening it and do not consider that rude, just clear.
On Sunday almost everything closes, supermarkets included, so do your shopping on Saturday; bakeries, restaurants and petrol stations open. The other particularity is how the country lives with its history: memorials stand in central places, there are brass plaques in the pavements with the names of deported neighbours — the Stolpersteine — and concentration camps such as Dachau, Sachsenhausen and Buchenwald are visited as memorial sites, with free admission. It is important to know that displaying Nazi symbols or giving the salute is a criminal offence in Germany, with no exception for tourists and none for a joke photo.
The history of Germany is that of a nation that came late into being. For almost two thousand years, the space we now call Germany was a shifting mosaic of tribes, duchies, principalities, free cities and bishoprics, held together by little more than a shared language and the shadow of an imperial crown that —in Voltaire's famous jibe— was neither holy, nor Roman, nor an empire. From the Germanic warriors who wiped out three Roman legions in the Teutoburg Forest in the year 9 to the federal state that is today Europe's largest economy, the country was built on a permanent tension between fragmentation and unity, between the particularism of its regions and the dream —sometimes luminous, sometimes catastrophic— of a single Reich.
No European history brings together so many summits of civilisation and so many abysses. This is the land of Luther and the Reformation, of Bach, Goethe and Beethoven, of Kant and Gutenberg, of the Bauhaus and the economic miracle; and it is also the land that produced the Thirty Years' War, the genocide of the Herero and the Nama, the trenches of 1914, and the unprecedented crime of Nazism and the Holocaust. To travel through Germany today —Cologne Cathedral, the castles of the Rhine, the Brandenburg Gate, the memorials of Berlin, the remains of the Wall— is to move through that double memory. And it is to encounter a trait that sets contemporary Germany apart from almost any other country: the deliberate, almost obsessive will to look its own darkest past in the face. Germans gave that work a name, Vergangenheitsbewältigung, and made it a pillar of their democratic identity.
Read the full history of Germany →Pick a region and open each destination to see what to do, prices and how to get there.
These are the sources we cite most across this country's guides, with how many times each appears. Hard data —tickets, opening hours, requirements, transport— comes from the official source and carries the date we checked it. Restaurant and hotel picks come from guides and reviews, and we say so on each page.
