Germany quietly built the best backpacker deal in Europe: the Deutschlandticket, a flat-rate monthly pass (€58 in 2026) covering every regional train and bus in the country. Bavaria is where it pays for itself in three days — the whole state is laced with slow, scenic regional lines, and every leg of this route is included.
Munich: beer gardens as a way of life
Give Munich three days. The compulsories are quick — Marienplatz's glockenspiel, the twin onion domes of the Frauenkirche — and then the city's real culture takes over: beer gardens. The rules matter and are wonderful: at self-service tables you may bring your own food, a Maß (full liter) of Helles runs €9–10, and pretzels come the size of steering wheels. Augustiner-Keller for the classic, the Chinesischer Turm in the English Garden for the setting, and the English Garden itself for Munich's strangest sight — surfers riding the standing wave on the Eisbach river year-round, in wetsuits, in a city park. On a clear day, climb St Peter's tower (€5) and the Alps line the horizon like a rumor of the rest of your week. Dachau memorial is a free, essential half-day by S-Bahn. Dorms €30–40.
Füssen and the castles
Regional trains run direct Munich–Füssen in two hours through progressively greener country. Füssen is a pastel old town five kilometers from the Neuschwanstein circus, and staying the night is the trick: the day-trip tide from Munich peaks from 10am to 4pm. Book castle tickets online well ahead (€21; the exterior and the bridge are free), take bus 73/78 to Hohenschwangau, and — most important — walk the ten minutes past the castle to Marienbrücke, the bridge strung over the gorge, where mad King Ludwig's fantasy floats above the trees with the Alpsee glittering behind. Then keep walking uphill; five minutes past the bridge the crowds vanish entirely. The lakeside walk around the Alpsee, below the older, yellower Hohenschwangau castle, is free and arguably the better hour.
Garmisch-Partenkirchen: the Zugspitze and cheaper thrills
A lovely slow bus (or train via Buchloe) tracks the mountains east to Garmisch-Partenkirchen, Germany's alpine capital under the Zugspitze, the country's 2,962m high point. The cogwheel-train-and-cable-car combination to the summit costs a genuinely painful €75 return — glorious on a clear day, a white void otherwise, so decide at breakfast. The budget masterpiece is the Partnachklamm (€10): a 700-meter gorge where the path is blasted into the cliff and the river thunders past close enough to soak you, then opens into high meadows where you can loop back over the tops. Ludwig's smaller, stranger Linderhof palace is a bus ride away, and the Eibsee — the green-blue lake at the Zugspitze's foot — is the swim of the trip.
Berchtesgaden and the Königssee
Cross-country by regional train (via Munich or Salzburg, 3–4 hours, still free on the pass) to Berchtesgaden, tucked into Germany's southeastern pocket of proper big mountains. The Königssee is the destination: a fjord-like lake pinned between vertical walls, where electric boats (€32 return) have run silently since 1909 and the skipper stops mid-lake to play a trumpet at the echo wall — the cliffs answer, clearly, twice. Get off at St Bartholomä's red-domed chapel and walk to the ice chapel below the Watzmann's east face, or ride to the end at Salet and walk twenty minutes to the Obersee, whose reflections are so perfect people assume the photos are edited. Above town, the Eagle's Nest bus (€35, history included via the excellent Dokumentation Obersalzberg) deals honestly with the valley's Nazi past.
Practicalities
June–September for hiking, December for the Christmas-market version of the same route. The Deutschlandticket is a rolling subscription — buy in the app, cancel before the 10th of the month. Regional trains need no reservations: you just get on, which after most of the world feels like a magic power. Budget €60–80 a day.