My guess is flying makes the most sense, especially if you can get direct flights for the price quoted. But a lot depends on whether you are talking about one person? Two? Four? Obviously a car makes more sense for four people vs. airfare as opposed to one person flying.

You can check rail connections + prices at http://www.bahn.de .

You can check rental car prices on your own but I'm guessing you should expect a steep drop fee for renting a car in Poland and dropping it in Germany.

thanks andrew. there'll be 2 of us. if im not mistaken, rail travel will take around 4 hours, and we dont have to worry about luggage size or weight. you're right about the drop off charge if we rent a car.

A quick check of bahn.de shows the quickest train option is about 8:19 with one change, and a cost of about $80 USD per person. For that, I'd definitely fly.

Trains from Krakow to anyplace take forever. A couple of years ago I was trying to go from Krakow to Frankfurt and decided to fly as I did not want to spend 10 to 12 hours on a train.

The train referenced above goes through Warsaw and then Poznan. I checked the route bypassing Warsaw and going from Krakow to Poznan and it would take even longer.

Where did you see train travel for 4 hours? What was the route? I haven't found any route from Krakow to Berlin that takes less than 8+ hours and most trains take 10+ hours.

I checked mappy for driving and it's 5.5 hours plus the time to pickup and drop off the car. I always add 25% to the recommended time.

Please advise the sites you're using for trains and driving times.

There is (currently) one direct EuroCity train per day which needs 10 hours and travels during daytime. If luggage is an issue, it may not be too convenient to use the any other, somewhat "faster" connections which require changing trains.

The direct buses need the same time but arrive in Berlin in the middle of the night between 2 and 3AM.

Rental car should be out of the question due to the cross-border drop off fee, as mentioned above already.

So the nonstop flight seems to give you some decent value for money even if the price is not exactly a low-cost fare.
Luggage is no problem, the limit on Air Berlin for checked luggage is 20kgs which is almost as much as most airlines allow for your intercontinental flight from the US (23kgs). They are also not anal about cabin luggage sizes and weight like the cheapo airlines as long as you don't overdo it.

i'm mistaken about the train travel between krakow and berlin being 4 hrs. i was guess-timating train travel to be about 4 hrs because the distance between the 2 cities is under 400 miles.

thanks to all for the input. flying is definitely the most sensible way to go. i'll keep checking airberlin, et al. for special fares. we will be leaving in the summer of 2013 so plenty of time to prepare and find some good fares.

Just remember, that $133 fare is probably for a limited number of seats and, when they are gone, the fare will go up, maybe significantly.

one of the responses to my post was removed by the mods. as far as i remember, i didnt see any offensive or out-of-line responses to this thread. if anything, the posts were direct and helpful to a pretty straightforward question. am i missing something????

<< am i missing something???? >>

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Trains in Poland and the Czech Republic make lots of stops so the general rule of distance and time does not apply.

I did remember the Orangeways bus service but they do not run between Krakow and Berlin.

Have you checked the fares for Lufthansa and Lot? Sometimes they have decent rates.