I’m looking into traveling to Germany this spring with my family, tentatively scheduled for 5/20-6/3, and I would like to know the best places to visit.

As a starting point, I decided that we should fly into Berlin and stay for a few days. I’ve picked out several attractions and places of interest for us to consider, but I know we would also like to travel outside of Berlin, as well.

We do not have a hotel booked, and we planned on getting hotel rooms as we go along. We just got back from Ireland in July, and we stayed in one hotel due to a travel package on priceline.com. However, we decided we wanted to see more of Ireland than just Dublin, so we had to rent other hotels as we went to the Southern and Western parts of the country. We drove most of the time, which was fairly convenient.

Anyway, I would like to know of other places to visit outside of Berlin. I’ve been told that the Romantic Road is a great starting place, with many medieval towns, castles, and the like. I realize, though, that Germany is a much larger country than Ireland and may be more difficult to get around by car (and by difficult, I mean that I don’t really want to spend an entire day in the car…). I know trains are very popular in Germany, but we will be carrying all of our luggage with us, so I’m wondering if that will be a problem.

Additionally, we were looking into possibly heading into Switzerland or France for a couple of days during our trip. If we were to do that, is there any kind of border control, such as with the U.S. and Canada? Ideally, we would like to spend at least 2 days in each city or town that we visit. If you could provide any information about places to visit (keeping in mind that our starting — and ending — point is Berlin) and travel information (whether we should rent a car or take a train, even with all of our luggage), that would be great. Thank you so much!

Also, if this helps:
I’m traveling with my family — my mom and dad, and most likely my brother (I’m 19, he’s 28).