Getting around Germany (flight / travel strategy) [closed]

In a nutshell, everything is possible: dropping the car off in another German city, renting in Austria and dropping it off in Germany or vice versa. You will pay a premium for one-way rentals and then extra on top of that for cross-border one-way rentals. But you can do it with all the major international brands.

Beyond that, German motorways are not quite what they used to be but driving around the country is reasonably fast and easy, if that's what you want to do. I have crossed it several times (from the Austrian border to the Netherlands or from the French border to Berlin) in less than a day, no problem at all (I usually drive around 110 mph where possible).

Forgoing getting a car entirely and going around by train is also a perfectly reasonable option in Germany/Central Europe, at least if you want to focus on cities and not on more rural areas like the Rhine valley, Black Forrest, etc.

From Vienna you can also easily include other neighbouring countries, at the very least Prague and the Czech Republic on the way to Berlin. But I could also easily spend ten days in one region or a couple of cities in Germany (although if you are from the US and not coming to Europe frequently, I can see why you would want to cram as much as possible in this one trip).

If you want to rent a car, check the fine print: Germany/Austria/Switzerland/France is almost certainly fine but further east some rental companies or class of cars might have additional restrictions, the contract will list which countries are included.

If this doesn't affect the price of your flight tickets, I would suggest to fly to one city, e.g. Berlin, drive to the other end of Germany, eg. Munich while stopping at Frankfurt or Nuremberg and then fly home.

I see little sense in driving back to the arrival airport, unless this affects the price of the flight tickets or the rental car (one-way rentals are usually more expensive).

Frankfurt and Munich have probably the most connections to the US, Berlin not so much.

Driving from Germany to Austria and back should be no problem (check with the rental agency!), however renting the car in Germany and giving it back in Vienna could be a problem (or expensive).