Taxi to Bordesholm: twenty minutes from Neumünster, at any hour

Why people take a taxi to Bordesholm

Bordesholm lies on the lake of the same name, halfway between Neumünster and Kiel in the middle of Schleswig-Holstein, the German state that runs from the North Sea across to the Baltic. Kiel, the state capital and cruise port, is about twenty kilometres to the north. Hamburg is roughly eighty kilometres to the south, straight down the A 7. During the day the village is well served by rail, and we say that as a taxi firm without dressing it up. Two Regionalexpress lines, meaning fast regional trains rather than long distance ones, call at the Bahnhof (the railway station): the RE 7 by way of Einfeld and the RE 70 by way of Brokstedt. Together that makes two trains an hour. Towards Neumünster they leave at roughly eighteen and forty eight minutes past, towards Kiel at ten and forty minutes past. The run down to Neumünster takes six to nine minutes, and to the small halt at Einfeld the RE 7 needs only three. Those are the times printed on the departure board in Bordesholm, so read them as a snapshot. German timetables are revised, and this one has been revised before.

Late in the evening the picture turns over completely. Around nine in the evening the RE 70 drops out, and from then on only one connection an hour is left. The last ordinary train from Bordesholm to Neumünster goes at about ten past ten in the evening, shown as 22.18 on the board, and the last one in the other direction at about half past ten, shown as 22.30. After that a hole of several hours opens up, and nothing rolls again until roughly twenty past one in the morning. Sunday evening is no different. On top of that comes the Schienenersatzverkehr, the replacement bus the railway puts on when the line itself is closed, which on this section turns up regularly in the late hours. Nine minutes then become around twenty four, and anyone who needs to catch a connecting train in Neumünster loses it.

The other end of the day works the same way. The first train leaves at about a quarter to six in the morning, 05.48 on the board. If you are due on an early shift, at a hospital admission or at the airport before that, there is no public connection to put you on at all. Those are exactly the hours we cover. Because it is only a few kilometres up the L 318 from our office, we are outside your door quickly, and the car comes to the address you give us rather than to a stop somewhere out in the village.

Where we drive in Bordesholm

Bordesholm is the main town of an Amt, an administrative union of fourteen small municipalities that share one town hall and one registry office. For all the villages around it, this is the address for everything that Bissee, Brügge or Schmalstede do not have of their own. Our destinations look correspondingly varied. In Alt-Bordesholm, on what used to be an abbey island in the lake, stand the Klosterkirche on the Lindenplatz with the tomb of Anna von Brandenburg, the museum on the island and the Klosterstift care home. One thing worth knowing before you ask the driver to wait: the famous carved altar by Hans Brüggemann is not in that church. It has hung in the cathedral at Schleswig since the Reformation, and visitors ask us about it surprisingly often.

Around the Bahnhofstraße we pull up at the Bordesholmer Sparkasse and the Volksbank, the two local banks, at the Therapiezentrum and at the Sankt Marien parish hall. In the centre of the village, around the Mühlenstraße, the Rathausplatz and the Heide-Simonis-Platz, you find the Rathaus (the town hall) shared by the municipality and the Amt, the shops, and on Saturday mornings the weekly market. Two addresses come up more often than any others: the branch of the Augenklinik Rendsburg, an eye clinic whose main house is in Rendsburg, and the Peters practice on the Heintzestraße with general medicine, cardiology and cardiac therapy. Add to that the gynaecology practice, the practice for children and adolescents, and the three pharmacies in the village, the Klaus-Groth-Apotheke, the Landhaus-Apotheke and the Linden-Apotheke.

We also drive to the Wohnplätze, the scattered hamlets and single settlements that carry a name but have no bus passing them: Eiderstede, which was a municipality of its own until 1906 and gave the station its name for years afterwards, the Eiderkampsweg, the Neuer Haidkrug, Sudberg, the Tegelhof and the forester's house at the Wildhof west of the lake. Then there are the fixed destinations of ordinary life: the Hans-Brüggemann-Schule on the Langenheisch, the Lindenschule on the Schulstraße, the sports park and the bowling hall at the Möhlenkamp, the Kulturforum Savoy in the old cinema, the municipal library on the Holstenstraße, the Hotel Carstens and the Verwaltungsakademie, the training academy for public administration, on the Heintzestraße.

The route from Neumünster to Bordesholm

There are two ways from Neumünster to Bordesholm, and both take about twenty minutes. The older one runs north along the L 318 through Einfeld. That road used to be the Bundesstraße 4, and before that the Altona-Kieler Chaussee built between 1830 and 1832, which is to say it is the road both places grew up along. From the Großflecken, the long central square of Neumünster, into the village is a good thirteen kilometres this way, and we usually need around twenty two minutes for it.

The second way goes over the motorway. We join the A 7 at the Neumünster-Nord junction, leave it again at the Bordesholm junction and come into the village on the L 49. From Neumünster station that is just under eighteen kilometres in roughly seventeen minutes. From the Holstenhallen, the exhibition halls on the northern edge of Neumünster, it is sixteen kilometres in a little under a quarter of an hour, and from the Friedrich-Ebert-Krankenhaus, the main hospital in Neumünster, a good twenty kilometres in a bit over twenty minutes.

Which way the driver takes is decided by the traffic on the day. Directly north of the village lies the Autobahndreieck Bordesholm, the motorway fork where the A 215 towards Kiel splits off the A 7. When that fork is backed up, the L 318 through Einfeld is the quieter choice. The L 49 runs past the village as a northern bypass with no crossings on it, and anyone driving it for the first time sees the Brautberg just before the turn, a burial mound from the Bronze Age standing on its own in the fields. It is worth a glance, and later on this page it comes back for a different reason.

When we drive to Bordesholm most often

The most frequent call from Bordesholm comes late in the evening, shortly after the ten past ten train has gone. From that moment the village cannot be reached by public transport at all, and that catches the late shift as surely as it catches teenagers who have gone out in Neumünster and the parents who would otherwise have to fetch them. On Friday and Saturday nights we often drive the route several times in a row.

The second reason is medical. There is no hospital in Bordesholm. The nearest one is the Friedrich-Ebert-Krankenhaus in Neumünster, and beyond that come the Lubinus clinic and the university hospital in Kiel. For older residents the Amt runs a Bürgermobil, a small community car with volunteer drivers, and it serves exactly those three houses. It is a good arrangement, but it is not open to everyone, and volunteers do not drive at night. After treatment at the eye clinic branch here in the village you are usually not allowed to drive yourself for hours either.

Then there are the fixed appointments of village life: the weekly market on the Rathausplatz on Saturday mornings, league matches and club evenings at the Möhlenkamp, performances at the Savoy, and the courses at the Verwaltungsakademie, whose participants travel in from across Schleswig-Holstein and arrive on a Sunday evening or leave on a Friday with luggage. In summer the Bordesholmer See is added to the list, when the bathing place, the lakeside cafés and the walking circuit around the water draw people out from Neumünster and Kiel. And in the school holidays the Schülerverkehr stops running, which is the only bus link towards Neumünster there is.

Krankenfahrten, journeys to treatment, from and to Bordesholm

A Krankenfahrt is the German term for a journey to or from medical treatment that a doctor has prescribed, and it is handled quite differently from an ordinary taxi ride. Bordesholm has doctors but no hospital, no dialysis unit and no radiology. On the outpatient side the village is decently equipped: the Peters practice on the Heintzestraße, the joint practice at Holstenstraße 55 and the practice at Holstenstraße 37, with occupational therapy on the Mühlenstraße, speech therapy on the Holstenstraße and at the Grüner Weg, physiotherapy at the Lüttenheisch, and two home nursing services, one on the Holstenstraße and one on the Bahnhofstraße. Anything beyond that leaves the village, and it leaves in three directions: to Neumünster for the Friedrich-Ebert-Krankenhaus, to Kiel for the university hospital and the Lubinus clinic, and to Rendsburg for the main house of the eye clinic whose branch sits here on the market square. That applies not only to Bordesholm itself. Anyone coming from Bissee, Grevenkrug, Loop, Negenharrie, Schönbek or Groß Buchwald to one of these practices has the same problem one size smaller, because no service bus runs there during consulting hours. In the public transport plan for these villages only the school run is included.

The most regular of these are the dialysis journeys. Bordesholm has no dialysis centre; the nearest is on the Großflecken in Neumünster, and a patient treated there travels the route three times a week, out and back, all year round. Journeys like that do not run on the fixed price shown on this page. They run on a prescription instead. The doctor issues a Verordnung einer Krankenbeförderung, a prescription for patient transport, and for outpatient journeys the health insurer normally has to approve it in advance. With care level four or five, with care level three and permanently restricted mobility, or with the disability markers aG, Bl or H in your pass, the approval counts as granted along with the prescription itself. The national guideline names dialysis, oncological radiotherapy and parenteral chemotherapy as the treatments this rule was written for. The statutory patient contribution still applies. Ask your insurer if anything is unclear, because these rules do change. If you are visiting from abroad and not insured in Germany, none of this applies to you: you simply book the ride, pay in the car and take a receipt for your own insurer at home.

In the village we also collect people at the places where somebody can no longer walk out to the road on their own: at the Klosterstift care home on the Lindenplatz, at the Dat ole Raathus day care house on the market square, at the Wohnpark on the Heinrich-Rix-Straße, at the Neuer Haidkrug shared house for older residents and at the Dahlienhof in Wattenbek. For older passengers there is also the Bürgermobil run by the Amt, driven by volunteers and cheap to use, but only Monday to Friday between eight in the morning and six in the evening. The journey has to be registered two days in advance, and the telephone line for that is open in the morning only. A discharge from hospital on a Friday evening, an appointment on a Saturday or a call from the emergency department does not fit into that. Our office is staffed seven days a week, and prescribed journeys we settle directly with your health insurer. Bring the prescription along on the first ride and we will sort out the rest.

Weddings, clubs and groups in the Bordesholmer Land

The Standesamt, the registry office, in Bordesholm is responsible for the whole Amt, so for fourteen municipalities, and it marries couples in far more places than the wedding room in the Rathaus. There are also the Hof Bissee, the Kleines Haus in Brügge, the Alte Kate in Reesdorf, the Räucherkate in Wattenbek, Emils Bootshaus on the Seestraße directly at the Bordesholmer See, and the Brautberg. The Brautberg is the same Bronze Age burial mound we pass on the way in over the L 49; ceremonies are held there only from May to September, because the whole thing takes place in the open air. Emils Bootshaus seats twenty six people and no more.

For us that means two things. First, the appointments sit tightly together. Marriages take place in principle during the office hours of the Amt, with only a handful of Saturdays added in the course of a year, and those mornings only. In the 2026 calendar there were three, and all three were taken. A couple marrying on such a morning has very little air between the ceremony and the party. Second, the guests are spread across the whole Bordesholmer Land, in Bissee, Brügge, Reesdorf, Schmalstede, Sören or Grevenkrug, and in the evening neither bus nor train goes to any of them. A guest coming in from one of those villages who wants a glass of something at the party needs somebody to bring him home. On top of that the wedding locations themselves lie scattered across several villages, from the Hof Bissee by way of the Kleines Haus in Brügge to the Alte Kate in Reesdorf. Between the town hall, the ceremony and the party there are then two separate journeys, and the guests want collecting somewhere in between.

The same goes for club life, which in a place this size is most of the social calendar. The first men's team of TSV Bordesholm plays in the Oberliga Schleswig-Holstein, the fifth tier of German football, so visiting sides travel in from across the state and the ground at the Möhlenkamp holds several thousand spectators. Alongside it there are the Bordesholmer Liedertafel of 1868 and the women's choir, the sailing club at the lake, the angling club, the German Red Cross and the Bushido club for Bordesholm and Wattenbek. The trade and business association puts on the summer festival between the station and the Sparkasse, an open Sunday for the shops in the Bahnhofstraße, the May wreath binding with dancing into May on the Heide-Simonis-Platz, and the careers and education day in the sports hall of the Hans-Brüggemann-Schule. The dates move from year to year and are published in the association's own calendar, so check there before you plan a journey around one. From five people upwards we send a Großraumtaxi, a van taxi that seats up to eight passengers, and for larger parties several cars go out, each with its own fixed price that you see beforehand.

A fixed price instead of the meter

Inside Neumünster the Taxameter, the meter in the car, charges the official tariff set by the city, and the Pflichtfahrgebiet, the compulsory operating area in which that tariff is binding, reaches beyond the city boundary: to Tasdorf, Bönebüttel, Padenstedt, Ehndorf, Wasbek, Großharrie, Rendswühren and Schillsdorf. Bordesholm is not on that list, even though it lies closer than some places that are. The village belongs to the Kreis Rendsburg-Eckernförde, the neighbouring district, and past Einfeld the obligation to run the meter ends.

Precisely because Bordesholm is not on that list, we are allowed to agree a price with you before the journey, and that is what we do. You see it on the screen before you confirm, and it holds all the way to your own door, whether that door is on the Mühlenstraße or out at the Wildhof, not merely as far as the station. Whether we take the A 7 or go through Einfeld, whether the motorway fork is crawling or the L 49 is clear, changes nothing about it. You pay in the car in cash or by card, or online in advance, which is to say before we have even left Einfeld behind us.

Frequently asked questions

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