Taxi Hamburg: from Neumünster to the door in the city

Why the run to Hamburg is worth doing by taxi

Neumünster sits in Schleswig-Holstein, the state at the top of Germany, roughly sixty-six kilometres north of Hamburg. Two regional trains an hour connect the two towns and both of them run direct. The RE7 leaves Neumünster at minute 31 and reaches Hamburg Hauptbahnhof, the main station, about 51 minutes later; the trains from Kiel and from Flensburg are coupled together in Neumünster and carry on as a single train. The RE70 leaves at minute 56, calls additionally at Brokstedt and at Wrist along the way, and takes around 55 minutes. Both run via Elmshorn and stop at Dammtor shortly before the Hauptbahnhof. As long as those trains are running that is a good connection, and we are not going to pretend otherwise.

Two things are still missing. The first is that the service stops early. The last scheduled train out of Neumünster leaves at 23:31 and arrives in Hamburg at 0:21; in the other direction the last one leaves the Hauptbahnhof at 23:38. Later departures do stand in the timetable, but they run only on certain nights, in practice mainly the nights into Saturday and into Sunday. Anyone who was at a concert on a weekday, or who finished a late shift, is stuck after that. The second is that the Hauptbahnhof is almost nobody's actual destination. On top of the hour in the train come the U-Bahn, which is the underground, the S-Bahn, which is the suburban railway, or a walk, with a suitcase, with a child, or after treatment.

There is no through bus from Neumünster to Hamburg either. The AKN line A2 runs via Kaltenkirchen, Henstedt-Ulzburg and Ulzburg Süd as far as Norderstedt Mitte, where you change onto the U1. For the 2026 timetable year there are engineering works on top of that. Because of the new electronic signal box at Ulzburg Süd, passengers travelling through have to swap trains at the Quickborner Straße stop on every single journey, across the same platform, with about four minutes to make the change. The AKN therefore reckons on roughly ten minutes more travelling time towards the Hauptbahnhof, and the ten minute frequency in the peak has been dropped for this timetable year. All the times named here are a snapshot from the September 2026 timetable and can change at a timetable change or through further engineering work.

What follows from all that is fairly plain. If you are travelling light in the middle of the day and the Hauptbahnhof really is where you want to be, take the train. If you are carrying luggage, travelling with children or with an older relative, going to an address that is nowhere near a station, leaving before the first train or coming back after the last one, the taxi is the calmer of the two. We drive the whole way ourselves, and you stay in the same seat from your own front door to the address you gave us.

Where in Hamburg we actually drive

Hamburg is a Bundesland, a federal state in its own right, and not part of Schleswig-Holstein. It has no Kreis, the district level that our own region is organised into. Instead the city is divided into seven Bezirke, its own city districts, holding 104 Stadtteile, the quarters people actually name when they say where they live. For the journey that means one thing: what matters is the Stadtteil, not the word Hamburg. The city reaches from Rissen in the far west to Bergedorf in the south east, and the two are a long drive apart. Give us the street and we stop in the street, not at the nearest S-Bahn station with two more changes and a case still ahead of you.

Most journeys end in the city centre and the HafenCity: the Altstadt and the Neustadt, the Elbphilharmonie concert hall on the water, the Speicherstadt warehouse district with the Miniatur Wunderland model railway inside it, and the Westfield Überseequartier. Right next to that are St. Georg around the Hauptbahnhof and St. Pauli with the Reeperbahn, the Operettenhaus theatre on the Spielbudenplatz and the Millerntor-Stadion. In Altona we drive to the Fischauktionshalle, the old fish auction hall on the river bank, to the Asklepios Klinik Altona and to the Helios Endo-Klinik. In Bahrenfeld it is the Volksparkstadion with the Barclays Arena beside it, and the Trabrennbahn, the trotting track. Eppendorf is on our list almost every week, because of the Universitätsklinikum and the Universitäres Herz- und Gefäßzentrum, the university heart and vascular centre.

Coming from Neumünster you reach the north of the city first: Schnelsen with the Albertinen Krankenhaus, Stellingen with the Tierpark Hagenbeck zoo and its Tropen-Aquarium, Langenhorn with the Asklepios Klinik Nord on its Heidberg and Ochsenzoll sites, and Fuhlsbüttel with the airport and Lufthansa Technik. Further out lie the Alstertal-Einkaufszentrum shopping centre in Poppenbüttel, the Elbe-Einkaufszentrum in Osdorf, the Hamburger Meile in Barmbek and, south of the Elbe, Harburg with the Asklepios Klinikum in Heimfeld, the Technische Universität and the Phoenix-Center. Airbus in Finkenwerder, the Messegelände, which is the exhibition ground, with the CCH congress centre next to it, and the university buildings at the Rothenbaum are regular destinations as well.

One practical note about addresses, because this is where most of the trouble starts. A hotel confirmation or an event ticket often names only the district, and a district is not an address. Write the street, the house number and the Stadtteil into the booking form, and add the name of the building, the hall, the ward or the terminal if there is one. That is what goes into the navigation, that is what decides where the car stops, and on this route it is also what the price is calculated from.

The route from Neumünster to Hamburg

We take the A 7 south. Neumünster lies directly on the motorway, at the point where the Bundesstraßen, the federal main roads, B 205 and B 430 cross, so we are on the slip road within a few minutes of leaving the town. Nobody drives the old main road any more: the former long distance route towards Hamburg was downgraded to a Landesstraße, a state road, north of Bad Bramstedt a long time ago.

On the motorway the route passes Bad Bramstedt, Kaltenkirchen and Quickborn, and then the Hamburg city area begins at Schnelsen and Stellingen. It is around 67 kilometres to the Hauptbahnhof and around 66 to the Rathausmarkt, the square in front of the city hall, in both cases about 55 minutes with a clear road. The airport at Fuhlsbüttel lies closer and is approached from the north: around 59 kilometres and roughly 44 minutes. It is about 60 kilometres to the Universitätsklinikum in Eppendorf, around 61 to the Volksparkstadion and just under 65 to the Reeperbahn.

South of the Elbe the picture changes. Harburg is a good 80 kilometres away and Bergedorf just under 90, because the Elbtunnel, the motorway tunnel under the river, or the way round the outside of the city has to be added. Allow 15 to 25 minutes more than for the centre there, and considerably more when the tunnel is closed. We plan the pick up time from the real destination rather than from the distance on a map, and for flights and fixed appointments we build in extra time for the A 7 on top of that.

It is worth knowing what else uses this motorway. The A 7 is the main north to south route through Schleswig-Holstein and it carries holiday traffic to and from Denmark as well as everyday commuters into Hamburg. It runs slowly towards the city in the morning, out of the city in the late afternoon, and in both directions on a Friday afternoon. None of that changes what you pay, because the figure was agreed before we set off, but it does change what time we ring your doorbell.

When we drive to Hamburg most often

The first busy period of the day is early in the morning, and it has two causes: flights and hospitals. Anyone who has to be at the airport before seven will not find a train that arrives in time. And anyone due at the Universitätsklinikum in Eppendorf, at the Asklepios Klinik Nord in Langenhorn or at the Endo-Klinik for an examination, with nothing to eat or drink beforehand, does not want to change trains twice on the way there. Hardly anybody travels back under their own steam after a procedure either, so we come back at the agreed time to the agreed entrance.

The second busy period is late in the evening. Musicals at the Theater im Hafen and the Theater an der Elbe, concerts at the Elbphilharmonie or the Barclays Arena, home matches at the Volksparkstadion and at the Millerntor, and an evening out on the Reeperbahn: all of it regularly finishes after the last train to Neumünster has gone. Book the way back at the same time as the way there, and you are not the one standing on the Hauptbahnhof afterwards working out what to do.

In between all that lies ordinary working life. Appointments in the city centre and the HafenCity, trade fairs and congresses at the CCH, works visits to Airbus in Finkenwerder or to Lufthansa Technik, where the last stretch by public transport is awkward whichever way you cut it. Then there are students and relatives who have to be somewhere at a fixed hour, and connections onto ICE long distance trains, which do not call at Neumünster at all.

Cruise passengers are a group of their own on this route. Hamburg is a regular cruise port with three separate terminals, in the HafenCity, in Altona and in Steinwerder, and they lie a long way apart on both banks of the Elbe. None of them sits on top of a station. With two cases per person, a change at the Hauptbahnhof and another onto a bus is exactly the part of the trip nobody wants at the start of a holiday. Tell us the ship and the sailing time and we work the departure backwards from that.

Medical journeys to the Hamburg hospitals

A word on the term first, because it has no direct equivalent in English. A Krankenfahrt is a journey to medical treatment that a doctor has prescribed, made in an ordinary car or taxi rather than in an ambulance, and paid in whole or in part by the statutory health insurance fund. It is a normal part of taxi work in Germany, and it is a large part of ours.

The Friedrich-Ebert-Krankenhaus in Neumünster covers a great deal on its own, from its cancer centre and its regional stroke unit to its centre for joint replacement. Hardly anyone drives to Hamburg for no reason, then. People go when the treatment they need is not available closer to home. That means the Universitäres Transplantations Centrum at the UKE, the university hospital in Eppendorf, along with the Hubertus Wald Tumorzentrum, the Martini-Klinik on the same site, the UKE children's hospital and the Universitäres Herz- und Gefäßzentrum. After an accident at work, or with a recognised occupational illness, the destination is a different one: the BG Klinikum Hamburg in Boberg, right out in the east of the city in the Bezirk Bergedorf. There the bill goes not to the Krankenkasse, the health insurance fund, but to the Berufsgenossenschaft, the employers' liability insurance body that covers accidents at work.

A prescribed Krankenfahrt runs on the form known as Muster 4, which the practice or the clinic makes out. For journeys to outpatient treatment the fund normally has to approve it beforehand. There are exceptions that matter. With the Merkzeichen aG, Bl or H, the codes on a German severe disability pass for exceptional walking impairment, for blindness and for the need of a permanent companion, and with Pflegegrad 4 and 5, the two highest levels of the German long term care scale, and with Pflegegrad 3 combined with a lasting mobility impairment, the doctor's prescription already counts as approved. For a series of treatments at high frequency, radiotherapy or chemotherapy for example, funds usually approve the whole series in one go. One point comes up on this route more than on any other: what is covered are the travel costs to the nearest suitable treatment option. Whether that is Hamburg in your case, or whether the same treatment could also be had in Neumünster or in Kiel, is something to settle with your fund before the first journey and not afterwards.

For us a Krankenfahrt is above all a matter of times and doors. The hour is agreed, the entrance is agreed, and the return journey is agreed along with them. On a site the size of the one on the Martinistraße the walk from the wrong gate to the right ward is a long one. So tell us the building, the ward and the entrance, and that is where we stop. After a day case procedure the discharge time is rarely known in advance; in that case we stay reachable and come as soon as you ring. The fixed price helps here too, because it is clear from the start what will be written on the receipt you hand to your fund. There is one limit. We drive a taxi, not a Krankentransportwagen, which is the staffed patient transport ambulance. Anyone who has to travel lying down, or who needs care along the way, is in the wrong vehicle with us. Say what the journey is for when you book, and we will tell you honestly whether we are the right car.

Hamburg through the year: when the city is full

Spring opens with the Frühlingsdom. The Dom is a large funfair held three times a year on the Heiligengeistfeld, the open ground between St. Pauli and the Karoviertel, and each of the three runs for about four weeks. April brings the Haspa Marathon, in 2026 the fortieth edition, and it shuts half the streets in the centre for the day. May adds the Deutsches Spring- und Dressur-Derby, the show jumping and dressage derby out at Klein Flottbek, the Hamburg Open tennis at the Rothenbaum, which has lately been played in May, the OMR Festival on the exhibition ground and the Hafengeburtstag, the harbour birthday. The Hafengeburtstag traditionally falls on the first weekend in May, in 2027 from 6 to 9 May, and while it is on there is no getting through between the Landungsbrücken, the long landing stage on the Elbe, and the HafenCity.

Summer belongs to the Sommerdom in July and August, to the Schlagermove, the Harley Days, the Internationales Sommerfestival at Kampnagel and the MS Dockville festival in Wilhelmsburg. Add the days on which the centre belongs to runners and cyclists: the World Triathlon around the Binnenalster, the inner lake in the middle of the city, and the ADAC Cyclassics in August. September is the tightest month of all. The Reeperbahn Festival runs from 16 to 19 September 2026 with around seventy venues packed around the Reeperbahn, the Filmfest Hamburg from 24 September to 3 October in cinemas spread across the whole city, and, in even years, WindEnergy Hamburg fills the exhibition ground, in 2026 from 22 to 25 September. On top of those come the Hamburg Cruise Days, when the lit up ships sail down the Elbe in the evening.

From 6 November the Winterdom runs, this year until 6 December, and the Christmas markets open alongside it: the historic one on the Rathausmarkt, the Santa Pauli on the Spielbudenplatz and the one on the Fleetinsel. For the journey all of this comes down to the same thing every time. Streets around the event are closed, and the address you have in your head is not reachable that day. We set you down a few streets further along, at a spot where we are actually allowed to stop, and we build the closures into the departure time. For the way back we agree a meeting point that is not in the middle of the crush. Those evenings are also the ones on which the last trains north are fullest, so the return is worth booking at the same time as the outward journey. All the dates here are a snapshot from September 2026; organisers move things, and the Hafengeburtstag follows the weekend rather than a fixed date.

A fixed price instead of the Taxameter

The Pflichtfahrgebiet of our Taxameter ends at the Neumünster city boundary, which is just past the slip road onto the A 7. Those two words carry the whole system. The Pflichtfahrgebiet is the compulsory operating area of a German taxi, and the Taxameter is the calibrated meter that has to be used inside it. Within that boundary the city sets the tariff, the meter works it out, and no driver is allowed to depart from it in either direction. The remaining sixty odd kilometres to Hamburg lie outside that area, and there a price agreed in advance is permitted. Hamburg has its own tariff for its own taxis, but that plays no part in a journey starting in Neumünster, because we fix the price with you before we set off.

The price for your destination address appears in the form before you confirm the journey, and it stays that price afterwards: whether everything jams up in front of the Elbtunnel, whether the A 7 crawls at Schnelsen, or whether roadworks send us round a diversion. Because half a city lies between Rissen in the west and Bergedorf in the south east, please enter the full address rather than just the name of the city; otherwise the form calculates a different route from the one we actually drive. Luggage costs nothing extra, and neither does the drive out to collect you. Firms that travel regularly to the exhibition ground or to a plant in Hamburg can be invoiced on request; everyone else pays in the car or at the time of booking. Cancelling is free for as long as no car is on its way to you.

For a visitor there is a second reason the fixed price is worth having. You do not have to judge whether a route is being driven the long way round, and you do not have to watch a meter counting up in a tariff system you have never seen before. The figure you agreed before departure is the figure at the end, whatever the traffic did in between, and it is on the receipt in writing.

Included in the fixed fare

• A fixed price for your Hamburg address, visible before you confirm
• Direct down the A 7, also after the last regional train has gone
• Hospitals, terminals and venues right at the entrance
• South of the Elbe as well, to Harburg and Bergedorf
• Großraumtaxi, a large taxi for up to eight people with luggage, on request
• Free cancellation for as long as the driver has not set off

Frequently asked questions

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