Taxi Kaltenkirchen: from Neumünster down the A 7 into the Kreis Segeberg

Where Kaltenkirchen is, and why everything there points south

Kaltenkirchen is a town of just under twenty four thousand people in the Kreis Segeberg, the Segeberg district of Schleswig-Holstein. It sits a good thirty kilometres south of Neumünster and roughly thirty five kilometres north of the centre of Hamburg, which places it inside the Metropolregion Hamburg, the metropolitan region that Hamburg shares with the two states around it. For a visitor, that position explains almost everything about the town. Nearly all of it faces south. The A 7 motorway runs past on its way from the Danish border down through Hamburg, the railway carries commuters into the city all day long, and the shops, the works and the leisure grounds are built for a catchment that reaches far past the town boundary. Neumünster lies the other way, at the quiet end of the same lines.

The railway is worth understanding before you plan anything at all. Kaltenkirchen is not served by Deutsche Bahn, the national operator, but by the AKN, a separate regional railway company that runs its own line, the A2, and sells its tickets through the HVV, the Hamburg transport association. Search only the national railway app and you may well conclude that no train serves this town. One does, and towards Hamburg it comes often. Towards Neumünster it does not, and that single gap is the reason most of our Kaltenkirchen bookings exist at all.

What brings people down here from our side is usually one of four things. The HolstenTherme, a large thermal bathing complex on the Norderstraße. The shopping at dodenhof and the Ohland Park beside the motorway. A shift at one of the bigger works in the town. Or an appointment at a clinic somewhere nearby, because Kaltenkirchen itself has no hospital and every medical journey therefore leaves the town. On top of that come groups heading for the Jahrmarkt, the annual funfair, and school parties visiting the concentration camp memorial that carries the town's name but stands outside it. All of those are covered further down this page.

Why the journey to Kaltenkirchen is worth making by taxi

Exactly one through public transport service links Neumünster and Kaltenkirchen, and that is the AKN line A2. It begins in Neumünster, runs by way of Bad Bramstedt to Kaltenkirchen and ends at Norderstedt Mitte, so nobody has to change trains. Southbound it needs around forty two minutes, northbound about forty one, and on this section it runs once an hour, on all seven days of the week. Working days bring no improvement either, because the extra services that run during the day turn back at Bad Bramstedt and never reach Neumünster at all. South of Kaltenkirchen the very same line looks like a different railway: a train every twenty minutes during the day and every ten minutes in the rush hour towards Norderstedt. Hamburg is tied in tightly. Neumünster is the thin end of the same track.

At the edges of the day the connection stops completely. On working days the last through train leaves Kaltenkirchen at about 21:42, that is 9.42 in the evening, and reaches Neumünster shortly after 22:20. Anyone wanting to travel later than that is offered a detour by way of Ulzburg Süd and Elmshorn, with two changes and well over an hour and a half of travelling. In the opposite direction the last chance on a working day is at about 22:33. On the nights before Saturday and Sunday the A2 runs later, but Sunday then starts late, with the first through service out of Neumünster only at about 06:33 in the morning. There is no usable bus between the two towns: the journey planner works out three to four changes and almost three hours, and the HVV buses at the Kaltenkirchen bus station serve the Kreis Segeberg and the direction of Hamburg, not Neumünster. These times are the position on 2 September 2026 and they shift with every timetable change, so check them if your plan depends on the last train.

Where we set people down in Kaltenkirchen

Most of our drops are in the town centre, on the Holstenstraße, at the Grüner Markt and on the Rathausplatz, where the Rathaus, the town hall, has had an extension at Holstenstraße 14 since 2023. Beside the station lies the Holstenplatz, where the weekly open air market is held on Wednesdays; on Saturdays that same market stands at the Grüner Markt. A few steps further on are the Michaeliskirche, whose round tower still dates from the Middle Ages, and the Bürgerhaus at Friedenstraße 9, a civic hall that has also housed the Standesamt, the register office, since May 2009, which is why couples marry there. The old station building from 1884 was restored in 2016 and now stands next to the lowered railway station.

The second big destination is the Norderstraße. The HolstenTherme is on it, with the ParadiesInsel, a sports pool, the SoleRelaxpool and the SaunaWelt, next door the heated open air pool, and on the same grounds the ResortHotel The Great North. For shopping we drive out towards the motorway to XXXLutz Dodenhof, to the Ohland Park at Kisdorfer Weg 11 and to the Boulder-Point at Kisdorfer Weg 15A, which according to the town is the largest bouldering hall in Schleswig-Holstein. Things are quieter at the Flottmoorpark with the Grell-Allee, and at the butterfly garden run by the conservation association NABU on the Schirnauallee, which opens on Wednesday afternoons only and then only by arrangement over the telephone.

Beyond that come the addresses scattered across the rest of the town. Schools on the Flottkamp, the Lakweg, the Marschweg and the Hohenmoorweg, along with the Freie Waldorfschule, the Leibniz-Privatschule, the VHS Kaltenkirchen-Südholstein, which is the adult education centre, and the training academy of the DRK, the German Red Cross. Sport on the Schirnauallee, with the Johannes-Kelmes-Sportanlage, the Schirnau football ground and the tennis courts together with their indoor hall, plus the Marschweghalle with the boxing hall, the Schützenzentrum shooting club Im Grunde, and the skate park. Work at Popp Feinkost, at Boeing Distribution Services, at WISKA Hoppmann, at AMC, at Lactoprot, at Grell Naturkost, at Cavendish & Harvey, at GLEICH Aluminium, and at MENCK on the Moorkaten industrial estate. Residential areas such as Heidkaten, the Wiesenpark and the Großer Karl we serve in exactly the same way, the fire station stands on the Süderstraße, and the Agentur für Arbeit, the federal employment agency, is at Kisdorfer Weg 7.

The route from Neumünster to Kaltenkirchen

Leaving Neumünster we take the Altonaer Straße and the B 205 and join the A 7 southbound at junction 15, Neumünster-Süd. After that come around twenty one kilometres of motorway, past exits 16 Großenaspe and 17 Bad Bramstedt and past the Moorkaten services, as far as exit 18 Kaltenkirchen. From there the L 320 leads into the town. Together that is a good thirty kilometres, for which we allow twenty five to thirty minutes when the road is clear. If the road numbers mean nothing to you, a B road is a Bundesstraße, a federal trunk road, and an L road is a Landesstraße, a state road. Both are ordinary roads with one lane in each direction, and in Germany the number on the sign is often the more useful thing to follow, not the place name.

Kaltenkirchen has two motorway junctions of its own, and which one we use depends on where you are going. If your destination is in the south of the town, out towards Kaltenkirchen Süd, we stay on the motorway as far as exit 19 Henstedt-Ulzburg and save the drive right across town. For the works in Moorkaten in the south west, the same apparent detour is usually the quicker way in as well. It is worth saying the exact street when you book rather than just the town, because that choice is made before we set off, not halfway down the motorway.

The journey also works without the motorway: on the L 319 as far as Bad Bramstedt and from there south on the B 4. That is the old main road between Hamburg and Kiel, whose northern section was downgraded to a state road once the A 7 had been built, while from Bad Bramstedt southwards it still carries the number B 4. We switch to it when the A 7 has come to a stand, and for you that changes nothing at all, because the price we agreed stays the price you pay.

When we drive to Kaltenkirchen most often

For all its nearly twenty four thousand inhabitants, Kaltenkirchen has no hospital of its own, and that shapes our work here more than anything else. For an admission, an operation or a visit, the journey has to leave the town: south to the Paracelsus-Klinik in Henstedt-Ulzburg, north to the Klinikum and the Schön Klinik in Bad Bramstedt, sometimes as far as the Heinrich Sengelmann Krankenhaus in Bargfeld-Stegen. Not one of those buildings stands at a railway station. It works the other way round as well: anyone from Kaltenkirchen who has to reach the Friedrich-Ebert-Krankenhaus in Neumünster faces an hourly train and then a walk at the far end, which is a long morning before the appointment has even started.

On working days our journeys follow the shift times at the Kaltenkirchen works. Popp Feinkost, a food producer, is the largest employer in the town with around six hundred staff, Boeing Distribution Services follows with a good five hundred, and after them come WISKA, AMC, Lactoprot, Cavendish & Harvey, GLEICH, DFK BAU, and the AKN depot, which also holds the workshops and the electronic signal box for the whole line. Anyone travelling in from Neumünster for an early shift, or wanting to get home after a late one, falls outside the A2 timetable at both ends of the day. That is not a matter of a missed train by ten minutes; at those hours there is simply nothing running.

Spread across the year, the occasions stack up on top of the daily traffic. The Jahrmarkt on the fairground on the Norderstraße. The ITF tennis tournament on the courts at the Schirnauallee. Weddings at the Bürgerhaus. Club evenings at the Kaltenkirchener Turnerschaft, the town gymnastics club. And the weekends at the HolstenTherme, when families come down from Neumünster in the morning and want to be home again in the evening. In autumn and winter we also make a great many shopping runs to dodenhof and the Ohland Park, for the plain reason that a boot full of shopping does not fit on a train.

Krankenfahrten: journeys to treatment out of Kaltenkirchen

Because there is no hospital in Kaltenkirchen, almost every Krankenfahrt crosses the town boundary. A Krankenfahrt is the German term for a journey to or from medical treatment in an ordinary car or taxi rather than an ambulance, and for people insured in Germany it is often paid for by the health insurer instead of the passenger. For an examination, a follow up appointment or a course of treatment, the journey runs to Henstedt-Ulzburg, to Bad Bramstedt, to Bargfeld-Stegen, or up to us in Neumünster to the Friedrich-Ebert-Krankenhaus. We collect you at your own front door, at the DRK senior citizens' centre on the Krauser Baum just as at the Seniorenresidenz am Markt, or at a flat in Heidkaten. The driver rings the bell, waits until you are ready and walks you to the car. At the other end we set down in front of the entrance and not on the visitors' car park, because the stretch from the parking space to the reception desk is for many passengers the hardest part of the whole appointment.

If the journey runs through the German health insurer, the basis is a prescription for patient transport, the form known as Muster 4. It is issued where you already are, so at the general practice centre, at the oncology practice or at the day clinic in Kaltenkirchen, and it should be in your hand before the first journey rather than after it. For an inpatient admission the matter is usually straightforward. For outpatient treatment the insurer normally has to agree in advance. Anyone who holds the disability marks aG, Bl or H, or who is assessed at care level four or five on the German long term care scale, does not need that separate approval for a journey by taxi or private hire car, and at care level three the same applies where the loss of mobility is permanent. For people in the statutory scheme the standard co-payment per journey still applies, unless you are exempt from it. If you are insured outside Germany, none of that machinery is open to you: the ride is simply a taxi ride at the price shown here, and you get a receipt to hand to your own insurer.

If a course of treatment runs over weeks, book the whole series in one go rather than each journey on its own. We enter the appointments, work out the driving time over the A 7 with a buffer built in, and send the same driver wherever the roster allows it. A walking frame and a folding wheelchair travel with you; say so when you book and a car with enough room is the one that turns up. We carry passengers seated. If you have to be carried lying down, that belongs on the prescription and is a job for an ambulance, not for us. And fix the return journey at the same time as the outward one. After a treatment, an hour of waiting for the next train and a walk from the station are exactly what nobody has any use for at the end of that particular day.

Festivals, groups and luggage

Kaltenkirchen celebrates in the same handful of places all year round. In June the Stadtfest, the town festival, fills the area around the Rathaus, the Grüner Markt and the Rathausgarten. In summer the Grüner Markt is rebuilt for the Weinfest, a wine festival put on by an organiser from Neumünster together with the Kaltenkirchener Ring, the local traders' association. On the first weekend in September the Jahrmarkt follows, on the fairground on the Norderstraße, with around eighty rides and stalls, most recently running from the Friday right through into the Monday. From the end of November come the Weihnachtsmarkt, the Christmas market in the town centre at the Markt, the Weihnachtsrondell at the Grüner Markt, and the Weihnachtsparade. We give no years here on purpose, because the dates move a little every time; the town publishes them in its own events calendar.

For getting there, all of that makes a real difference. While the Jahrmarkt is on, the Norderstraße is closed to through traffic and the way in to the paying car parks runs only by way of the Barmstedter Straße. The HolstenTherme stands on that same street, so anyone going for a swim on that weekend arrives by a different route than usual. At the festivals in the town centre the problem is not the drive but the parking: around the Rathaus and the Grüner Markt nothing is free on days like those, and anyone coming down from Neumünster in their own car spends longer looking for a space than the drive itself took. We set you down wherever traffic is allowed through on the day, and we pick you up at the same spot.

With groups it is the number of seats that decides. Up to four passengers travel in a saloon car. From five to eight you need a Großraumtaxi, the larger van style taxi, for which a separate price applies. If the party is bigger again, we send several cars to the same address at the same time so that everybody arrives together. That is what happens for wedding parties at the Bürgerhaus on the Friedenstraße, for celebrations at the Lazos Event-Center on the Kisdorfer Weg, for club evenings at the Bürgerhalle on the Flottkamp or at the Gemeinschaftshaus on the Schützenstraße, and for teams heading to a match at the Schirnauallee. Luggage follows the same rule: a saloon takes two large suitcases and hand luggage, and anything past that, from a pram to a family's holiday bags, belongs in the bigger vehicle. Tell us how much there is when you book, and the right car is the one that comes.

A fixed price instead of the Taxameter

Kaltenkirchen belongs to the Kreis Segeberg and lies a good thirty kilometres from us, well outside the Pflichtfahrgebiet of Neumünster. That word means the compulsory operating area: the zone in which a German taxi has to accept every fare and has to charge the official municipal tariff on a calibrated meter, the Taxameter. Outside that zone the meter does not apply and the price is agreed instead. So for this journey we settle it with you beforehand. You see it here on the page and once more in the booking form before you confirm anything. The drive to your address in Neumünster is not counted, and ordinary travel luggage costs nothing extra.

Nothing that happens during the journey changes that figure afterwards. Not if we leave the A 7 for the L 319 and the B 4 because something is blocking the motorway, and not if we carry on past the exit as far as Moorkaten or the Kisdorfer Weg. The return journey out of Kaltenkirchen we record separately, best of all when you book the outward one, because the railway gives up late in the evening. If a family of five arrives at the Norderstraße, we need the larger car, and its price is stated in advance in the same way. The boundary, incidentally, is not the town sign of Kaltenkirchen but the edge of the compulsory area just outside Neumünster: up to there the meter counts, beyond it what we agreed counts.

Frequently asked questions

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