Taxi to Kiel: from Neumünster to the Förde

Where Kiel is and what people go there for

Kiel is the capital of Schleswig-Holstein, the German state that fills the neck of land between the North Sea and the Baltic, and it is the largest place we serve. The city is built around the Kieler Förde, a long narrow arm of the Baltic that reaches deep inland. That shape decides almost everything about moving around Kiel. The water runs through the middle of the city, so two addresses that sit close together on a map can be a long way apart by road, and the way between them may lead all the way round the head of the inlet.

From Neumünster it is a good thirty six kilometres due north and just under half an hour by car. Hamburg lies roughly sixty five kilometres in the other direction, on the same motorway. We sit between the two, which is why a trip north from Hamburg and a trip to Kiel so often turn out to be the same road.

People travel to Kiel for very different reasons, and the reason changes what a taxi has to do. Ferries leave for Norway, Sweden and Lithuania, from three different quays that are nowhere near each other. Cruise ships tie up at the Ostseekai from spring into autumn. The Universitätsklinikum Schleswig-Holstein, the university hospital, treats patients from the whole state. The Landtag, the state parliament, sits at the Landeshaus on the waterfront. There is a university, a shipbuilding industry on the eastern shore, a football club, a handball club, and once a year the Kieler Woche, a sailing regatta and city festival that runs for nine days and rearranges the whole centre while it lasts.

At the northern edge of the city the Nord-Ostsee-Kanal, the ship canal that links the North Sea with the Baltic, ends at the locks in Holtenau. Big ships pass through there all day and you can stand at the lock and watch them. For anyone being driven around Kiel the canal matters for a duller reason: the northern districts are reached over a small number of bridges, so when one of those bridges is out of service, the route to the north of the city changes for everybody.

Why the train works by day and stops working at night

Neumünster and Kiel sit on the same railway line, and during the day the train is quick. The RE 70 leaves shortly after the full hour and is at Kiel Hauptbahnhof, the main station, in eighteen minutes. The RE 7 leaves around half past and needs a good twenty minutes, because it calls at Einfeld, Bordesholm and Flintbek along the way. The ICE and IC long distance trains towards Kiel stop in Neumünster as well. If you need to be at Kiel Hauptbahnhof in the middle of the day and you are travelling without luggage, the train will have you there before our car would. We would rather tell you that ourselves than let you work it out on the way.

The catch comes in the evening. On an ordinary weekday the train shortly after ten at night is the last one going back from Kiel to Neumünster. After that the departure board shows nothing at all in our direction for almost three hours, until shortly after one in the morning. Only on Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays does the RE 7 keep running later, and in the night from Saturday to Sunday it runs every hour into the early morning. So if you go to the opera, to a match or to a concert on a weekday, the train will get you there, but it will not bring you home.

Then there is the last stretch inside Kiel itself. The Hauptbahnhof is a terminus at the southern edge of the city centre, with the tracks ending inside the building, and from there you go on by KVG city bus or by one of the small ferries that cross the Förde, because Kiel has neither an S-Bahn nor a tram. To Schilksee, to Holtenau or over to Dietrichsdorf on the eastern shore, that is another twenty to forty minutes with a change on the way. Bus route 4550, the airport coach between Kiel and Hamburg, does stop at the Neumünster bus station and does even leave Kiel after midnight, but it takes noticeably longer for the distance than the train does.

The departures named here are the ones in the 2025/26 timetable between Neumünster and Kiel. Look them up again before you travel, because timetables are changed regularly, and a page that quotes a departure time is only ever a snapshot.

Where in Kiel we actually drive

Kiel has thirty city districts, grouped into eighteen Ortsteile, larger districts that each have their own local council, and they lie in a horseshoe around the Förde. From the Hauptbahnhof up to the Olympiazentrum in Schilksee, at the far northern end, is another good ten minutes right across the city and then along the water. Which is why Kiel on its own is not enough for us as a destination. Only with the district or the street do we know whether the trip stays on the western shore or has to go round the inlet.

The address we drive to most often is the Universitätsklinikum Schleswig-Holstein on Arnold-Heller-Straße, followed by the Städtisches Krankenhaus, the municipal hospital, and the Lubinus Clinicum on Steenbeker Weg. The Christian-Albrechts-Universität, the Fachhochschule and the Muthesius Kunsthochschule come up just as regularly, and so do GEOMAR, the ocean research centre, and the Landeshaus on the Kiellinie, where the state parliament sits.

On the western shore lie Mitte with the town hall, the opera house and the Holstenstraße shopping street, behind it Schreventeich and Hasseldieksdamm, further west the large housing estate of Mettenhof, in the south Hassee with the CITTI-PARK shopping centre at the Mühlendamm, and north of the centre Wik, then Holtenau with the locks of the Nord-Ostsee-Kanal, then Pries-Friedrichsort. On the eastern shore we drive to Gaarden, Ellerbek, Wellingdorf, Neumühlen-Dietrichsdorf and Elmschenhagen. To get there you go round the Hörn at the southern end of the Förde, even though on the map the eastern shore looks like it is simply across the street.

We set down at the Hauptbahnhof and at the Sophienhof shopping centre on the Sophienblatt, and at the terminals: Norwegenkai, Schwedenkai, Ostseekai and the Ostuferhafen lie far apart, and partly on opposite sides of the water. For a match we drive to the Holstein-Stadion on the Westring or to the Ostseehalle arena. And if your trip goes beyond Kiel, out to Laboe with its naval memorial, to Mönkeberg, to Schwentinental or to the open air museum at Molfsee, we take you there as well.

The route from Neumünster to Kiel

Out of Neumünster we take the B 430 onto the A 7 and then, already at the Autobahndreieck Bordesholm, the interchange where the two motorways split, onto the A 215, which runs from there into Kiel with no further change. That motorway is twenty one kilometres long and four lanes the whole way. It opened on 4 August 1972, in time for the Olympic sailing events held off Kiel that summer. At the Kreuz Kiel-Mitte junction it turns into the B 76, which carries on as an urban motorway, so you stay free of junctions and traffic lights almost as far as the city centre.

To Kiel Hauptbahnhof it is a good thirty six kilometres and just under half an hour. To the university hospital and to the quays on the Förde add a few minutes on top. To the CITTI-PARK in Hassee it is less, because that one sits on the route before the centre rather than beyond it. To Schilksee it is considerably more, a good forty minutes, because that means crossing the whole city first and then following the Förde north.

If something is standing still on the A 215 we drop down onto the old country road through Bordesholm and Flintbek, the former B 4, which lost its federal number when the parallel A 7 was built and is now a Landesstraße, a state road one class down. It is a few kilometres longer and takes a little more time, but it keeps moving when the motorway does not. Whether we reach Kiel on the A 215 or through Flintbek makes no difference to you, because the price is agreed before departure and does not hang on the distance actually driven.

When we drive to Kiel most often

Kieler Woche is the spike in the year. It always ends on the last Sunday in June and begins eight days earlier, on the Saturday evening, with the Glasen, the ringing of the ship's bell that opens the festival. In 2026 it runs from 20 to 28 June. During those days much of the city centre is closed to traffic, the racing happens off Schilksee, and the celebrating happens along the Kiellinie and on the Rathausplatz. Getting into the city is not the difficult part. Getting out again late in the evening is, above all on the Saturday of the Windjammerparade, when the tall ships sail out and the crowd along the water is at its largest.

The rest of the year is carried by other occasions. Home matches of Holstein Kiel at the Westring and handball evenings of the THW in the Ostseehalle end for tens of thousands of people at the same minute, and everything that moves out of the city moves at once. The ferries run to a fixed pattern: to Oslo in the early afternoon from the Norwegenkai, to Gothenburg in the early evening from the Schwedenkai, to Klaipeda several times a week from the Ostuferhafen, and from spring to autumn the cruise ships at the Ostseekai on top of all that. Anyone who checks in with suitcases and has a fixed boarding time does not want to depend on a connection.

Quieter, but far more regular, are the journeys into ordinary working life: appointments at the hospital that start early in the morning, early shifts at thyssenkrupp Marine Systems and the other yards on the Förde, duty at the Landeshaus and at the insurers and banks in the city, and students with luggage at the start of a semester.

Medical journeys to Kiel: hospital, clinics and dialysis

A large part of our Kiel work has a medical reason, and that follows from what stands in Kiel. The Campus Kiel of the Universitätsklinikum Schleswig-Holstein on Arnold-Heller-Straße admits patients from across the state, and its Klinik für Strahlentherapie, the radiotherapy department, is by the hospital's own account the largest facility of its kind in Schleswig-Holstein. Alongside it are the Städtisches Krankenhaus on Chemnitzstraße, a teaching hospital of the Christian-Albrechts-Universität with a children's clinic of its own, the Lubinus Clinicum on Steenbeker Weg, known above all for orthopaedics and joint replacement, and the Zentrum für Integrative Psychiatrie on the Niemannsweg with a day clinic and outpatient departments. For dialysis, Kiel has among others the NierenZentrum am Sophienhof on Hopfenstraße, a few steps from the main station, and the Nieren- und Gefäßzentrum on Steenbeker Weg.

What sets these journeys apart from every other trip to Kiel is the repetition. Dialysis usually happens three times a week and takes hours. A course of radiotherapy runs on every working day for several weeks. The way there is rarely the problem, the way back is: across Kiel to a terminus station after the treatment, then the train, then the last stretch home once you are in Neumünster. Many people cannot manage that any more, and the ones who can manage it once cannot manage it thirty times.

Because these appointments are fixed weeks in advance, we plan them as a standing series, at the same times each week and, as far as the roster allows, with the same driver. Tell us once when you book that there is a rollator, a wheelchair or a companion, and it stays in the order, so it does not have to be explained again every time. If a treatment overruns, the driver waits rather than leaving and coming back.

Whether a health insurer pays for the journey is not decided by the taxi but by the doctor's prescription. In Germany such a prescribed trip is called a Krankenfahrt, and the rules come from § 60 SGB V and the Krankentransport-Richtlinie, the directive of the Gemeinsamer Bundesausschuss, the body that decides what statutory health insurance covers. Journeys to a hospital admission and back after discharge are covered. Journeys to outpatient treatment have to be approved by the insurer beforehand, and approval counts as given for care level 4 or 5 under the German Pflegegrad system, for care level 3 with a lasting impairment of mobility, and for the disability markers aG, Bl or H. Repeat treatments such as dialysis, oncological radiotherapy and parenteral chemotherapy are listed explicitly as exceptional cases in Anlage 2, annex 2 of that directive. The statutory contribution of ten percent per journey, bounded by a statutory minimum and maximum, stays with you in every case.

All of that describes German statutory health insurance. If you are insured abroad, ask your own insurer what it reimburses before you travel and keep the receipt we give you. For a prescribed journey the fixed price of this page does not apply; a separate procedure does, and what is needed for it is set out on our page about Krankenfahrten. Anyone going to Kiel without a prescription, for a preliminary examination, a follow up check, a talk before an operation or to visit a relative on a ward, books the trip like any other, at the fixed price.

Business travel to Kiel: ministries, shipyards and industrial estates

Kiel is the state capital, and a traffic flow of its own hangs on that. The Landtag meets in the Landeshaus on the Kiellinie, the Staatskanzlei, the state chancellery, and several ministries sit on the Düsternbrooker Weg, and around them are state authorities, courts and chambers. The Industrie- und Handelskammer zu Kiel, the chamber of industry and commerce, has its building on the Bergstraße in the middle of the city centre, and points out itself that the visitor spaces in its underground car park are limited. For a nine o'clock appointment, coming from Neumünster, that leaves two options: set off very early and then go looking for a space, or be dropped at the door and arrive with your head on the meeting instead of on the parking.

The work itself often lies a long way from the Landeshaus. On the eastern shore of the Förde, thyssenkrupp Marine Systems and German Naval Yards face each other across the Werftstraße, and the early shift there starts at an hour when the trip from Neumünster to the yard gate would still involve two changes. The Wissenschaftspark on the Fraunhoferstraße brings around a hundred companies with roughly 1,600 employees together on one site, along with the open workshop FabLab.SH. On the grounds of the former Seefischmarkt, the deep sea fish market, in Wellingdorf at the mouth of the river Schwentine, maritime firms, research groups and young companies have moved in, and GEOMAR has its second site there on the Wischhofstraße. In the south east of the city, finally, lies the Gewerbegebiet Wellsee, an industrial estate of around a hundred and sixty hectares with more than two hundred businesses, reached from the Wellseedamm between the B 404 and the B 76.

Between all of those addresses there is nearly always the B 76. As the Theodor-Heuss-Ring it runs straight through the city and, with up to a hundred thousand vehicles a day, is one of the busiest roads in Kiel. At the Barkauer Kreuz and the Waldwiesenkreuz it stands still reliably in the morning and again in the late afternoon. At the north western edge of the city there is now the alte Levensauer Hochbrücke as well, the old high bridge over the Nord-Ostsee-Kanal: it has been closed to cars since 10 August 2026 and traffic is diverted over the neighbouring B 76 bridge, on the position at the beginning of September 2026 expected to last until the end of 2027. Roadworks like that change, so we check what applies on the day and work the pickup time in Neumünster back from it rather than from a rule of thumb.

Anyone who drives these routes regularly does not have to pay in the car each time. With a Firmenkonto, a company account, the journey runs on invoice. At the end of the month every single trip appears with date, time and route on one collected invoice, and your bookkeeping posts one item instead of a pile of separate receipts. How it is set up is explained on our company account page. It changes nothing about the price for Kiel, which is fixed before departure even when the appointment runs longer than planned. The same works in reverse: we collect your guests in Kiel, at the main station, at their hotel or at a ferry terminal, and bring them to you in Neumünster.

A fixed price instead of the Taxameter

As long as we are driving inside Neumünster, the calibrated Taxameter, the taximeter, runs on the municipal tariff, and agreeing a price of our own there would not be permitted. Kiel is something else: it is a kreisfreie Stadt, a city that forms its own administrative district, a good thirty six kilometres further north, and between the two lies the Kreis Rendsburg-Eckernförde with Bordesholm and Flintbek. The journey therefore leaves the Pflichtfahrgebiet, the compulsory service area in which the municipal tariff must be charged, long before it reaches the destination. That is exactly why a price may be agreed in advance for this trip.

So what the journey to Kiel costs is already there in the booking form, before you book, and that is what it stays. If the A 215 is crawling, if we divert through Flintbek, or if it happens to be Kieler Woche, nothing gets recalculated afterwards. There is no surcharge for the time of day either: the run back from Kiel at three in the morning costs the same as the outward trip in the afternoon. What the larger vehicle costs appears the same way, as soon as you enter how many people are travelling.

The point of that is not the arithmetic, it is knowing where you stand. A journey of this length in a metered taxi is a number that only becomes final when you arrive, and on a route with a motorway, a city centre and a bridge closure on it, that number can move a long way. Agreeing it beforehand takes the traffic out of your side of the deal and leaves it on ours.

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