Taxi to Lübeck: from Neumünster to the Altstadt, the UKSH and Travemünde

Why the journey to Lübeck is worth taking by taxi

Between Neumünster and Lübeck there is neither a through train nor a through bus. You always change at least once. The usual way out is the RB82, the regional train run by Nordbahn, as far as Bad Oldesloe, and from there the RE8 to Lübeck Hauptbahnhof (the main station). In the timetable as it stood at the beginning of September 2026, the RB82 runs once an hour, at thirty seven minutes past, in Bad Oldesloe you have eleven minutes to change, and after a good seventy five minutes from platform to platform you are in Lübeck. Coming back, the road is often the quicker way: bus line 7650 links the ZOB at Lübeck Hauptbahnhof with the ZOB in Bad Segeberg in about forty minutes, running via Stockelsdorf and Mönkhagen, and in Bad Segeberg you get back on the RB82 to Neumünster. ZOB is short for Zentraler Omnibusbahnhof, the central bus station, and on German signs and departure boards you will only ever see the three letters.

Eleven minutes to change sounds workable, and in practice it is tight. If the RB82 is late, you wait a full hour in Bad Oldesloe for the next RE8. The line from Neumünster to Bad Oldesloe is single track, it is not electrified, and during the day it is occupied almost continuously. Engineering work and diverted freight trains lead to cancellations and to Schienenersatzverkehr, which is what the railway calls it when buses take over the route and you finish the journey by road anyway. On this line that is not a rare exception but a pattern that keeps coming back. A half hourly service is only planned once the line has been doubled, and that lies somewhere in the years around 2030 to 2035 at the earliest. If you avoid the whole thing and go round by Kiel on the RE83 through Preetz, Plön and Eutin, you are travelling for about two hours. All the times named here are a snapshot and they change with every timetable change, so check them on the day if you decide to take the train after all.

Where we drive in Lübeck

Lübeck lies on the Baltic coast in the east of Schleswig-Holstein, on the river Trave, which reaches the sea at Travemünde. It is the second city of the state after Kiel and by surface area the largest of them all, and that is exactly why a Lübeck address needs more than a district name. The Ortsteile, the city districts, lie a long way apart, and the drive from one end to the other can take longer than a stretch of the motorway. The Altstadt sits as an island between the Trave and the Wakenitz and has been a UNESCO World Heritage Site since 1987.

On the island we drive to the Holstentor, to the Rathaus (the town hall) on the Markt, to the Marienkirche, to the Dom with the triumphal cross by Bernt Notke, to the Petrikirche with its viewing platform up in the tower, to the Burgtor, which is the second surviving city gate at the northern end of the island, to the Europäisches Hansemuseum, which tells the story of the Hanseatic League that Lübeck once led, to the Günter Grass-Haus and the Willy-Brandt-Haus, the museums for the writer and for the chancellor, to the St. Annen-Museum, to the Museum Behnhaus Drägerhaus, to the Theater Lübeck, to the Musikhochschule on the Große Petersgrube and to Niederegger in the Breite Straße, the marzipan house that most visitors have on their list. (The Buddenbrookhaus, the museum in the house of the Mann family, has been closed since the end of 2019 for rebuilding, as things stand until around 2029. Parts of the exhibition are on show in the Behnhaus for as long as that lasts, and we are happy to take you there instead.)

Outside the Wallanlagen, the ring of ramparts and parks around the island, we drive to St. Jürgen with Strecknitz, Blankensee and Krummesse, to St. Lorenz Nord and St. Lorenz Süd around the Hauptbahnhof, to St. Gertrud with Marli, Brandenbaum, Eichholz and Karlshof, to Moisling, to Buntekuh with the Citti-Park, to Kücknitz with Dänischburg, Herrenwyk and Pöppendorf, to Schlutup and to Travemünde with Priwall, Ivendorf and Brodten. Frequent destinations are the UKSH Campus Lübeck at Ratzeburger Allee 160, which is the Lübeck half of the university hospital of Schleswig-Holstein, the Sana Klinikum on the Kronsforder Allee, the DRK-Krankenhaus run by the German Red Cross, the Universität zu Lübeck and the Technische Hochschule in the Hochschulstadtteil, which is the university quarter out to the south east, and then Drägerwerk, Euroimmun, Brüggen, Nordgetreide and the Lübecker Hafengesellschaft, the port company. Add to that the LUV Center in Dänischburg, the LindenArcaden at the Hauptbahnhof, the Haerder-Center, the Musik- und Kongresshalle on the Wallhalbinsel, the Stadion an der Lohmühle, Flughafen Lübeck-Blankensee and the Skandinavienkai in Travemünde. Give us the street and not only the district, then we stop in front of the right door rather than somewhere in the right part of town.

The route from Neumünster to Lübeck

We leave Neumünster either on the B205 or on the B430 towards Wankendorf, join the A21 and follow it south. At Bad Segeberg the motorway stops. There is a short piece of B206 before the road feeds onto the A20, the Ostseeautobahn, the Baltic motorway that runs east from there towards Lübeck. That connecting piece between the end of the A21 and the beginning of the A20 is the slowest passage of the whole trip, above all in the morning and in the early evening. Into the city itself we go on the L332, which on the ground means the Segeberger Straße and the Fackenburger Allee, and that runs almost straight at the Holstentor. Reckon on a good hour of actual driving to the Altstadt. The letters in front of the numbers tell you what sort of road it is: A stands for Autobahn, the motorway, B for Bundesstraße, a federal main road, and L for Landesstraße, a road run by the state. We name them the way the signs do, because that is what you will see out of the window.

Inside Lübeck we have several approaches to choose from: the A1 with the exits Lübeck-Moisling and Lübeck-Zentrum, the A20 with Lübeck-Genin and Lübeck-Süd, and the A226, which works as a city motorway towards Travemünde and the Skandinavienkai. For destinations in Kücknitz and in Travemünde there is the Herrentunnel under the Trave, which is a toll tunnel, and that is the one point we settle with you before we set off, because going round it takes noticeably longer depending on the time of day. It is a small decision at the start of the journey and a large one at the end, when a ferry is closing its check in.

When we drive to Lübeck most often

The most common reason is the UKSH Campus Lübeck. Together with Kiel it is one of only two hospitals in Schleswig-Holstein at the level the Germans call Maximalversorgung, which means it takes the cases that smaller hospitals send on. Anyone referred there from Neumünster usually has an appointment at half past seven or at eight, and on a Sunday the train does not get you into Lübeck before shortly to eight. After an anaesthetic or a procedure nobody is allowed to drive themselves home in any case, and anyone visiting a patient on a ward is normally carrying a bag and flowers. On top of that come the ferries at the Skandinavienkai to Sweden, Finland and the Baltic states, whose sailing times take no notice of the hourly RB82, and the flights from Lübeck-Blankensee, which cost you two changes if you go by bus and train.

On weekdays we drive commuters to Dräger, Euroimmun, Brüggen, Nordgetreide, the port company and the industrial estates in Buntekuh and on the Geniner Straße, where the shifts simply do not fit the timetable, and we drive students and staff of the university and the Technische Hochschule out to the Hochschulstadtteil. In the evening it is the Theater Lübeck, a concert in the Musik- und Kongresshalle or dinner in the Hüxstraße, the street in the Altstadt where most of the small restaurants are. In spring the Brahms-Festival comes round, along with the rowing regatta on the Wakenitz and, on the night before the first of May, the Mai-Singen under the arcades of the Rathaus. In summer it is the beach at Travemünde, with sand toys and a pushchair in the boot. In Advent it is the Kunsthandwerkermarkt, the craft market held for eleven days in the Heiligen-Geist-Hospital, a medieval hospice building that is worth walking into even without the market. The exact dates shift from one year to the next, so look them up with the organiser before you book around them.

Krankenfahrten: medical journeys from Neumünster to Lübeck

A large part of our Lübeck work consists of Krankenfahrten. That is the German word for a journey to or from treatment that a doctor has prescribed, made in a normal taxi rather than an ambulance, and it is a category the health insurers deal with separately. Anyone going to the UKSH Campus Lübeck for the first time usually underestimates one thing: you are not driving to a building, you are driving onto a site. The address Ratzeburger Allee 160 does not yet say where your appointment takes place. The buildings on the campus carry letters and numbers, and inside the buildings there are numbered Infopunkte, information points that the departments use as their address. The Zentrale Notaufnahme, the emergency department, and the Klinik für Strahlentherapie, radiotherapy, are in Haus A; the Schmerzambulanz, the pain clinic, is also in Haus A on the ground floor, while its Tagesklinik, the day clinic, is in Haus C1. If your appointment slip says nothing but UKSH, you end up walking right across the campus with a bag in one hand and a folder of results in the other. So when you book, tell us the Haus and the Infopunkt and not only the name of the clinic, then we set you down at the right entrance instead of at the access road off the Ratzeburger Allee. The campus can be reached by public transport as well, bus lines 8 and 9 even run onto the hospital grounds and the station Lübeck-St. Jürgen is about ten minutes on foot away, but all of that assumes you still want to walk after your treatment and are able to. After an anaesthetic, after radiotherapy or with a fresh dressing that is not a serious option, and the way back through Bad Oldesloe is even less of one.

Besides the UKSH we drive to the Sana Klinikum on the Kronsforder Allee, which is an academic teaching hospital of the UKSH, to the Krankenhaus Rotes Kreuz on the Marlistraße with its geriatric department, its day clinic and its outpatient rehabilitation, and to the dialysis units: the Nierenzentrum on the Kahlhorststraße in St. Jürgen and the site Am Dreilingsberg in Travemünde. With a day clinic or with dialysis it is rarely a matter of one journey. It is the same route several times a week, for months. What follows now concerns the German statutory health insurance system, so it matters to you if you are insured with a German Krankenkasse. How your insurer treats the journey is their decision and not ours. The basis is the doctor's prescription on the Transportschein, the transport form, which has to state why a taxi in particular is necessary. Journeys to outpatient treatment normally have to be approved by the insurer in advance. For dialysis and for oncological chemotherapy or radiotherapy, and for holders of the Merkzeichen aG, Bl and H, which are the codes on a German severe disability card for people who cannot walk unaided, who are blind or who need constant assistance, that approval is not required. What is paid for, as a rule, is the journey to the nearest suitable place of treatment, and whether Lübeck counts as that in your case follows from the referral and the prescription. Please settle this with your insurer before the first journey rather than afterwards. Whether we can bill your insurer directly is something we go through with you on the phone beforehand. The fixed Lübeck price helps in both directions here, because the way out and the way back are both settled before the appointment and do not depend on how long you sit in the waiting area.

Groups, luggage and the roads around the port

The Skandinavienkai is not a quay but a site of around eight hundred thousand square metres with nine RoRo berths, in operation around the clock, with its own four lane approach road coming straight off the motorway. RoRo stands for roll on roll off, which means the lorries and cars drive on board and off again under their own power instead of being lifted. For a traveller the important part is this: the terminal is not in the middle of Travemünde, it stands on its own along the Trave, and between the barrier and the ship there is another stretch to cover on foot or by shuttle. The check in desks are in the Hafenhaus, together with shops and somewhere to eat. Ships sail from there to Sweden, to Finland, to Latvia and to Lithuania, Finnlines for instance to Helsinki and to Malmö, Stena Line to Liepāja. The shipping lines close check in well before departure, and how far before is written on your ticket. Give us that time when you book and not the sailing time of the ship, then we work backwards from it and set the departure in Neumünster to match. Cruise ships, on the other hand, mostly tie up at the Ostpreußenkai, which is right in the middle of the town on the Vorderreihe, opposite the four masted barque Passat, with a glass terminal building directly at the mouth of the Trave. Ships of up to around two hundred metres in length and twenty five metres in beam fit alongside there. So if you go aboard or come ashore at the Ostpreußenkai you are standing in the town itself and not on a port site, and the meeting point for the way back looks completely different from the one at the ferry terminal.

The Priwall comes with a peculiarity that we raise with every booking. The peninsula belongs to Travemünde, but by land it hangs off Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, the neighbouring federal state, because the state border runs across its eastern end. Anyone who does not take the ferry has to drive around thirty five kilometres around the Dassower See, by way of Dassow, Selmsdorf and Schlutup. That is why we take the car ferry. It runs every day of the year around the clock, every ten to fifteen minutes between five in the morning and quarter to eleven at night, at wider intervals after that and in the early hours, and the crossing itself takes only a few minutes. In fog, in a storm or when shipping traffic runs through without a break, sailings can be dropped. We build that reserve into the plan whenever a ferry, a train or an early flight is waiting at the other end. For groups, incidentally, what counts with us is not only the number of heads but the number of cases. Eight travellers fit in the Großraumwagen, our eight seat van, but eight people with ferry luggage, a pushchair and beach gear is a different proposition from eight people with hand luggage. Tell us both numbers. Lübeck fills up on fixed dates: the Travemünder Woche, the sailing week, runs over ten days in July and turns half of Travemünde upside down; the Nordische Filmtage, the Nordic film festival, have run since 1956 over six days across the first weekend in November; and on match days for VfB Lübeck, the city's football club, St. Lorenz Nord fills up around the Stadion an der Lohmühle. On days like that we would rather put the meeting point for the return a few streets further out, somewhere we are genuinely allowed to stop.

A fixed price instead of the Taxameter

Lübeck is a good hour by car from Neumünster and therefore well outside our Pflichtfahrgebiet. That is the area a licensed German taxi has to serve and in which the official municipal tariff applies. Precisely because the journey to the Trave leaves that area, a price may be agreed in advance instead of letting the Taxameter run. The Taxameter is the calibrated meter in the car, and it is checked and sealed by the authorities. If the journey stayed inside Neumünster, a fixed price would not be allowed: there the meter charges the official city tariff and we are not permitted to change anything about it.

The Lübeck price is in the form before you confirm, and after that it does not move. Not when the B206 stretch at Bad Segeberg is at a standstill, not when the A20 is closed, and not when road works in the Fackenburger Allee send us round the outside. Because Travemünde and the Skandinavienkai lie furthest away of all the Lübeck destinations, the exact address matters more to us than the district. Type in the Lübeck street and the form works with it immediately. If you would rather speak than type: 04321 22200, day and night, and that includes a ride back from Travemünde at three in the morning.

Included in the fixed fare

• Fixed Lübeck price, visible in the booking form before you confirm
• No change in Bad Oldesloe and no waiting for the RE8
• Right up to the address in the Altstadt, at the UKSH or in Buntekuh
• Travemünde, Skandinavienkai and Flughafen Blankensee included
• Großraumwagen with room for eight travellers and their ferry luggage
• At night as well, when the last RE8 out of Lübeck has long gone

Frequently asked questions

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