Taxi to Rendsburg: from Neumünster across the Nord-Ostsee-Kanal

Where Rendsburg is, and why the trip is worth a taxi

Rendsburg is a town in Schleswig-Holstein, the northernmost of the German states, roughly halfway between Hamburg and the Danish border. From our base in Neumünster it is a good forty kilometres to the north. What makes the place unusual is the water. The Nord-Ostsee-Kanal, called the Kiel Canal in English, runs straight through the middle of it and links the North Sea with the Baltic. Sea going ships pass through the town all day long, close enough that you can read the name on the bow, and the same waterway splits the place into a northern and a southern half that you cannot simply walk between.

Rendsburg sits on the same railway line as Neumünster. Regional trains towards Schleswig and Flensburg stop there and the pure travelling time is short. To get there the train makes a detour that exists nowhere else in the country: the Rendsburger Schleife, a full loop that curls around the district called Schleife and over the rooftops of the town so the track can climb the forty metres it needs to cross the canal on the high bridge. It is a ride worth doing once for its own sake. How often the trains run and exactly how long they take is a snapshot, because timetables change, and the last train of the evening leaves earlier than most visitors assume.

The catch is not the travelling time. The catch is what comes after it. The Hauptbahnhof, the main station, stands in the Königskoppel district on the northern side of the canal. Anyone heading for Rendsburg-Süd, for Marienhöh, for Stadtmoor or for the Messegelände, the exhibition grounds at Grüner Kamp, is therefore on the wrong bank and needs a second connection to finish the journey. The same goes for the hospital in the Lilienstraße, for the Kreishaus in the Kaiserstraße, which is the seat of the district authority, and for the vocational colleges on the Herrenstraße. From the platform you reach them on foot or with another change.

Out into the villages around the town, to Fockbek, Nübbel, Westerrönfeld or Schacht-Audorf, the bus runs a good deal less often, and in the evening and at the weekend frequently not at all. In a taxi you do the whole thing in one piece, from your address in Neumünster to the front door in Rendsburg, with your luggage, with a rollator, or with a child asleep on your arm. Nobody has to work out which platform, which bank of the canal, or what happens if the connection is missed.

Where we drive in Rendsburg

Rendsburg is officially divided into twenty-nine Ortsteile, the German word for a named quarter of a town, and they sit on three levels: north of the river Eider, between the Eider and the canal, and south of the canal. So when you book, do not give us only the name of the town. Give us the street. Then we pick the right approach from the start, instead of arriving correctly in Rendsburg and wrongly on the far bank.

Most often we drive into the Altstadt, the old town, which sits on an old island in the Eider. The usual points there are the Altstädter Markt with the Rathaus, the town hall, and the Marienkirche, then the Schiffbrückenplatz and the Schiffbrücken Galerie, the shopping centre whose car park is reached from An der Bleiche. Immediately next to it lies Neuwerk, the old garrison quarter laid out on a grid, with the Paradeplatz, the Christkirche and the Hohes Arsenal. In the same quarter stand the Schön Klinik in the Lilienstraße and the Berufsbildungszentrum, the vocational training centre, on the Herrenstraße.

In the Königskoppel we set down at the station and at the Nordmarkhalle on the Willy-Brandt-Platz, and on Fridays at the market hall as well. In Nobiskrug we drive to the shipyard on the canal and to the Waldorfschule on the Nobiskrüger Allee. Into Mastbrook, Rotenhof, Kronwerk and Mühlenau-Margarethenhof we drive to the residential streets, and out to the quay at the Kreishafen, the district harbour, where the original gondola of the Schwebefähre from 1913 has stood for a few years now. A Schwebefähre is a transporter bridge: a platform that hangs on cables from the underside of the railway bridge and carries cars and people across the water without blocking the shipping.

Official destinations are the Kreishaus in the Kaiserstraße, the administration of the Kreis Rendsburg-Eckernförde, which is the district covering the whole surrounding area, the Neues Rathaus Am Gymnasium, the Amtsgericht, meaning the local court, in the Königstraße, and the Rendsburg Information office at the Altstädter Markt. Then there are the schools: the Helene-Lange-Gymnasium in the Ritterstraße, the Herderschule by the Stadtsee, the Gymnasium Kronwerk on the Eckernförder Straße, the Danish Ejderskolen in the Prof.-Koopmann-Straße, the Nordkolleg Am Gerhardshain and the swimming centre An der Untereider. South of the canal we drive to Rendsburg-Süd for the Messegelände and the DEULA training centre at Grüner Kamp, and on to Marienhöh and Stadtmoor.

The route from Neumünster to Rendsburg

We leave Neumünster on the Rendsburger Straße and join the A7 northbound, the motorway that runs from Hamburg up to the Danish border, and stay on it for about twenty-five kilometres. At the Kreuz Rendsburg, the motorway junction south of the town, we swing onto the A210 towards Kiel, four lanes wide and without a hard shoulder, signed here for Bredenbek, Schacht-Audorf, Rendsburg-Mitte and the Messe. A few kilometres later come the B202 and the B77. Those are Bundesstraßen, main trunk roads one class below a motorway, and the B77 takes us round the west side of the town and through the Kanaltunnel into it. All together that is about forty-four kilometres and, with a clear run, a good half hour.

The Kanaltunnel is the point where it can jam. It runs a good six hundred metres under the canal, it has two bores with four lanes between them, and vehicles taller than about four metres do not fit through. Around thirty-five thousand vehicles use it every day. The automatic height check in front of the entrance goes off regularly, in the first half of this year more than twice a week, and when it does a lane closes and the queue builds back up the approach. Dangerous goods are not allowed through at all. The town of Rendsburg publishes the status of the tunnel for both directions on its own website, and our drivers look at it before they set off.

Two destinations we reach without the tunnel at all. The Messegelände in Rendsburg-Süd is on our side of the water coming from Neumünster, so that trip is even slightly shorter. And for Büdelsdorf we stay on the A7 for longer, cross on the Rader Hochbrücke, the tall motorway bridge over the canal, and then carry on along the B203. That bridge dates from 1972 and is being replaced by a new structure. Work there is expected to run into the thirties, and in a storm it is closed to empty lorries and trailers. The traffic then diverts into the Kanaltunnel, so both crossings get tight at the same moment. On days like that we leave earlier and say so when we confirm the booking.

For you as a passenger none of this is something to plan around. You tell us the time you have to be there, we work backwards from it, and if both crossings are difficult we start earlier. What matters is that the delay does not land on your bill. The price is agreed before we set off and it does not move afterwards.

When we drive to Rendsburg most often

The largest part of our journeys to Rendsburg has to do with the hospital. The Schön Klinik in the Lilienstraße has around twenty specialist departments and, with well over five hundred beds, is the biggest hospital in the area, with a helicopter platform on the neighbouring building. Tens of thousands of people are treated there as outpatients every year. Admission times are often so early that no train is any help, and after an examination under sedation nobody is allowed to drive themselves. On the ground floor of the same building sits the Anlaufpraxis of the Kassenärztliche Vereinigung, the walk-in surgery that covers the hours when ordinary doctors' practices are shut, and that is exactly what people need in the evening and at the weekend.

On weekdays the two Berufsbildungszentren add to the traffic, one on the Herrenstraße by the canal, the other on the Kieler Straße, together almost six thousand pupils and trainees from across the district. Rendsburg is the Kreisstadt, the administrative seat of the Kreis Rendsburg-Eckernförde, which is why the appointments that cannot be moved are here too: the Kreishaus, the Amtsgericht and the vehicle registration office. An appointment at a German authority is given for a fixed minute, not for a morning, and if you miss it you go back to the queue for a new date.

Then there are the dates in the calendar. In summer we drive a great deal to the NordArt in the Kunstwerk Carlshütte, a large art exhibition held in a former iron foundry in neighbouring Büdelsdorf, in autumn to the Norla, the agricultural show on the Messegelände at Grüner Kamp, and to the SH Netz Cup, the regatta at the Kreishafen. In the evenings there are performances at the Stadttheater on the Hans-Heinrich-Beisenkötter-Platz, and guests who sleep at the Nordkolleg and have to be back in Neumünster the next morning before the first useful connection exists.

Krankenfahrten to Rendsburg: dialysis, radiotherapy, follow-up care

A large share of our journeys into the Lilienstraße are not single appointments but treatments that run for weeks. The hospital there operates, among other things, a department for radiotherapy and nuclear medicine, an oncology section with a breast cancer centre, a bowel cancer centre and a prostate cancer centre, a department of neurology with a stroke unit, a department of geriatric medicine, a children's and adolescent department, and a department of psychiatry and psychosomatic medicine. Somebody referred there from Neumünster is as a rule going for one particular specialism, not because it happens to be the nearest hospital.

In German this kind of trip has a name of its own, Krankenfahrt: a journey to or from medical treatment in a normal car with a driver, not an ambulance and not a stretcher. A doctor can prescribe it in much the same way as a treatment, and then part of the process runs through the health insurer rather than through you. We do these journeys every day and we know how the paperwork behaves.

The most regular of them are radiotherapy and dialysis. A course of radiotherapy often runs on every working day for several weeks in a row. Dialysis takes place three times a week and the appointments are early. The Nephrologisches Zentrum Rendsburg-Eckernförde treats on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays as well as on Tuesdays, Thursdays and Saturdays, and the first shift starts before seven in the morning. In Rendsburg the centre has two addresses, the practice with its dialysis unit in the Wrangelstraße and a second dialysis unit on the fifth floor of the hospital in the Lilienstraße. Counted together with the site in Eckernförde that is a good fifty treatment places.

For the journey that means two things. First, we collect you at a time of day when there is still very little public transport moving, and on Saturdays the timetable is thinner than on a weekday in any case. Second, the end of a treatment is rarely fixed to the minute. We wait without a meter ticking over, because the price was agreed before we set off. On this particular route that is worth more than it sounds: between Neumünster and the Lilienstraße lies the Kanaltunnel, and if the height check goes off there, or if nothing moves over the Rader Hochbrücke in a storm, it costs time. It changes nothing about what you pay.

If a doctor has prescribed the journey, the basis for it is the form known as Muster 4, the German prescription for patient transport. For outpatient treatment the health insurer may have to approve the journey beforehand, and it will look at where the treatment is being given. So ask for the reason to be written on the prescription, for instance that the specialist department is in Rendsburg. If anything is unclear, ask at your own practice or at the hospital's social services department before the first journey rather than after it. A whole series you book with us once. After that every appointment goes firmly into the plan, the trip out and the trip back, and wherever it can be arranged the same driver comes each time.

Business trips to Rendsburg: ports, works and industrial estates

Rendsburg itself has a good thirty thousand inhabitants, and the economic area around it more than twice that, because Büdelsdorf and the surrounding parishes from Alt Duvenstedt to Westerrönfeld belong to it. The work happens on both banks of the canal. On the northern bank lies the Kreishafen, the district port, which has been in operation since the canal opened and handles bulk cargo of every kind, and the shipyard at Nobiskrug. On the southern bank, in Osterrönfeld, lies the heavy lift port Rendsburg Port, built for heavy plant, machinery and project cargo, and beside it an industrial estate of around fifty hectares whose approach roads are laid out for heavy haulage.

Which bank your destination is on decides our route, not your price. To the port in Osterrönfeld and the estate next to it we come the same way as to the Messegelände, without the Kanaltunnel, because from Neumünster both lie in front of the water. To the Kreishafen and to Nobiskrug we go either through the tunnel or the long way round. For Büdelsdorf, where the ACO group has its head office on the Ahlmannkai, we stay on the A7 and only change to the B203 beyond the Rader Hochbrücke. On the same road, a couple of kilometres from the motorway, lies the joint municipal industrial estate Borgstedtfelde. For Fockbek, where the Hobby caravan works builds caravans and motorhomes with around twelve hundred employees, we pass the town on the western side.

The second thing that decides the trip is the clock. The town bus network connects Rendsburg with Büdelsdorf, Fockbek, Westerrönfeld, Osterrönfeld, Schacht-Audorf, Rickert and Nübbel, with the ZOB, the Schlossplatz and the Stoppstraße as interchange points, but the frequency follows school hours and office hours. That rarely fits an early shift at a works gate, and it fits a late shift back to Neumünster even less. The same is true for fitters who arrive in the evening and have to move on the next day, and for visitors who come in through Flughafen Hamburg. We collect them at the airport and take them all the way to the gate, with no change at a station and no hire car to return.

When single journeys turn into regular ones, a Firmenkonto, a company account, is the simpler way. You register the invoicing details once and say who is allowed to order. After that your people simply get in and name the firm, and nobody pays in the car. At the end of the month your bookkeeping receives one collected invoice with every journey listed separately, sorted by cost centre if you want it that way. Journeys for customers and visitors run over the same account, and the guest pays nothing at all. Recurring appointments we set up once and then keep in the plan permanently, and fixed times we accept as binding up to ninety days ahead. How the account is set up is explained on our own page about the Firmenkonto.

A fixed price instead of the Taxameter

Inside Neumünster the official town tariff applies. It is worked out by the Taxameter, the calibrated meter in the car, and no driver is permitted to deviate from it. That tariff is binding within what German law calls the Pflichtfahrgebiet, the compulsory operating area in which a taxi has to accept every fare at the official rate and may neither undercut it nor add to it. Rendsburg lies outside the Pflichtfahrgebiet of Neumünster, and that is precisely why we are allowed to agree a price with you in advance for this route. It stands on the screen before you confirm, and after that it does not change.

On this route that is worth more than on many others. If the height check at the Kanaltunnel goes off, if nothing moves over the Rader Hochbrücke because of a storm, or if the roadworks push us into a detour, there is no meter running along beside you counting the waiting time. The agreed price stays as it is. The risk of the traffic sits with us, which is the way round it should be, because we are the ones who know the road and you are the one with the appointment.

You pay in cash or by card in the car, or online in advance with PayPal, Apple Pay or Google Pay. As long as the driver has not yet set off, you can cancel free of charge. It is best to book the return trip at the same time, then the car is at the agreed place at the agreed time and you are not standing on a pavement in a town you do not know looking for a rank. Our office at Rendsburger Straße 41 in Neumünster is staffed around the clock, and the number 04321 22200 is answered at night as well.

Booking from abroad, and what we need to know

The booking form is in English and open at any hour. Two things matter more on this route than on most. The first is the street. Rendsburg has quarters on both banks of the canal and the crossings are limited, so a booking that says only Rendsburg can send us to the wrong side of the water. Give us the street and the house number, or the name of the building if you know it better than the address, for instance the hospital, the Kreishaus or the exhibition grounds. The second is the time you have to be there rather than the time you would like to leave. Tell us the appointment, the check-in or the start of the event, and we work the departure out from that.

A standard car takes up to four passengers with their luggage. If you are a larger group, or if you are travelling with a lot of cases, ask for a Großraumtaxi, a van sized taxi with room for up to eight people. Those cars are not standing on every rank, so say so when you book and we will have one ready. The same goes for a child seat, for a wheelchair or a rollator that has to go in the back, and for anything bulky like a bicycle or a set of golf clubs. None of that is a problem when we know about it beforehand, and all of it is a problem at the kerbside at six in the morning when we do not.

If you are arriving in Germany first and going on to Rendsburg afterwards, tell us the flight number or the train. We follow it, so a delayed arrival does not mean a lost car and a second booking. For a whole series of journeys, whether that is a course of treatment, a week of meetings or a fortnight at an exhibition, book once and tell us the dates, and we schedule each one and confirm it. Anything you are unsure about is quicker to settle by telephone than by form, and there is somebody at the office at every hour of the day and night, including Sundays and public holidays.

Included in the fixed fare

• A fixed price from Neumünster, even when the Kanaltunnel is standing still
• Right to the door in the Altstadt, in Neuwerk or at the Königskoppel
• The southern bank too: Rendsburg-Süd, Marienhöh, Stadtmoor, Messegelände
• Büdelsdorf and the Carlshütte over the Rader Hochbrücke, without the tunnel
• Early admission times in the Lilienstraße, before the first train runs
• Book the return trip at the same time, late in the evening as well

Frequently asked questions

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