What is the best way to ship my house hold goods back to the states from Germany?

Go to http://www.tolmien.de/ (German moving company) and call their toll-free 0800 number - they'll do the job for you.

Their website also is available in English, German, Spanish and French. Or write an email to Tolmien: info@tolmien.com

Their number is 0800 - 85 41 555 (within Germany only)

Greetings from Germany

Shipping is very expensive. I just did this 2 years ago. We checked into an international moving company and it would have cost over 5000 Euros to ship less than half of our things. Unless you absolutely need to, I wouldn't ship furniture.

We ended up just shipping about 15 boxes of personal things. We went through Lufthansa and the cost was about 900 euros. It got from Berlin to Austin, Texas in 5 days.

I will warn you about breakables. Although they told us it would all be handled well and put inside a huge wooden box to protect it all, it wasn't. Basically, they way they loaded all our boxes on the scale to weigh it was exactly the way they shipped it. They just put a plastic type wrap around the boxes and shipped it. We had many things broken and they even allowed the boxes that had "breakable" to be on the very bottom. I did get almost a $300 refund after contacting Lufthansa 3 or 4 times.

I would check around, but basically it comes down to this:

By air: priced by weight

By sea: priced by cubic meter (even if you don't use a whole container, you are charged for it - check out the size of the smallest containers).

Good luck!

Try an internationally known moving company, they can also pack your things efficiently. You could also ship it through cargo ships, but it takes longer. Make sure you both keep inventory lists of all your boxes. And word of advice don't just throw things in boxes, it pays off to label them in detail with what you have inside so when you arrive you are not opening hundreds of boxes trying to find what you have.

Also...............

If your family or anyone you know works for the U.S. forces or embassy they would have the best advice on reccomending a shipping company thats trustworthy.

Unless you have some special military deal, You need to check out the prices first...you will want to sell anything that is not unique and that you can't get here...shipping is EXTREMELY expensive...Think big garage sale before you just start packing everything up..the shipping cost can be a good percentage of the value of the item...

You need to look in the phone book or on the Internet about International moving companies. Check the prices and order one they are coming packing and shipping.

Wenn du viele Sachen hast würde ich dir Raten einen Container bei einer Spedition in Hamburg ,Rotterdam oder Bremen zu chartern.

rent a container then fill it with all your goods them ship it ti your destination