Does the Bahn 50 card work like a railpass - take any train anytime or is it just a discount card that gives you a discount off normal fares.

For 8 days of travel the German Twin Pass is very cheap - an 8-day pass would cost p.p. $307 or about $38 per day for totally unlimited travel on virtually any train - just hop on and off and also for that day on S-Bahns in cities - that is about 27 euros a person per dauy for an 8-day pass/1 mo period.

That said in Bavaria all your trips would be covered by the Bavarian Pass - 29 euros for two or more travelers but you must take regional trains - much slower than ICE trains that you could use with the pass - but obviously cheaper.

Your other trips in western Germany could also fall into Lander Passes for those areas.

You may be best off just buying Lander Cards as you go along and eschewing any pass.

Anyway for loads of great info on German trains check out these IMO fantastic sites - www.seat61.com; http://www.budgeteuropetravel.com/id9.html and www.ricksteves.com.

ww.bahn/en is the official site of German Railways for fares and schedules.

http://www.bahn.com/i/view/GBR/en/prices/germany/bahncard.shtml

seems like Bahn Cards give discounts off regular fares (not saver fares) so would not be practical for your plans - good for folks in Germany a long long time. Well a quick look says that but not sure.

And I believe there is currently some kind of free day on German Passes - the extra day, if comports to your travel time, could make that pass more attractive.

Lander Cards BTW can be easily bought at any German Railway station from automatic machines or at ticket windows.

BahnCard 50 gives, as the name implies and as is explained on the website linked above, a discount of 50% on standard fares, which means you still have to buy tickets but for half the price. No hopping on and off as you like as with a pass.
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The BahnCard is of use to residents or long-term visitors but hardly for short-term visitors. Also, note that you buy a subscription, the BahnCard will be renewed automatically after a year if you do not cancel the subscription in time, i.e. by six weeks before it runs out.

Assuming you mnean Regensburg (Regensberg is a village in Northern Switzerland), all your destinations except Schwäbisch Hall are located within the federal state of Bavaria. In other words, all these trips except to and from Schwäbisch Hall can be done even cheaper on a Bayern-Ticket for 26 €/day for the two of you if you use local and regional trains.

Assuming you mnean Regensburg (Regensberg is a village in Northern Switzerland), all your destinations except Schwäbisch Hall are located within the federal state of Bavaria. In other words>

one half of them are

what about the others - are they grouped into one or two Lander Ticket coverage as I suspect?

Lander Tickets not only give free train travel - albeit only on slower and IME much less comfy regional trains but also give free travel on buses and metros for the whole region for the whole day to boot!

Riverboat to Trier.
Trier to Luxembourg - hopefully
Luxembourg to Cologne
From Cologne day trip to Dusseldorf, Aachen , then to hotel in FRA
FRA to Bonn & back to FRA hotel

Trier to Luxembourg is a very short train ride - from Luxembourg to Cologne you'd go back thru Trier so maybe stay the night in this very pleasant and very historical city and do a day trip from it to Luxembourg?

Trier has two of the most intact Roman relics outside of Rome in the Porta Negra - a huge stone-block city gate and an ancient Roman Temple converted eons ago to a Christian Basilica - it also has the Karl Marx House in which the philosopher was born and which is not a museum/study center to this very influential person (for good or bad but...) - Trier has other lovely old churches and a pleasant plesant pedestrian shopping zone.

Thank you both so much for your input regarding my questions

PalenQ - When the river cruise, that we are on, ends in Trier, there is a guided city tour that takes in the sites that you mention. Trier sounds like a very interesting place to visit.
Thanks again.

and a boat along the Mosel all the way to Trier I presume - along what many consider to be Europe's most pretty river valley - a sinously twisting river with vineyard-carpeted slopes on each side often rising about a thousand feet up - ruined castles dotting hills along the way - unbelievably cute riverside wine towns - ah yeh - I have bicycled up and down the valley dozens of times and never get tired of such a unique scene.

You are right. You must be in very good shape to do all that bicycling!Wish we were going to be in that area for a longer period of time, but unfortunately we're not. We're flying back to Boston 4 days after the cruise.
Thanks again.

Luxembourg to Cologne
From Cologne day trip to Dusseldorf, Aachen>

Have biked through Cologne and Dusseldorf many times and went to Aachen once - those are IMO three of the least romantic looking cities in Germany - all suffering from serious war damage and thus modern cities lacking old-world charm we see in towns like Hiedelberg - another option to visit and it is close to Frankfurt Airport - Cologne's cathedral is spectacular and it is a nice enough town but unless you have other reasons for going there or Dusseldorf I think there are more interesting and better looking towns. Speyer, on the Rhine near Frankfurt is also a charmer with a neat old Schloss on the river. Just a thought.

Thanks for that info. I wasn't expecting too much from Dusseldorf, but I thought Aachen was supposed to be a nice "charming" place. I would like to see the Dom in Cologne. Aachen is right across the border from Maastrich, which we have been to so maybe it is not worth the time visiting....although the 2 places are in different countries. I have read that Speyer is worth a visit, so maybe I will consider that instead of Aachen???

Well I may have missed something in Aachen - it does have Charlemagne's cathedral (I think Charlie's - Aachen or Aix-la-Cheapelle as it was called then was his base and capital of the western Holy Roman Empire but the rest of the town really was a let down for me - there is a thermal spa with water that tastes absolutely horrible - but maybe I did not look around enough - anyway did not seem remarkable but any Germany city to me is interesting and nice in its own way.