German rail pass
 

Hello,
My parents (Irish) are heading to Germany in March for a holiday and plan to travel between cities by train. I had a look at the DB BAHN site and found something called a German Rail Twin Pass (4 to 10 days unlimited train travel in 1 month) which I think would be perfect for them, but it says that it's only for non-European travellers. Does anyone know if this is actually the case?
Thanks in advance.

Hi F,

Have you priced their journeys at www.bahn.de?

They often have discount fares that would be much less than a railpass.

You can buy railpasses in Europe, but they are more expensive than in the US.

((I))

Hi there,

Yeah, I worked out how much the trip would cost with individual tickets and with a pass and it works out better with the pass. If they can get one that is...! It just seems a bit odd to me that it wouldn't be available to European visitors to Germany.

It could be true. There is also something called an Interrail pass (www.interrail.com) that is only available to Europeans, not us in the US. It less expensive for a single adult pass, but they don't offer the savings of a twin pass.

"I worked out how much the trip would cost with individual tickets and with a pass and it works out better with the pass".

Did you also look at all the special fares (Dauer-Spezial, SparPreis, Länder-Tickets, usw) offered by German Rail? You might have to rearrange your travel a little to use some of them, but I have found it rare for a rail pass to actually save.

You might want to check on the Rail Europe site. Here's an article about their new 'pass finder' feature. Once you've found the right pass, you can also go back to the home page and price the journey by point to point for comparison. http://www.wickedgoodtraveltips.com/?p=99

I haven't checked this latest pass finder, but my experience with the Rail Saver one is that it is no good at all at finding special fares. What it does recommend, so far as tickets, is unnecessary and convoluted. On the other hand, having a pass finder that did know about special fares would be much harder, because they are limited in availability and you have to be on alert to get those deals.

Hi FM,

I find it hard to accept that 4 days of PtP travel within Germany costs more than a pass.

Would you mind giving us the itinerary?

((I))

"Once you've found the right pass, you can also go back to the home page and price the journey by point to point".

What home page? I hope you don't mean the home page of Rail Europe. Point to point tickets from RE are not a good basis for comparison. They are almost alway more $ than standard tickets purchased on-line or at the counter from the national rail companies, sometimes much higher. Further, as already mentioned, they don't usually show special fares that can often save huge amounts vs. standard fares. There is no easy way to compare; it takes a lot of research.

Hi again!

Haven't checked back in a while.

I have looked into it some more and you are right that in fact it works out much cheaper to buy tickets in advance at discounted fares, for example, rather than opting for a rail pass. Thanks for that!

Just FYI, they are now planning to travel from Berlin to Heidelberg and Heidelberg to Munich, with a return day trip from Munich to Salzburg.

Thanks again for all that info!

Deutsche Bahn has an office in the UK which sells tickets for Germany
(www.deutsche-bahn.co.uk).
There are rail passes which are available to British people and so must be available equally to Irish people. The five-day twin pass is £218.90 which is equivalent to £22 (about 29 euros) per person per day. This seems good value to me. Perhaps if you book three months in advance, you can get comparable fares on-line for some journeys, but I would never want to follow an itinerary fixed so far in advance. The rail pass also gives free travel on the Köln-Düsseldorfer ships on the Rhine, amongst other benefits.

On you Munich-Salzburg-Munich day, consider using a Bayerkarte--a ticket that allows up to 5 people to travel as much as they want in second class on local trains from 9am for 27 Euro total--less for a single traveler. So, for that price, you could get to Salzburg and back for far less than regular tickets.