Munich, Germany train questions?
 

Only 13 days and counting until we leave on our long awaited trip to Germany. I'm down to the fine tuning of our itinerary and have 3 more questions to pose to my Fodor's Family.

#1. We would like to travel by train (using the Bayern Länder Pass) from Dachau KZ Gedenkstätte to Prien a Chiemsee on Sunday, 21 October.

The schedule on the bahn.de website has the following notation:
runs not every day, 14. Oct until 18. Nov 2007 Su

I'm not sure how to interpret this - what exactly are they trying to say? Will the train be running on Sunday, 21 October?

#2. Where is the M&uuml;nchen Hbf Gl.5-10 train stop located? I think I've figured out that the <i>tief</i> stop is on the lower level (correct?), but I'm not sure where to go for the Gl.5-10.

#3. The bahn.de website mentions that the Bayern L&auml;nder Pass can be used on the M&uuml;nchner Verkehrsbund (MVV), which I'm assuming includes the buses and trams in Munich (correct?)

Is the Bayern Pass also good on the buses in southern Bavaria, particularly from Garmisch-Partenkirchen to F&uuml;ssen?

Your assistance, once again, in helping me plan for our trip would be greatly appreciated. Thanks, Robyn :)&gt;-

1. First of all, you will be taking a Dachau city bus from the KZ Gedenkstatte to the Dachau S-Bahn station. You take the S-Bahn from Dachau into Munich, and then a regular train to Prien. You cannot use an IC train with the Bayern Ticket. As to the notation &quot;not every day;&quot; if you put 21 October into the search box, then it DOES run on that day.

2. The &quot;tief&quot; stop is the S-Bahn station on the lower level. Gl. 5-10 means Tracks 5-10 on the main level of the station.

3, Yes, you can use the Bayern Pass on the busses and trams within Munich. You can possible use it on the local bus in Dachau--ask the driver. I'm not sure about busses from Garmisch to Fuessen.

Although the main station in Munich is rather large, there is the usual electronic board with departures so you should have absolutely no trouble finding the train to Prien.

I assume you are planning to go to the palace. How are you planning to get from the station in Prien to the ferry docks in Stock? by rail or walking?

Thank you both for your replies.

<i>&quot;As to the notation &quot;not every day;&quot; if you put 21 October into the search box, then it DOES run on that day.&quot;</i> YEAH! That's exactly what I was hoping to hear.

Yes, we want to go to Schloss Herrencheimsee. The search on bahn.de has us taking a bus to the dock to get the boat to the island to see the palace. We have 35 minutes to catch the boat. How far would it be to walk from the train to the dock, or should we just take the bus?

Robyn :)&gt;-

If you plug in Herrenchiemsee as your destination, you will see the intermediate stages. From the train to the bus is said to be 3 minutes. From the bus stop to the ship is 5 minutes. I think those times are for average walkers. For me I would add a minute or more to each.

I must admit I don't grasps the &quot;not daily&quot; notation. If you look on other days at the same time slot, 9:42, the notation says that the train runs daily. There is no qualification.

The departure is listed on the web site as pointed out above. So I cannot add anything more than what is already stated.

To see the intermediate travel stages you need to drill down by clicking on the entry under Station/stop.

The Munich station is large, but I have always found my train. The main part of the station is obvious.

It's a fairly short walk if i remember right to the boat dock from Prien station - besides buses there was a tiny steam train that ran down there as well - but may operate only in peak periods?

I've only taken the narrow ga. railway which runs from Prien to Stock or walked it. The walking path is right next to the narrow ga. railway and I think you could do the entire walk in 15-20 minutes...almost impossible to get lost since the tracks run directly to the ferry docks.

I am not sure the narrow ga. railway will be operating when you are there as Pal has questioned as well. I've never seen the bus but I'm sure it will be easy to find if you decide to use it...Prien isn't all that big.

The S-bahn station, Munich Hbf (tief), is under the street on the north side of the Hbf. You get to it by going down steps from the north side of the track area.

Gleis (tracks) 5-10 are in what is called the Holzkirchener Fl&uuml;gelbahnhof (wing station), which is attached to the south side of the main track area. Tracks 5-10 end before tracks 11-26, so you have to walk out along the south wall adjacent to track 11 until you get to tracks 5-10.

The Bayern-Ticket is valid for all conveyances (S-/U-bahns, streetcars, and buses) of the MVV, including the bus to Dachau.

The Bayern-Ticket is also valid for all regional bus systems within Bavaria. That includes buses of the Regionalverkehr Oberbayern (RVO) which runs bus 9606 from GaP to F&uuml;ssen. Their website at www.rvo-bus.de is in German only. A shortcut to the schedule for RVO 9606 is at http://tinyurl.com/2e5dmw. Note that the Bayern-Ticket is not valid for buses routes that cross over the border, such as the route from F&uuml;ssen to Reutte.

If you wade through the German on the RVO website, you will find that they offer a Tageskarte (day ticket) for &euro;8,50 pP, which gives you access to all the RVO buses for a day. For two people, a family Tageskarte is &euro;20. The family ticket is valid for two adults and all their children, but for just two adults it would cost more than two individual day tickets.

Thanks, everyone, for the valuable information. And Larry.. excellent description of the Munich Hbf.

I had poked around the German RVO site earlier, with my Langenscheidt German/English dictionary in hand, but became easily frustrated. So thanks for wading through the site for me.

Robyn :)&gt;-

You can get good maps of all the stations (U-/S-bahn) in Munich from the MVV website, www.mvv-muenchen.de. The site has an English language side, but I don't think you can get the maps there. On the German side, select &quot;Umgebungpl&auml;ne&quot; from the pulldown under &quot;Pl&auml;ne&quot;, then select the link to Schnellbahnnetzplan (make sure your pop-up blocker is off). You will get what looks like the standard Munich rail map, but each station is a link to the map of that station.

For the rest of Bavaria, go to www.bayern-takt.de. You can select English, then click on the link to Bayern-Ticket. A new page comes up, and on the left side is a link to &quot;station layouts&quot;. Those are nice maps because they show the track numbers and the bus stops at the station and a picture of the track area so you have a little idea of what to expect.

&gt;&gt;I had poked around the German RVO site earlier, with my Langenscheidt German/English dictionary in hand, but became easily frustrated.

Not surprising. I read German easily, but I still found the RVO site a little difficult to navigate at first.

BTW, I wrote to RVO (auf Deutsch, nat&uuml;rlich) about a year ago, asking for the fare between F&uuml;ssen and GaP. She told me it would be best to buy the Tageskarte - I'm sure she said the standard one-way ticket (Einzelfahrschein) was more than &euro;8,50, somewhere around &euro;10.

If you stay on the S2 train until Ostbahnhof (Munich East), it will be easier to change to your train to Prien.
At Munich Hbf it is appr. a 1/4 mile walk from the lower level where the S-Bahn arrives to tracks 5-10, while at Munich East the platforms are parallel, so you just take one escalator down, and another one up.

Could not the train already be fairly full by the time it reaches secondary station Ostbahnhof?

The bahn.de itinerary has us taking the S-2 from Dachau to Munich Ost, then picking up a RB train into Prien. There's only a 10 minute layover in Munich, using their schedule.

We'll be spending the night in Mittenwald, then taking the train into G-P the next morning, where we'll pick up bus 9606 into Hohenschwangau. Since we're training and bussing, we're planning on buying a Bayern L&auml;nder Pass to cover transportation for the day.

Larry, your links to the Bavarian train station layouts were <font color="red">excellent!</font> I usually try to take a photo of each station that we pass through, so I really enjoyed looking at the pictures of the cute little stations that accompanied the layout and list of ammenities.

I spent last night printing out all the stations where we have a lay over to catch another train (plan those pee stops), and where we'll be stashing our luggage while we explore different towns. What a huge help this will be.

Do you happen to have similar links for the stations in Baden-W&uuml;rttemburg and Rhineland-Pfalz?

Thank you, thank you, thank you...

Robyn :)&gt;-