We are traveling to Germany in September and will be traveling by train. Our itinerary is Munich to Rothenburg to Heidelberg to Bacharach to Cologne. We have decided to purchase tickets as we go possibly taking advantage of Lander Tickets and Happy Weekend Tickets when possible. Am I correct in assuming we can just show up at the station and but tickets as we go? We will be traveling second class. Also, we will be traveling from Cologne to Paris on a Wednesday on the final leg of our trip. There are direct Thalys trains from Cologne to Paris which we would like to take. The price on bahn.de is 85,50 euros. Would it be better to buy these tickets before we leave the States or buy them when we get to Germany?. Also, are the Happy Weekend Tickets good all day or just from Noon on? Thanks.

For thalys best fares i'd go to www.thalys.com or www.voyages-sncf.com, the latter the French rail website that may have special offers for Thalys. Usually fares in the US are a bit higher, though at times, like thru the end of Aug, 2006 RailEurope is having a 50% off sale (though doesn't apply this time to Cologne services) and is even offering a $16 Paris-amsterdam fare - a great deal if actually bookable. For info on prices in US i always refer folks to BETS (800-441-2387) who in my experience give great service - that said i think you'd be better off online or even waiting until Munich, where you could buy them at the station.
You of course can just show up at the station and buy tickets as you go or even buy them all at once in one station.

just checked RailEurope site and $150 is the cheapest (per person) Cologne to Paris so the 86 euro fare is much better.

The Länder tickets are not limited. You can just show up at the station and buy them.

Certainly, the Bayern ticket will be ideal for your trip from Munich to Rothenburg - just as long as you don't want to leave before 9 AM on a weekday. If you absolutely, positively have to leave before 9, there is a 7:50 train to Augsburg. Fare on that train is €10 each person. The connecting train leaves after 9, so you could use the Bayern ticket the rest of the way.

The rest of your routes cross state borders, so use of the Land tickets gets a bit more complicated. If you can do Rothenburg to Heidelburg or Bacharach to Köln on a weekend day, you can use a Schönes Wochenende ticket. That ticket, by the way, is valid from midnight in the morning, all day until 3 AM the following day.

The trip from Heidelberg to Bacharach, if on a weekday, is not so complicated, because the Rheinland-Pfalz ticket is valid between Mannheim Hbf and Ludwigshafen, across the river in Rheinland-Pfalz. Take the S-bahn from Heidelberg to Mannheim Hbf (€4,50 pP), then buy a Rheinland-Pfalz ticket for €23. You may not be able to buy it from a ticket counter, but you should be able to from any of the red, multi-lingual, touch screen Fernverkehr automats.

What about those other two legs? Do you plan on doing any of them on a weekday?

The point Larry's making is that on Sat or Sun the Happy Weekend ticket will take you across state borders at any time of day, which makes your ticket purchasing a lot simpler and probably cheaper. Just buy the H-W tickets in Germany.

For weekday travel:

Munich-R'burg: Bayern Ticket

R'burg-H'berg (crosses state border): You'll need to get either point-to-point tickets + Baden-Wuerttemberg ticket, or Bayern Ticket + B-W ticket. You can buy the p-2-p tickets or Bayern Ticket in R'burg or Munich, but the B-W ticket can't be bought in Germany before you actually reach the state of B-W, so buy it online before you go.

H'berg-Bacharach: Do as Larry explained, but buy your Rheinland-Pfalz ticket in advance online too so that you don't have to purchase it in Mannheim beetween train connections.

Bacharach-Cologne (also crosses state border): Another Rheinland-Pfalz ticket (buy it in Bacharach from a machine or in advance online) will get you all the way to Bonn, but you need p-2-p tickets or a NRW ticket for Bonn-Cologne, whichever is cheaper. The NRW ticket should be bought in advance online; the p-2-p tickets can be bought in advance in Munich or wherever (Bacharach doesn't have a manned station, may be trickier for you to use machine for these.)

Happy Weekend tickets are good for 1 full day from midnight until 2 or 3 a.m. of the following day.

Russ, you said, "the B-W ticket can't be bought in Germany before you actually reach the state of B-W, so buy it online before you go."

That used to be the case with Länder tickets, but it is no longer true (hooray). Note, from the DB website, "You can also purchase the Länder-Tickets on all DB-ticket automats or for 2 EUR more in all DB travel centers or DB agencies." By DB-ticket automats they mean the red, multilingual, touch screen machines. You will find these machines in stations served by the long distance trains (ICE, IC, EC) of the Fernverkehr, which would include Munich and Heidelberg.

I am reluctant to tell people to buy these tickets online, because the Bahn Ticket-shop is only in German. Also, you buy the Land ticket online for a specific date, and if you decide you want to travel on a different date, you can't just go to a ticket counter and exchange it. Tickets purchased online have to be refunded by mail and you have to send them in with a form that you find SOMEWHERE on the Bahn website.

Buying a Land ticket from a ticket automat is too simple not to do it that way.

Also, Länder tickets are not the best way to go for the Rothenburg to Heidelberg and Bacharach to Köln legs. The least expensive way to go is with multiple point-point tickets and a Verkehrsverbund day ticket. Exactly how this works is a little more complicated. I didn't want to explain it unless Jim said he was going to do one or both legs during the week, without a Schönes Wochenende ticket.

Larry - if the out-of-state purchase of Laender tix is now possible, my apologies for complicating your advice to Jim. And you're right that the Laender tix are only available in German - I'd forgotten that. And you're also right that the Verkehrsverbund options will often save a bit on this route or that over the Laender tix, but I've found it's terribly difficult to try to get that info across to someone and for them to use it.

So where's Jim??

"Also, Länder tickets are not the best way to go for the Rothenburg to Heidelberg and Bacharach to Köln legs. The least expensive way to go is with multiple point-point tickets and a Verkehrsverbund day ticket. Exactly how this works is a little more complicated. I didn't want to explain it unless Jim said he was going to do one or both legs during the week, without a Schönes Wochenende ticket."

This is the reason that I am happy to pay the ticket agent 2 euros over the machine purchase price when I am not sure what the best fare will be.

Regards, Gary

We're going to Germany the end of Aug and bought a Twinsaver ticket or some such name. Because we /or take a fast train (ICE) we chose this option.

Russ, like you I remember the days when you could not purchase a Land ticket outside of the Land. Even when the online tickets first appeared, a Land ticket could only be sent to an address within that Land.

However, things have changed for the better. First I noticed that Land tickets could be purchased online from the Ticket Shop and self printed. Later I noticed that the Bahn website said they could be purchased at any DB automat in Germany. I called German Rail just to confirm it. However, as I said, they cannot be purchased from a Nahverkehr (blue/white) automat outside the Land, only from a red DB automat.

The advantage of this new Land ticket purchase policy is that, for instance, you can purchase a Bayern ticket while you are in Frankfurt.

If two arrive at FRA and want to go to Rothenburg that day, you can purchase a Bayern ticket in the airport for €25 and two point to point RMV tickets to Kahl am Main for €6,25 each, so the total fare to Rothenburg would be €37,50. That compares to two full fare tickets for €72. If you are a group of four, it costs €50 vs. €144. It will take less than one hour longer; the savings are worth it.

You can even go all the way to Munich (or Salzburg) for that same €37,50.

Two things:

1) In Germany, you can save a lot by taking slower trains. At www.bahn.de, select "without IC/ICE" and note the difference - twice the travel time, half the fare. Hey, you're on vacation, what's the hurry? Besides, down the Rhine from Mainz to Koblenz and Köln you get a good long view of the castles if you travel on the slow regional trains.

2) From Köln you can fly Germanwings to Paris, dirt cheap at times, it cost me 25 bucks in May, USD including fees etc.

Gary,

in this case I would caution about putting too much faith in using ticket agents. This is a case where some homework is essential.

I think if you were to go to the counter in Rothenburg and ask for train tickets to Heidelberg, the best they could do with Länder tickets would be to sell you a Bayern ticket for €27. Since they are probably only a regional counter, not a DB Reisebüro, they wouldn't be able to sell you the B-W ticket. They might advise you to buy it at the red DB Automat on the platform for €25 (€52 total). However, the best option at the counter for Rothenburg to Heidelberg would probably be two full fare regional tickets at €30,50/P (€61,00 total), the price shown on the DB website.

However, the route to Heidelberg goes through Würzburg; the fare from Rothenburg to Würzburg is €10 per person. If you look on the Bahn website for the fare from Würzburg to Heidelberg, nothing is shown. That is because the "connection is served by a transit agency", and tickets cannot be purchased from DB online for a transit agency. In fact, I think these tickets can only be purchased locally, i.e., inside the transit district.

Most of the trip from Würzburg to Heidelberg is within the Rhein-Neckar transit district (VRN, www.vrn.de). Würzburg is actually in the Mainfranken district (VVM), but the area up to Würzburg is shared between the districts. Therefore, you can buy, in Würzburg, VRN tickets for Würzburg to Heidelberg for €7,20 per person. That makes the trip from Rothenburg to Heidelberg €17,20 per person, €34,40 for two. That's much less than what it would cost from the counter. I think the best you could get from the counter would be the same advice I just gave you.

As for Bacharach, I've been there. It is an unmanned station. The only tickets you can buy are from the blue/white Nahverkehr automat. The machine does sell the Rheinland-Pfalz ticket.

Larry has a totally mind-boggling incredible grasp of German trains and fares! Totally amazing - Fodorites are so lucky to have him as a resource.

PalQ,

wow, I will assume you are sincere and, as I consider you aknowledgeable contributer to this site, I will take that as an extreme complement. Maybe my homework has paid off.

Really, it is questions like this the get me to dig and, as I do, I learn more.

It seems that the pricing structure in Germany has change over the years. Five years ago, all the fares could be found on bahn.de. Then they started to diversify their operation, and pricing was made the responsibility of the local fare disctricts. Now the bahn only says that the fares are within a tariff district, and you have to try to find the district. I wish they would publish a complete map of the fare districts. Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Main (www.vrm.de), which includes Frankfurt, the airport, and Mainz, has a list of "Andere Verkehrsräume" (other transit areas) under Service > Infos, with links to all the transit districts, but there is no roadmap, it is more or less hit and miss.

I have been slowly compiling a map of the districts. Maybe someday I will start a website with more direction on how to find this information.

Larryincolorado - you definitely are THE man to talk to when it comes to train travel in Germany. And I mean that with all sincerity. Would you mind sending me an email so that I will have your email address? I have several questions to ask you that don't necessarily need to be posted on this forum. Thanks... Ben ([email protected])

Larry: Yes you should create a continuing thread with all the regional passes, bahn.de specials, Schones Wochenende Tickets, etc. Similar to MorganB's superb guide to SNCF - but Germany with all its Lander Tageskarte is much more Byzantine as to pricing when travel is concentrated in a small area. Then when answering questions on rail travel we could simply give the URL of the thread for folks benefitting from what are some of the great bargains in European trains through your intense research.
Interesting enough Today's Railways, a UK rail mag on Continental travel in the June 2006 issue published details of nine Lander Tageskarte (regional day passes) and 25 Verkehrsverbund Passes (tariff unions for cities and areas around them and, unlike Lander Tickets which are good i think basically on rail lines, these passes are good on all public transport in the local area; smaller area but comprehensive coverage of not only S-Bahns but U-bahns, buses, etc).
Interesting enough it says the Bayern Ticket is 17 e for a single and 24 e for a group - maybe they are a bit behind with their prices - they add that this pass is even valid on the Kempten-Reutte in Tirol-Garmisch line running thru Austria (this line was threatened with closure - the cross border part Reutte-Kempten but has now been refurbished and kept open).
A 'New Weekly Pass' they highlight is the Brandenburg Ticket called the 7 Tage Gesamtnetz which covers the whole of Brandenburg and Berlin - 1st class 67.90 euro, 2nd 57.90 euros.
I have studied and written about European train for decades but i know relatively little about online pricing, the Lander Cards, except they exist, etc so appreciate your sharing knowledge of these. Similar to MorganB in France and the now departed to slowtravel.com GAC in Italy...and others too.
I usually have a pan-European railpass when i travel on typically wide-ranging train travels so have never really had to study the local options, even though like last December i spent several days just taking trains around the Darmstadt-Frankfurt-Geissen-Koblenz-Black Forest area and probably could have saved some days on my Eurailpass and used Lander tickets instead.
any way as they say in Germany, have a Gut Fahrt - good ride on your next trip!
P.S. You may enjoy reading Today's Railways if you don't already - US subscription agent 760-603-9766 or direct from UK: Today's Railways Europe (Dept T), Platform 5 Publishing ph- 44 (0) 114 255 8000-
regularly covers German trains and each country each month.

PalQ,

is MorganB's guide to SNCF a thread on Fodor's? Can you give me a link to it?

How do you keep others from "contributing" to the thread?

As far as I know, the Länder tickets are normally valid for all modes of transport in the Verkehrsverbünden (Metro districts) in that Land. I think there may be one or two VV that don't honor the ticket for some transport, but that is unusual. I know also that several VV in Baden-Württemberg (Karlsruhe, KVV and Donau-Iller, DING) straddle a Land border. There the ticket is good in the part of the VV within B-W, as well as specified stretches in neighboring Land. All this is explained pretty well on the DB site, although maybe only in German. Also, each of the Länder has its own website, with a better description of the area of validity, sometimes even maps, but these also are often only in German.