A South African’s guide to train travel in Germany

A couple of friends and I traveled to Germany in July earlier this year, and I’ve been meaning to make a blog post about the German train system ever since. Understanding the German transport system can be intimidating for a foreigner, especially if you are on a budget and can’t afford to just take a taxi everywhere. Their transportation website (www.diebahn.de) is only partially translated, and attempting to ask a local German at the airport for directions will probably not go too well unless you are fluent in German. (Hint: They don’t like English speaking people, so if you talk to somebody immediately identify yourself as South African and they will be much friendlier towards you.)

Here’s a quick summary of the article for the impatient:

• Travel in groups of 5 or multiples of 5. Many train/tram/bus tickets allows up to 5 travelers on a single ticket at the same price, thereby letting each member of the group pay only a 5th of the ticket’s cost.
• If you are going to be looking around the city, buy a day ticket that allows access to the local trains, trams and busses.
• If you are traveling outside the city boundaries, buy a regional ticket(Länder-Ticket) such as the Hessenticket. This ticket costs 30 Euro, is valid for 24 hours, allows you to travel anywhere inside a region/province (e.g. the entire Western Cape as a ZA equivalent), and can be used by up to 5 travelers on a single ticket (Effectively costing 6 Euros per person to travel the entire Hessen state.).
• Also look out for regional tickets that are valid for a whole weekend, check online.
• Don’t take a chance, always travel with a ticket. If you are caught, you will be levied a fine of 40 Euros.
• Do not be late! The trains wait for nobody, not even if you’re running towards it while screaming and waving.
• The train tickets are valid for trams and buses within the ticket’s designation region.
• Take the Regional Express if you want to get somewhere fast.

As we landed on Frankfurt airport, we realized we had no idea how to reach our hotel in the center of Frankfurt only a couple of km’s away. The first step is exiting the international arrivals terminal and waiting for a (free) shuttle to the train platforms. At the train platform terminal, go downstairs to the actual train platforms to get access to uncrowded ticket dispensers and get your bearings. The ticket dispensers has two columns of about 10 rows of buttons you could press for about 20 types of train tickets you could buy, and this is for the local trains only!

The rule of thumb when buying tickets are as follows: Buy a day ticket (Tageskarte) if you plan on sight-seeing later the day. Buy a single-fair ticket if you only plan on getting to the hotel and sleeping off the jet lag. Buy a group ticket if you are a group of 5, this will save you a lot of money.

The trip from the airport to Frankfurt should cost you about 2 Euros. Stop, take some time, and read the big boards with yellow timetables on them on the train platform levels, and familiarize yourself with the railway’s layout by finding a map of the railway lines printed on a wall. Your first objective should be to find the train platforms, all the information and a couple of uncrowded ticket dispensers will be there (You will severely upset the locals if you hog the ticket dispensers on the top levels while trying to figure out what you should be buying). You will probably be taking the S9 to Frankfurt and getting off at the Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (Main Train Station). Be ready to board the train. Notice how everybody around you are ready to jump on the train as soon as it stops, like athletics runners before they are set off, so make sure your group is together.

Once in Frankfurt, you can buy a day ticket or group day ticket to travel within the city region (designated area 50 I think.) You can use this ticket to travel on the trams and subway trains between stops, and you can usually find a map of all the stops at a train/tram stop. Pop into your hotel lobby and pick up a brochure with a map of the city, it will be very useful. Also ask the receptionist where the nearest supermarket is, and for the location of other areas of interest.

When traveling outside the city area, buy your group a regional ticket like the Hessenticket mentioned earlier. I couldn’t find a single source on the internet that confirmed whether you can actually travel with 5 people on a single ticket, and the answer is: Yes you can! Ie, if you are 5 travelers, you can pay 30 Euros together (or 6 Euros each), and if you are a single traveler you will pay the full 30 Euros yourself (which is something I’ve had to do once when I got separated from my group in the middle of the German countryside.)

The Hessenticket will give you access to all local trains/trams and buses, anywhere inside the Hessen region. Check Wikipedia, Hessen is quite big, larger than Gauteng. If you want to take the scenic route, take the local trains like the S-bahn and other smaller trains from stop to stop. You will make a LOT of stops along the way, but it will be worth it as you get off at train stations to switch trains, and see all the little German towns. If you are in a hurry, you can take the larger Regional Express (RE) train, which only stops at the main train stations, and can take you from Frankfurt to Kassel in about 2 hours (The scenic route took us about 5 hours…). You will know which train is the RE when you see it, it has two floors and is much bigger than the S-bahn trains.  The Hessenticket does NOT give you access to the “ICE” high-speed trains, they are VERY expensive (over 50 Euro for a one-way trip per person.) but the Regional Express should be sufficient.

If you need internet access in Germany, find an internet cafe. It is really not that expensive. Their GPRS billing system does NOT work like ours, you get billed per minute and not per MB like here, so you won’t be able to mxit in Germany for cheap if you buy a German prepaid simcard.

If you have any questions, please leave a comment to this post and I will reply as soon as possible.

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