Flight connecting from FRA to TXL, or take Deutsche Bahn (and questions about the Deutsche Bahn)

First, I would check your flight history. Is it usually early or often late. That might help you. Google your flight, and Flight Aware will pop up showing you this.

Who is your next flight with? If you have to change terminals, this might add on to your time, though 2 hours for a connecting flight is usually plenty of time.

Making that connecting flight sounds easier, even though you have to pick up your bag. They won't be checking the contents of your bag, so no customs.

You don't say when you are coming to Germany, but it is still light out at 22:00.

Yes, it is safe to ride buses and trains in Berlin at night. Not sure where you are from, but public transportation in Germany is easy as well as safe. Walking around in Germany is safe too. Not something I would worry about. The streets are lively, with sidewalk cafes and people sitting out there til late in the evening.

Yes this is a rather disjointed post.
A. If you buy a separate flight on a different carrier, you have no guarantee your flight lands on time, you get through immigration quickly, get your luggage in a timely manner. If you are late and miss the flight, you're stuck there and will have to buy a walk-up price for a later flight.
B. Yes, I do it all the time.
C. Deutsche Bahn sells a product called a German Rail Pass, different from Eurail multi-country pass. It has its own set of rules. If you get a flex pass where you pick the days, never use it for local transit which is just a few euros when it will burn an expensive pass day. All cities have single day tickets to cover all local transit for cheap. Don't mess with Bahncards. They have your credit card and they renew automatically unless you cancel in writing. There are people on this site that could write a book on all the ins-and outs of German railway network all the myriad money saving strategies.
D. At Tegel Airport, you can get a bus to various points in central Berlin for only about 3 EUR and they go every 10 minutes.

Taking the train, there are frequent trains (like every 15 or 20 minutes) right from Frankfurt airport to Berlin with one connection along the way. If you do get a German Rail Pass, you just hop on and you'll be in Berlin in about 4 1/2 to 5 hours. You might want to spring for a 4.50 EUR seat reservation so you know you'll have a set the whole way. The walk-up ticket price is 128 EUR if you don't have a pass.

Condor participates in DB's rail&fly program. So you could get to Berlin for 29 Euro on any train.

A.

What can i expect-- Can I get off my flight in FRA and head directly to my connecting flight? Do I need to get out of the plane-taking area and clear customs first? What about my bags (one carry, 1 check)?

You have to go through immigration first, then pick up your luggage then pass through customs (just a formality - simply take the green line). Then you will check your bags with the other airline. Two hours are sufficient for all that, even if you have to change terminals, but you never can be sure if your flight will be on time. It's true that many flights arriving from the US are even a bit early, but I've had the opposite experience twice in the past months - three hours delay due to technical problems, one hour due to wheather conditions.

Pre-booking a train saver fare for a 16:00 depature would be even more risky: if you miss your train your ticket will be invalid. As mentioned above, you should discuss with your travel agent if you still can add a DB rail&fly ticket to your Condor ticket. Those tickets are not bound to a specific train. Else, I'd pay the walk up fare for a maximum of flexibility and safety. Buy an ticket to BERLIN (not: Berlin Hbf), it will include the trip to any S-Bahn station near your hotel for the same price.

B. Of course.

C. A Bahn Card is barely rewarding for the average resident, the less for you. As for the German Rail Pass it's only rewarding if you do long distance trips. For nearby destinations and destinations not served by high speed trains it's mostly cheaper to buy a regional day pass (a Brandenburg-Berlin ticket in your case).

You are all amazing, thank you so much

A Bahn Card is barely rewarding for the average resident, the less for
you.

That is too general a statement. A Bahncard is a very simple savings system, and depending on how much and how far you travel within Germany, it can be worth its money even on a single trip.

It's a simple calculation really, since it's a straightforward 25% or 50% saving. As soon as the card has helped you save more than it originally cost, it has been worth its money.

The catch is a diffent one: The Bahncard works on a subscription system, and the contract will be automatically extended for another year unless you cancel in time. I am not sure how they handle that with non-residents, since they will need an address to bill you.

Sometimes they have special offers for a trial Bahncard 25 (Probe-Bahncard). I have done that once or twice, only needing it for a single trip actually, and cancelling right after buying it (which meant it was still going to be valid for three months). I felt sort of sneaky doing that, but the agent gave me the outright recommendation to do it that way, so I guess it was o.k..

The great advantage of the Bahncard compared to other special offers is that you will get your 25 or 50% off ANY train, no matter if you have reservations or not. Which is great if you need to be flexible, as it appears here, since it may be difficult to catch a particular train, coming from an international flight. With other savings systems you are usually stuck with a particular train, and if you don't catch that one, your ticket is going to be invalid (Zugbindung). Not so with the Bahncard.

Do you have three or more days of train travel planned? Or just the Frankfurt-Berlin roundtrip?

If you buy a German Rail Pass, either here or in Frankfurt Airport train station, it will cover S-Bahn trips on your full-coverage pass days, i.e., the same days that you're also using for trains. In Berlin, that's only offered to/from a train station, but in other cities, they don't care which direction you go. In-city U-Bahn, bus, and tram are never covered.

I think adding an extra flight now would mean a separate ticket and your luggage would not be checked through to Berlin. And the airline would not feel obligated to honor the second ticket if you arrived in FRA too late for the connection.

do all the passes include Deutsche Bahn and U and S bahn lines?

Both passes include the S-Bahn but not the U-Bahns (nor trams nor buses).

I searched on Kayak and saw I can book a train to Berlin Hbf/ Central
Station for a reasonable price. ($70 for the round trip in second
class, through Deutsche Bahn) and arrive in Berlin 20:30. The train
leaves around 1600 but I figure I'll be able to catch this train,. ..
right?

I wouldn't count on it, even if the flight arrives on time. At that price it's obviously a non-exchangeable ticket. Although I think I've always been able to get to the Fernbahnhof within an hour of landing, I've never had to retrieve a checked bag.

Could you be a little more specific (date) on the "1600" train to Berlin? I've checked several dates and the closest I can find is a connection through Frankfurt Hbf leaving the closer in Regionalbf at 15:47 and arriving Berlin Hbf at 20:28. You definitely don't want a 15:47 departure with a scheduled 15:00 arrival. On a Sunday there is a 16:02 departure, but it has three train changes and gets to Berlin at 21:28. Use the Bahn schedule website; resellers like Kayak might not have up-to-date information.

I think your best bet, at least using rail, is if you can get that Rail & Fly ticket. I think it's valid for the next train to Berlin, even if your incoming flight is late.

Condor participates in DB's rail&fly program. So you could get to Berlin for 29 Euro on any train.

This. You have that day of arrival or the next to take ANY ICE train, so the next one with a seat-- you're on it, no fuss, no worry about missing a pre-booked train. Spend the night in Frankfurt if you like. In fact, Condor will include this for free if included with your ticket if bought on their website, or charge 29 euros afterward (I think, no personal experience, website is ambiguous).

I registered and checked Flight Aware (very neat so far, the one page i've looked at), it seems that the flight time over the last four months has always been less than is written in my itinerary. So they've either been on-time or early to arrive at FRA.

When I kept saying "customs" I did mean immigration. Thank you for being so informative.

The train i've looked at Kayak is, I think i used the search for FRA to TXL in flights but it gave me a link to the trains as well. Search also works looking directly for trains.

https://kay.ac/CVekvn the top link to the DB trains for July 22.
I am looking at the 4:13pm train, direct to Berlin Hbf

The plane I would have taken to TXL from FRA would have been through Lufthansa, but everyone seems to agree using public transport late at night is safe :) so I'm trying to contact Condor now about this rail program

I did think about about getting a train ticket once I land, instead of booking it ahead of time, but I wasn't sure if i should be worried about availability on the train.

EDIT:
I added the DB Rail&Fly to my ticket :) I guess i'll hop on the train to berlin once I land
I didn't see anything about it on their website (not that i dug deep) and I didn't see anything about while I booked my flight. I talked to someone on Live Chat and she did tell me it would be 29?39? EU both ways but I'd have to call them. I called them and they just.. charged it to the card I paid for my flight with. Roughly 75 USD
I've been charged and sent another email confirmation immediately
The Condor Live Chat assistant told me I'd get information on how to use the ticket, checkins and all, through a PDF in my email. I'll just wait a bit and see

The Condor website is poorly laid out. Good luck trying to add secure flight info, it's in there somewhere.

From playing around, if you had put SEA to Berlin in the original purchase operation, the train section will come up automatically and been part of the itinerary.

Note that there is no 16:13 train from Frankfurt Airport. That train leaves from the main (central) train station. While many connections from the airport to Berlin will require going to the main train station first, there is a good connection from the airport at 16:10, with one change of trains in Leipzig.
Check for connections on https://www.bahn.com/en/view/index.shtml - use Frankfurt airport (or "FRA Frankfurt Airport") as starting point and whatever train station you need in Berlin as destination.

Thank you..

I see I was looking at the wrong station.
The station I was looking at was from Frankfurt(main) Hbf (which is Frankfurt Central Station some ~13 minutes from the airport?)
to Berlin Hbf tief.

This train still gets me to Berlin thirty minutes earlier than the 16:10 train from the Airport.

I read that (s?) trains frequently leave the airport to other stations (such as FRA hbf?) through the Altrains.. something. I tried to search and see when they are to see if I could go from the airport to the central station to catch the shorter train, but no luck.

It is probably simpler for me to take the train from the FRA airport to Berlin with that change in the middle.

Thanks again

I tried to search and see when they are to see if I could go from the airport to the central station to catch the shorter train, but no luck.

Search for local trains (S-Bahn, RE, RB) from "Frankfurt Flughafen Regionalbahnhof" to Frankfurt(Main) Hbf. To catch the 16:13 ICE safely you should take the S-Bahn departing 15:32 from the airport (the Regionalbahnhof is adjacent to terminal 1).

The website I referred you to knows how much time to factor in for changing trains, including the S-Bahn trains (and, as a matter of fact, all other kinds of public transport, and to more or less any street address in Germany and even in a lot of other European countries). So if you are at the airport, it usually makes sense to use the airport as a starting point (and to state your final destination in Berlin as well). For the airport, the website will also automatically select the appropriate train station (local train station or long-distance train station, which are about 10 minutes apart). By the way, the app "DB Navigator" will give you the same information and can be useful when travelling by public transport, though there are better apps for the local transport network in Berlin.

The only thing to keep in mind is that the website will give you the quickest connection - i.e., when travelling through the Hbf (main station), it will give you the last possible S-Bahn train with which you can catch your long-distance train. That usually makes sense to minimize waiting times, but of course, if you arrive at the airport station early, you should take the first train (S-Bahn or other) in your direction.

By the way: You can reserve a seat in long-distance trains (IC and ICE) independently from the ticket for 4.50 Euros (which also includes a connecting train if you have to change trains). I do not think that is necessary on a Saturday, though.

Thank you for being so informative and detailed.

I will also use that website again to study my route further.

+.. should i be worried about the
'Please note that it doesn't run all the time' -- paraphrasing. It was much shorter. 'Not runs at all times' something along those lines.
Is it talking about the train or buses?
The little calendar they provide doesnt help with that information.
(+Only if you happen to know what im talking about. Im sorry im not more forthcoming with links and what im looking at. )

Thank you everyone, for your input and patience.
I will try to figure it out from now on--

This is a great place with great people :)

Don't worry. If you look for a specific date, all connections shown will run on that date. The note you mention is for frequent travellers: It means the same connection might not be available on another day (e.g. due to planned construction etc.).

Testing for SEA on July 21, I find that the rail/fly option is adding $30 to the ticket. So there does appear to be a small savings if rail/fly purchased at the same time as the ticket. I swear there was no additional charge for rail/fly on another city pair that I checked earlier.

Occasionally bahn.com uses non-standard English, like "runs not every day." Somebody should point it out to them.