Frankfurt airport to Cologne

The DB site will answer your train ticket question.

When I wanted to get to Cologne from far away, I bought a connecting flight with my international flight. That happened to be United-Lufthansa, but on the United web site, the additional flight to Cologne cost almost nothing, and was a convenient connection. I understand that if you already have your flight to Frankfurt it is too late to do this.

€39.20 unless you do a combination of Länder tickets which may be more or may be less. It takes between 3 and 4 hours.

Is this for one sole person?

no this is for 2 people total, is cologne and frankfurt in 2 seperate states, which would be 2 lander ticks approx 28e each?

When I wanted to get to Cologne from far away, I bought a connecting flight with my international flight

That is how I used to travel on the company dime. Sit at Schipol for 3 1/2 hours waiting for a puddle jumper to Cologne, then rent a car, then drive the Autobahn through crazy traffic for another hour to get to destination on the other side of Cologne. Then I wised up and next time, I went right to the Schipol train station and bought a ticket to within 2 blocks of my destination, then relaxed on the train and let DB do the driving.

For tomorrow, I see you can get a Flexpreis ticket using the scenic route along the Rhine for 46 EUR, Trains go at 58 past the odd hours (9:58 say). At 58 past the even hours (10:58) it costs 3 EUR more and requires a train change in Mainz. Takes 2 hours and 7 minutes either way. Otherwise you can take the bullet ICE for 67 EUR that does it in under 1 hour, bypassing the Rhine valley. Trains at 9 a 43 past the hour.

Frankfurt is in Hessen, Cologne is in Nordrhein-Westfalen. So one Lander ticket won't cover it.

From what I'm seeing on Deutsche Bahn, the walk-up prices for local vs. ICE is about 39 vs 60 euros, but the time difference is over three hours vs less than 1. In fact, the Frankfurt to Cologne ICE route is one of the fastest in the network. It is quite an impressive engineering feat, as the terrain is anything but flat.

Since you don't seem to be in a hurry, may I suggest you take the local train from FRA to Mainz and hop on a KD river cruise up the Rhine to Cologne-that cost about €30 per person. Great scenery, tolerable food, and very relaxing. You dock in the heart of Cologne.

"I dont want to pre pay because of possible delays and am not in a hurry ..."

If you are not in a hurry, then take the regional trains and travel through the Middle Rhine Valley, a UNESCO World Heritage site and Germany's most scenic train route. Stop off and see a castle if you have time.

2 people, right? Only €44/2 on weekends with the Happy Weekend ticket (travel at any hour) or €52/2 on weekdays (after 9 am) w/ the Quer durchs Land Ticket. Both are day passes that IGNORE state boundaries - valid for the entire country.

They can be bought at FRA's Regionalbahnhof station ticket machines whenever you get there. On most journeys you have one change of train. Normally you change trains in Koblenz and/or Mainz. Some journeys take 3 hours, others 3.5 or 4.0 hours - just depends on which types of regional trains you use and how many stops they make.

that KD cruise seems good. It looks like it leaves Mainz at 8:30am, is it possible to stay a night in Frankfurt and be able to leave to make it that early?

"...take the local train from FRA to Mainz and hop on a KD river cruise up the Rhine to Cologne-that cost about €30 per person. Great scenery, tolerable food, and very relaxing. You dock in the heart of Cologne." This is possible if you have 12 hours and do the Boppard-Koblenz segment by train, or if you do it over two days, but I think you'd be wiser, if you're interested, to try a short 1.5-hour cruise from Bingen to St. Goar instead (and the rest by train.) The Bingen-St. Goar part represents the most scenic part of all and cost you only €16 with the 20% discount you'll get by showing your train ticket at the KD boat kiosk in Bingen (AND of course it saves you around 10 hours of relatively dull scenery.)

See page 7 of the KD cruise boat flyer for the schedule.

Bryan - here's a map of that most scenic part.

A K-D ticket from Mainz to Köln (Cologne), according to the K-D website, will cost you 43,84€/P (probably rounded) with the 20% discount with showing your rail ticket at the dock in Mainz. But the K-D boats don't go all of the way from Mainz to Köln in a day; the 8:30 boat from Mainz goes as far as Boppard, where you change boats with a 4 hour stopover. And the next boat only goes as far as Koblenz that day.

By rail, you can take the S-Bahn from FRA Regionalbahnhof to Mainz for 6,45€/P, then use a Rheinland-Pfalz-Ticket for 29€ to Bonn, then use VRS tickets from Bonn to Köln via Koblenz for 7,70€/P, for a total of 53,70€ for two. None of these tickets require pre-payment. You can also use the same tickets to take an RE from the airport to Koblenz and another RE from Koblenz to Köln.

However, on a weekend day, you can use the same regional train with a Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket for 44€. Or, on a weekday, you can use a Quer-durchs-Land-Ticket for 52€.

The route through Koblenz is the most direct other than the ICE only route, but you can't use Länder-Ticket on the ICE. Frankfurt is in Hesse; Köln is in NordRhein-Westfalen (NRW), two different Länder (or states), and those states do share a border, but it is difficult to find a route between them that does not go through a third Land, Rheinland-Pfalz. However, the short stretch from Siegen (NRW) to Au (NRW), through Rheinland-Pfalz does appear to be covered by the Schöner-Tag-Ticket (Länder-Ticket for NRW). The Schöner-Tag-Ticket for 2-5 people cost 43€ and the Hessen-Ticket cost 34€ for up to 5 people. So using those two Länder ticket would cost 77€, more than the other options.