German Rail Pass

Most Germans celebrate Christmas on evening of Dec. 24th (Heiligabend). I assume that the most holiday related travels will happen between Dec 18th/19th and Dec 23rd. Trains will likely be well filled up. Therefore 1st class and seat reservations are meaningful.

Note: Trains cannot be sold out, only the seats on a train. Therefore the difficulty will be to reserve 2 seats near each other,not to book the train. Around holiday it is not seldomly that travelers stand in the train or sit in a corner of the isle.

All DB stations (enter German town names): https://www.bahnhof.de/en
All shops at DB stations (German language): https://www.einkaufsbahnhof.de/

Heads up: On Sundays shops in Germany are closed, except some at the main train stations and airports.

Have a good journey.

How flexible do you need to be? Hamburg to Berlin booked for same-day travel in first class on an ICE is approx €150 per person. With 24 hours notice it could be €80-€100 p.p. or more.

At those sorts of prices the first class twin rail pass might make sense (though note you'd still want reservations on busy days). Though most of your trips aren't as long as that.

However, if you don't need that level of flexibility, point-to-point tickets in advance are going to be a lot cheaper, especially since some legs can be done on direct regional trains without advance booking (e.g. Cologne-Dusseldorf, probably Bremen-Hamburg if the issue with the Metronom train contract gets sorted.) To pick a random date, Hamburg-Berlin in first class booked today for December 8th at 10:15 is €42 p.p. to give one example (plus reservation fee).

A pair of first class "Probe Bahn Card 25" could be a useful investment for the 25% point-to-point discount - as long as you remember to cancel the ensuing subscription - but you'd want to sit down with the DB website and a calculator to check. Details are at https://int.bahn.de/en/offers/bahncard/trial-bahncard25-1st-class

Hello. About a week ago I responded to your questions on another forum about the flexi version of the German Rail Twinpass (which is now only avaliable in Germany,) about the "discount" you ask about, and about the price comparison with individual tickets. I also suggested the Deutschland Ticket as a supplemental purchase for getting around within the cities you have named. I provided two links for you - one to the relevant German Rail Pass page and one to the Man-in-Seat-61 site. Here is that forum thread:

https://www.tripadvisor.com/ShowTopic-g187337-i301-k15444822-Germany_Multi_City_Train_Travel-Frankfurt_Hesse.html#124588420

I did not receive further follow-up questions on these matters from you there. So if you have questions for me about the information I provided, you are welcome to post those questions here or on the other site, and I will do my best to answer them. Please post my name at the top of your post so that I pay attention to it.

If you just want some advice from others, that's fine too - I will not reply to you on this forum unless you post my name at the top.
Best wishes for a nice trip.
Russ

To piggy-back on Russ's post, on my phone screen I could only see the destinations as far as Berlin. Changing devices shows how much more you're travelling, and clicking the link mentions possible stopovers and flexibility - at that point I agree that the rail pass is a much better deal.

(I'm feeling nostalgic - I criss-crossed Germany with a [paper and pen] second class rail pass 25 years ago, and the ease was amazing.)

In the past I've been able to find the prices for German Rail twin passes (50% more for the second person), but I can't find them anymore. I can only find tables where it's a per person price; two people are twice as much. If you've found a twin price, please show the link, othewise I'm assuming my page has the right prices.

You show 10 venues and 9 ">" marks, which are trips between venues. One trip, I know, Köln to Düsseldorf is a very short trip. I think a local regional train or tram ticket is about 15€ pP. It's in second class, but the whole trip is about 30 minutes. It's probably not worth an ICE ticket or a day of a rail pass. So that leaves 8 trips for a pass.

The German Rail Flexi pass comes in 4 day, 5 day and 7 day versions for 600€, 664€, and 770€ respectively. That works our to 150€ to 96€ per day for two people.

Since you already have your accommodations for the trip, except for Frankfurt to Köln you should be able to count on making the specific trains for each trip, and therefore Saving fare tickets are a viable alternative to a pass.

Frankfurt to Köln is at the end of a trans-Atlantic flight. I don't think you can count on using a train-specific ticket for that leg. You might be able to still get a Rail&Fly ticket "extension" from you airline for that leg, but if not, a day of a rail pass might pay off.

So you should certainly explore Saver Fare tickets for each leg. Go to the Bahn website and look up each leg and see what the 1st class Saver Fare tickets are currently going for. Don't use Super Saver fares. They are totally non-refundable.

Look up on the Bahn website what Saver Fare tickets are available for each leg. It they are less than about 110 euro, buy them. Then see what more expensive legs are left that might justify a rail pass. I doubt that there will be any.

In 1988, I went to Germany for the first time on my own dime for 14 days. I bought a 16 day continuous 2nd class pass for $160. That was a great deal. In 2000 I went back and paid the same, $160, for a pass for, I don't remember, maybe 5 or 6 days. After I came home, I looked up the fares for the trains I used, and I think I just about broke even vs. individual tickets. Since then, I have always analyzed my trips, individual tickets, regional passes, saver fares vs. a rail pass, and I've always found I did better without a pass.

There used to be a separate German Rail Pass, independent of Eurail, but I can not find any information except rumors that it still exists if bought once in Germany after showing your passport (proving you are not a Germany national). Now, the DB website only shows the Eurail single country pass for Germany. The Eurail Pass must be purchased in advance before arrival in Germany.

In the past I've been able to find the prices for German Rail twin
passes (50% more for the second person), but I can't find them
anymore.

Here's what I posted for the OP previously from the DB site; the standard price for the 10-day pass, flexi-version, for 1 person is €407 (2nd class), the standard 10-day twin pass, flexi-version in 2nd classs is €692 - for two persons. Thus the standard price for the twin pass represents a savings of 15%. 1st class prices for the two types are €509/1 and €866/ 2 on a twin pass. See chart:

https://assets.static-bahn.de/dam/jcr:4a130d88-de38-40e9-ba87-9da18fdd5f42/GermanRailPass2025_0110_IntBahnDe%20(1).pdf

On the page below, scroll down to "Would you like to use the German Rail Pass with another person?" for further information:

https://int.bahn.de/en/offers/german-rail-pass

From that page: "The German Rail Twin Pass is currently only available for sale in person, e.g. in our DB Travel Centres."

You will find also a link to the DB German Rail Pass flyer on the above page.