I need some help. Questions about changing a train

do not worry if you miss it take the next one.

14 minutes is actually a very comfortable amount of time. I'm looking at this next Monday, Sept 18 and it shows you arriving at platform 3, and your connection is on platform 5. You get ready by having your luggage and be standing near the door as you pull into Mannheim. When the train stops, exit immediately. You walk down the the stairway (or escalator) on the platform and walk about 30 feet in the tunnel to the stairway (or escalator) that is platform 5, go up and you are there. Your ICE to Munich arrives at 12:27, so you should be waiting for it. If you have a reserved seat on the ICE, check the train diagram on the platform. It will tell you about where on the platform your assigned carriage will be when the train stops and you can get onboard as soon as the departing passengers are off and find your seat. If you don't have a seat reservation, you'll see where the 1st class and 2nd class carriages will be so you can be standing there as well.
You can also check the yellow train board on the platform to confirm which platform the ICE 595 will be on.

If your TGV train is very late, you can get on the next direct train to Munich one hour later. If you have a seat reservation, you will have time to go downstairs to the Reisezentrum (ticket office) and get a new one.

I agree with Sam. 14 minutes is a fairly long time for a change. I've done many that were 5 minutes with no problem. Sam most likely got his information from the DB website. If you look at "details" it will show you the platform numbers.

The station only has 10 tracks, reached by an underpass, so it will only take a few minutes even if you have to get from track 1 to track 10. Just Google Mannheim Hbh. The first listing will show the types of trains (IC, ICE,RB, etc). Click on that and it will bring up the various trains and their platforms. For example, it shows that Saturday's 1230 to Munich is leaving from platform 5. Hope that helps.

Sam gave a very good description of how to get from platform to platform.

Gilsujin, try to make sure you can be among the first to exit out the doors of your train. Once I missed a very small 3-minute halt because people were standing in the aisle, and I lined up in back of them, thinking they were going to get off the train. They did not, and I missed the exit by being too polite to push and shove my way to the front.

Good luck, and have FUN in Munich! I hope you love it!

Planned platform numbers are shown in the bahn.de journey planner. And the conductor usually announces important connections with platform numbers just before the train arrives.

So, fellow train travelers - If the train stops at a station that is NOT your exit then please don't stand in the aisle and block the passage for others. Most Americans have no common sense of train etiquette because there just aren't that many trains for us to ride.

If your train is on time, you do not have to be among the first to exit. You have plenty of time. In fact, as a regular traveller, I find it quite annoying when I have an actual tight connection and the first people start lining up at the exit doors 10 minutes before arrival (also blocking the way for those who want to go to the train restaurants or the restrooms). This forces me to do the same, though the nearest exit will never be more than 15 metres away.

Tim, it's not just an American thing, british seniors do it. Stand up and put coats on as soon as they leave the previous station. And the ones first at the door are always those who don't know how to open it!!!!

But closer to the original question, most people can walk a mile in 15 minutes. Assuming you may have a couple hundred yards at most, 14 is a huge amount, even if you had to stop to read a screen. The big question is not is this enough time to change trains but is the TGV reliable enough to get you there on time. And, surprisingly, is the ICE actually reliable enough to worry about it going exactly on time! Over the past month the TGV has been more reliable than the ICE so overall the interval was often more than 14 minutes.

And the ones first at the door are always those who don't know how to open it!!!!

Ah yes, forgot to mention that if you ARE the first one at the door, that it is your job to push the illuminated green button to open the door, or let some one more experienced in front of you. The doors do not open automatically, and that is also true when you want to board the train. If nobody happens to be getting off at that door, push the green button and it will open.

The TGV goes nonstop from Paris to the Forbach on the German border, then stops in Saarbrucken, Kaiserslautern, Mannheim, and last stop in Frankfurt. So it does not have a lot of chances of getting delayed. The ICE 595, on the other hand, starts life at Berlin Ostbahnhof and snakes its way through north central Germany to Frankfurt, then Mannheim, Stuttgart and Munich. There are a lot of things that can delay it on the way.

Now I appreciate the regulars' annoyance with newbies lining up early to exit the train, but the fact remains that the train is stopping for only 3 minutes. Part of that time is also allotted for new people boarding the train as well. If you wait for the train to stop before you put on your coat, gather your belongings, wrestle your luggage out of the overhead rack, you may find yourself fighting against the stream of people who just boarded. The fact that there is a direct ICE to Frankfurt 13 minutes before this train, and a direct ICE 13 minutes after this train, I would not expect a huge throng boarding here, but you never know. Mannheim is a major transfer hub, so people going south to Karlsruhe, east to Heidelberg, north to Mainz, south to Stuttgart and Munich, as well as Mannheimers will be exiting the train here.