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"Stopover" option on German rail ticket?

I am interested in stopping for a few hours in Fribourg, Germany, en route from Baden Baden to Basel, Switzerland. Can I get a ticket that would allow me to do this for no charge (that is, one ticket from Baden Baden to Basel)?

Posted by
109 posts

If the above is not possible, I see there is a Baden-Wurttemburg regional day ticket for 24 Euro. Would this ticket allow me to travel to the Swiss Basel rail station, or just the German (Basel Bad) rail station?

Posted by
6590 posts

The Baden-Württemberg ticket permits travel on regional trains between Basel Bad and Basel SBB (not however on the Basel city trams.) You can see the connection on this map of validity for the B-W ticket. This ticket is a day pass so you can use it an any hour you like (see 9 am weekday restriction however) on any stretch of track with any stopovers you like as long as you stay within the area of validity and ride the regional trains. No scheduling of your stopover is required.

You could also travel to Basel SBB with a KONUS card. This is a free train ticket that is valid for the duration of your stay at any hour on the regional trains, and on the day of your departure as well. You get it from hotel, B&B, and other innkeepers - but only if you stay in certain Black Forest towns. Baden-Baden is not one of those - so if you aren't married to B-B (not a real Black Forest town anyway) you might just stay elsewhere instead. KONUS card details:

https://www.blackforest-tourism.com/info/KONUS

Click on the flyer at the right of the page above for a complete list of towns. Gengenbach is a particularly nice one and a convenient travel base for other outings (unlike Baden-Baden, where the station is a long bus ride outside of town.)

Posted by
109 posts

Thanks Russ. As far as my original query, is such a stopover possible with a regular, point to point ticket? I noticed there is a "via" option on the German rail site. Can I get off in Fribourg, and get back on another Basel-bound train a few hours later?

Posted by
6590 posts

You can of course schedule a stopover on a normal ticket. Enter Freiburg(Breisgau) Hbf as your stopover station in the VIA box and your desired stopover duration in the box on the right. If your itinerary includes any high-speed trains (like IC, ICE or EC) you must use those high speed trains exactly as scheduled. Saver fares will have refund penalties - read the fine print.

A normal ticket for regional trains only is also possible and will be time-flexible - you can use any regional trains you please on that day no matter what your schedule says. Click on "only local transport" for such ticketing - or to pin down schedules for your own use with the B-W ticket or the KONUS card. I think you will pay more for this option than with the B-W ticket (which offers basically the same trains and connections and overall travel times.)

Posted by
268 posts

Just to add to Russ's reply: What he says about the tickets being tied to specific long-distance trains is true for saver fares (including "super saver" fares). The more expensive "Flexpreis" is valid on all trains of the chosen category and below on that day (also for the next day, for distances > 100 km). This means flexible ICE tickets are also valid on IC trains and regional trains, and flexible IC tickets are also valid on regional trains.

You can also select different train types for different sections of your routing (makes sense with a saver fare, e.g., IC from Baden-Baden to Freiburg and regional train from Freiburg to Basel, so you keep the flexibility on that second section).

Posted by
19052 posts

The Vor- und Nachlauf provision of Sparpreis tickets means that, although travel by long-distance trains (ICE/IC/EC) is limited to the train specified, travel by regional trains is limited only to midnight of the morning of the first day to 10 (AM) of the following day. You are allowed to take any regional train on the same route in order to get to the first long-distance train or from the last long-distance train to your final destination.

A few years ago, I helped someone use this provision to their advantage. They wanted to go from Amsterdam to Bacharach. The connection the Bahn initially offered used an ICE to Köln, then an IC to Koblenz, and a regional train to Bacharach. They could have built in a stopover in Köln, but they didn't know for how long, and any specified connection meant they would have to leave Köln at a set time, neither earlier nor later. However, by specifying a stopover in Köln, then using Means of Transport to specify regional travel from the segment from Köln to Bacharach, they were able to get a connection that allowed them to stay as long as they liked in Köln, then go by regional trains to Bacharach, as long as they got to Bacharach by 10 AM the following morning.

BTW, you might have a better chance getting a connection if you use Freiburg, Germany, as your stopover.

Posted by
109 posts

Thank you, Lee! That is the kind of option I was hoping for. Very helpful! (And yes, I need to remember to use the German spelling rather than the French)

Posted by
19656 posts

Regional trains go from Freiburg (Breisgau) to Basel Badischer Bf every hour, and more often during commuter hours. If you need to get to Basel SBB, transfer to the S-Bahn at Basel Bad. Make sure the ticket is to Basel SBB if that is where you want to end up.

Posted by
7453 posts

I think there has been much great advice on different ticketing options, use of passes, stopovers on faster trains, but given the short distances, and maybe a desire to remain flexible, I think I would just opt for the simple solution, show up in Baden-Baden and get a ticket for the next train to Freiburg, maybe compare prices, but the Regional train would be fine, then after some time there, whatever your interest demands, head back to the station and get a ticket the rest of the way.

I do not think costs would be extreme, you have maximum flexibility, no worries about trying to get back to the station to catch a specific train, maybe you love Freiburg so much you decide to have dinner there, or scrap your plans and stay overnight.

Posted by
32523 posts

AshleyMIA, with such a great baths on your doorstep as Keidelbad webite: https://www.keidelbad.de/start/ why did you go so far to Baden Baden? Of Baden Baden, the Vita Classica at Bad Krozingen, and the Keidelbad (used to be the Eugen Keidel), I prefer Keidel.

Just curious...

Posted by
32 posts

This is all really helpful, and I'm wondering if anyone can elaborate on one thing:

In general, if a long-distance train passes through a city, are you allowed to leave the train station at one of its scheduled stops and come back later? For example, if I had a ticket from Leipzig to Munich, could I stop in Nuremberg?

Perhaps if I was using a German Rail Pass and it was one of my travel days, I wouldn't even have to worry about this?

Posted by
19656 posts

If it is a Sparpreis ticket on an ICE, IC, EC train, only if you have bought the ticket with the stopover already specified. For the example you give, There is a direct ICE departing to Leipzig at 9:48, arriving Munich at 13:02, it stops at Nuremberg at 11:52 for 3 minutes. For the same price, you could specify a 4 hour stopover (or other amount of time) at Nuremberg when you buy the ticket. Then your the ticket would show you getting off at 11:52, then boarding an ICE train at 16:02 for the continuation to Munich, arriving at 17:04. Your ticket would only be valid on that train.

Another trick would be to specify an open stopover in Nuremberg by deselecting ICE, IC, EC trains for the continuation to Munich. Then you could continue to Munich on any regional train the rest of the day. In this example, you would have to be careful as some of the regional trains to Munich are very slow, making every stop along the way. Some make only a few stops so they are not a whole lot slower than the ICE trains.

Posted by
6590 posts

"For example, if I had a ticket from Leipzig to Munich, could I stop in Nuremberg?"

Sam's response in the first paragraph applies if your ticket is for long-distance train (IC, ICE, EC, etc.) travel only.

However, if you have a ticket for...

...the Leipzig-Nuremberg segment by long-distance train(s), and...
...the Nuremberg-Munich segment by regional train(s),

then you can hop off in Nuremberg for however long you like, and later the same day catch a later regional train to Munich.

The regional trains take a little longer. For a ticket with regional trains for the second segment, you should do the following at the DB site (using Leipzig as your "from" station and Munich as your "to" station, of course.)

https://reiseauskunft.bahn.de//bin/query.exe/en

  • specify a stopover ("add intermediate stops") in Nuremberg of some arbitrary length (1 hr, 2 hrs, whatever)
  • under "More means of transport" deselect the long distance IC, ICE, and EC trains.

You will then find schedules that have regional trains for the second leg at some arbitrary hour.

Now it gets a little bit trickier than Sam has hinted at above...

Click on "details" for the departure time out of Leipzig that you want. Then in the "products" column, click on the train number for your second train (probably "RExxxx" or similar.) That will bring up a set of stations that your scheduled train to Munich stops in - your route (fyi there are different train routes for the Nuremberg - Munich trip.)

So... as long as you board the scheduled train for Leipzig - Nuremberg, with this ticket, you can ride ANY regional trains that same day between Nuremberg and Munich as long as they follow that same route that you chose when you bought the ticket. It doesn't matter what time your ticket tells you to board the regional train. DB does not care at all which regional train you choose on that route, which makes your stopover in Nuremberg very flexible.

It would be wise to have a list of departure times for Nuremberg - MUnich by regional train - trains that follow YOUR CHOSEN ROUTE - so that you don't have to figure that out later. If you can't pull those up yourself at the DB site, DB personnel at the station in Nuremberg can provide that for you.