I am travelling to Germany for the first time, first and foremost to visit a friend in Frankfurt and another in Weisbaden. No more than a day or two max with each. I will be there from 10/28/2013 till 11/7/2013. I fly in and out of Frankfurt. I have my flight already booked but noting else. Ideally I would like to go to Berlin. I trying to get started. Any suggestions for materials or websites to help me get started? Should I purchase a rail pass to get from the Airport to the City? How close is Weisbaden? Although I'm in my late 40's I travel light and will be going solo for the first time.
Posted by
Danville, VT
12040 posts
"Any suggestions for materials or websites to help me get started?" First and foremost, the Deutsche Bahn website to answer all your transportation questions. You can see here that direct trains from Frankfurt to Berlin take about 4.5 to 5 hours. Reasonable to take a 2-3 night visit to Berlin, but probably not a feasible daytrip. "Should I purchase a rail pass to get from the Airport to the City?" Only if you want to pay about €100 for a ticket that costs about €5 from an automat. Don't even THINK about a rail pass, unless it's one of the regional rail passes sold directly by Deutsche Bahn. For Berlin to Frankfurt and back, you can save a lot of money by buying the ticket in advanced. "How close is Weisbaden?" Very close to Frankfurt and the airport. Even closer than Gary to downtown Chicago. Many people commute between the two cities for work.
Posted by
Lakewood, Colorado
19274 posts
The link above takes you to the home page of the Bahn website, but the Query box (upper left) does not allow for the input of all information. Click on "Further search options" to go to the Query Page, then bookmark that page for future use. The Bahn will give you good schedule information and prices, and allow you to purchase tickets for long distance travel, but will not give you fares within transit districts, like Frankfurt (RMV). To see fares in the Rhein-Main-Verkehrsverbund, go to www.rmv.de/en. For instance, the one-way fare from Frankfurt Flughafen Regionalbahnhof to anywhere in the inner zone of Frankfurt (zone 5000) is 4,25€. If you anticipate more travel on conveyances in the zone that day, a Tageskarte, for 8,30€ gives you unlimited travel on all conveyance in that zone for the day.