Dusseldorff to Cologne

Thanks. Should I purchase in advance or not?

Thanks. Should I purchase in advance or not?

Define pricey. You can travel after 9 am weekdays and all day weekends for 37.50 for up to 5 people over the entire Nord Rhine Westfallen (includes Dusseldorf ond Cologne). Just Duesseldorf to Cologne and back with the Verkehrsverbund Rhein-Sieg ticket for 32.60. For one person the price is 27.00 on the NRW, or 22.90 on the VRS.

Thanks. We are only going for a few hours and the round trip on BahnCard was $52 per person. What is the rail you mentioned?

Hi, See if you can take the S-Bahn from Düsseldorf Hbf to Köln Hbf. I know the S-Bahn goes to Essen (terminus) from Düsseldorf but not sure about Cologne. To either Essen or Köln is ca an half hour ride. No need to take a train when the S-Bahn can get you there.

The NRW is available by going to www.bahn.com and click on "Offers" then the Nord Rhein Westfallen for the regional tickets. You can buy these from the vending machines in Dusseldorf. There is apparently an additional charge to use the ticket counter. The VRS site is www.vrsinfo.de. There should be a ticket machine at Dusseldorf Hbf. There are 2 regional trains every hour for 30 minutes, the S-bahn is more frequent, but they make all the stops, so it's more like 45 minutes. You want the Tages Ticket, that covers to and from plus local subways and buses in Cologne.

"the round trip on BahnCard was $52 per person." What do you mean by "on BahnCard"? BahnCard is not a type of train; it is a discount card. There are three kinds of BahnCards, 25, 50, and 100, for the percent discount you get by having a BahnCard, but they have to be purchased and cost enough that it is unlikely that a casual tourist would do enough train travel to justify buying a BahnCard. I looked up the RT standard Bahn fare for 2, Düsseldorf Hbf to Köln, using a BahnCard 25, and it was 44,20€ (22,10€ pp, not $50 pp) using ICEs. But since the fare on regional trains (RE/RB/S) is covered by a Verkehrsverbund (transit district), the Bahn does not show that fare, not does it sell local tickets online. As mentioned above, the fare using a Länder-Ticket or a Tageskarte is less than the Bahn fare. Up_date: Now I see where you got $52 pp RT. You are using the RailEurope website. Don't! RailEurope only sells tickets for a small subset of the available trains, usually the fastest, most expensive trains, and it usually marks up the prices a lot over what you would pay over the counter in Germany or online from the German Rail (Bahn) website. There are many lower priced advance purchase ticket and daily passes for unlimited travel in a specific state or transit district, but RailEurope doesn't offer these tickets.

No. you can get at the station when you are there. Trains will not sell out. They're like city buses.

Great. Thanks.

The Länder (Schöner Tag, etc) Tickets and Verkehrsverbund Tageskarten are unlimited in quantity (never sell out) and don't go up as the date approaches. You can purchase them any time, right up to train time at the same price. They are valid on regional trains (RE, RB) and local transportation (S/U-Bahn, trams, and buses). Länder-Tickets are not valid before 9 AM workdays. You can get discounted prices for express trains (ICE, IC, EC) if you purchase in advance (at least 3 days, best prices up to 92 days) from Bahn.de.

Thanks for the info.