Train Travel in Germany

Just a comment: "Day 1: Depart Amsterdam early a.m. for Rhine River Area. Explore area rest of day: Rheinsfels, Marksburg (maybe), KD boat between St. Goar and Bacharach." You'll barely be able to see half of this in one day, even less if your trip isn't in late spring or summer (daylight hours...).

"within a 24 hr. period

As long as the 24 hr period starts and ends at midnight. It's a calendar day.

Not sure what you mean about "rigidity" with P2P. With the schedule you are proposing, you don't have much room for flexibility. If you are talking about buying full fare tickets just before travel, that's not very rigid, but would cost about the same as a pass. Actually, if you book your first ticket, Amersterdam-Oberwesel online from the Bahn for €29 pP, which has to be pretty rigid with the schedule you have, and use €28 Bayern-Tickets in Bavaria for Rothenburg-Füssen and Füssen-Munich, which are pretty much all regional trains anyway, the only "questionable" fare is Oberwesel-Rothenburg, which is €53 pP full fare or €29 pP advance purchase. You're really looking at €96-€120 without a pass for Amsterdam-Munich (4 days) vs about €150 pP (USD-equivalent) for the rail pass. That includes €10 each for a VRM Gesamtnetz Minigruppentageskarte for additional travel on the Rhein the first day.

But really, if you want my advice, this itinerary is total madness. You are spending entirely too much time traveling for the "dwell time". Flesh out the itinerary. Get actual train time from the German Rail website. Add in time for getting from the Oberwesel Bhf to the castle which is on the top of the hill.

Look at the K-D website. The boats on the Rhein don't run hourly, like buses. I think there is one boat down the river around noon and another in the late afternoon, and the boats go so s-l-o-w, particularly UP the river, against the current, which is to the SE. Plan your schedule accordingly. Figure two hours at Rheinfels (don't even think about Marksburg).

Please note that except for a very few fast trains no trains in Germany require reservations, and as such, no supplement is required.

Almost all trains in Germany do not require reservations, but if you want them, they are €2,50 pP, €4,50 group, with an online ticket purchase, vs. €5 and €9 at the window or with a rail pass.

Once you are in the Rhine area, a Laender pass or Schoenes Wochende pass will be the cheapest transportation. The passes are good for 1-5 people traveling together for a day of regional bahn (local train) use. The only trains that stop at all the little towns along the Rhine are the locals. I think the pass is around 28 Euros this year.

I'm not sure where the Laender pass begins (or ends) for the area. You may be able to use it starting in Koeln (Cologne) or it may be Koblenz. Lee is much better on details than I am.

As for using a Länder-Ticket (Rheinland-Pfalz-Ticket) on the Rhein:

I really don't think they will need to use one.

If they come in using a rail pass, they obviously can use the pass for any other rail transportation in the area the rest of the day.

If they are going to use a Europa-Spezial ticket, they can build in stopovers on the way. For instance, they could come from Amsterdam with a stopover for two hours in Köln, then go on to Oberwesel as long as they scheduled the Köln stopover using the "via" function. Assuming they scheduled an express train from Köln to Koblenz, they must use the train specified on their ticket. Once they get to Koblenz, it will be all regional trains, and, according to the Vor- und Nachlauf provisions of the AGB, they can use any regional train(s) to get to their final destination, as long as they finish their travel that day (10 AM the following morning, actually) and, presumably, are moving toward their final destination.

Once they get to their final destination, or if they are using full fare P2P tickets, local transportation in the area might be less by just buying P2P tickets. They could also use a day pass (Minigruppentageskarte, €20 max) for the local transit authority (VRM, www.vrm.info) for unlimited travel. VRM includes Oberwesel, but not Bacharach, to Remagen and to Bullay, on the Mosel.

The Rheinland-Pfalz-Ticket. €28, is valid for a much larger area, everything between the Rhein and the French border down to Nordrhein-Westfalen, which starts down the river from Remagen. It also includes the Saarland. Bonn, Wiesbaden, Mannheim, and Karlsruhe are considered border stations, and travel to those cities is included in the RL-P-Ticket.

Thank you to all who replied. We appreciate the feeback and information.

I just want to clarify for those that think our schedule is crazy that we have done extensive research, studied the current Bahn train/KD boat schedules, asked questions, and talked to people who have done what we want to do. The Rhine River area afternoon itinerary was actually fleshed out for us by a long-time RS poster.

We both really enjoy train travel and for us the journey is as much fun as the destination. We know that we are spending about 4 hrs. each morning on the train and we are okay with that. We are early risers and even with a morning train ride we will have most of the p.m. in each place. While we do lock in where we sleep each night we are flexible as to what we do in each place (save for a few must-dos). We may end up getting to Oberwesel and do nothing but sit on our balcony and enjoy the view. Even thought Neuschwanstein is a must-do now, we may change our minds that morning. We don't stress and try to squeeze stuff in, if it works great, if not, fine too. We just didn't want to go straight from Amsterdam to Munich so we asked people for recommendations as to what to see along the way.

We have a few more train questions:

Where do we find the cheap fares that have been posted here? When I look on Bahn the cheapest fares are 58+ euros. Am I looking in the wrong place?

Do we have to buy these in advance or do we get them the day of travel? If we have to buy in advance, are we locked in? There are several trains out of each place within a few hours of each other and we do want some flexibility (which is why we were thinking the pass).

If we do end up going with the pass we know we want a couchette on the night train. How do we pay that supplement? We know we have to make reservations but again on the Bahn website I can't seem to find supplement reservations.

Thank for the help you are providing to two travelers new to German trains!

Hi everyone!

One more question besides those I asked in my reply to all the suggestions. I'm sorry if they seem elementary but this is my first foray into German train travel.

The prices that you all provided, are those per person or because there are two of us, is that the total price?

Thank you!

In the case of Länder-Ticket (Bayern, Rheinland-Plalz, etc) the ticket covers up to five people, so I did not give the cost per person. For full fares or discount fares, like Europa-Spezial, I try to show the fares "pP", per person (pro Person, in German), or "each".

Länder-Tickets are always available for that price. They are not limited in quantity. You can buy them just before travel from an automat at the station.

Discounted fares require at least a three day advance purchase, but, like airfares, there are a limited number of tickets at the lowest price. The price goes up about €10 pP each time the lower priced tickets sell out. These ticket go on sale 3 months before travel date and purchase as soon as possible is advised. Those advance purchase tickets are date and train specific and, on the day of travel, non-refundable. Do you buy a non-refundable airline ticket and expect to take any plane that day?

"When I look on Bahn the cheapest fares are 58+ euros."

That's for 2 people, right? €29 pP.

Re the 59EUR tickets, Lee is most likely right. I kept wondering where everyone kept getting these 29EUR sale tickets, until I tried searching for one person and realized the 59EUR fare I'd been getting was indeed for two people :P

Here is the English language information on the tickets from the Bahn website. There is more information on the German language side.

For a lot of the discounts in Germany, it starts at €29 for the first person, €9 less each (€20) for 1-4 Mitfährer (co-travelers). So, two people would be €49 at the first price level, then €69 for two when the first level sold out, etc. For journeys across the border, it's the same for each traveler, i.e. if the first one is €29, then it is €58 for two.

I've got to comment on your itenarary, too. On day 1 the earliest train out is at 7 am and arrives at Koblenz at 10:45. You can't fit in Rheinfels and Marksburg and the KD boat in 1/2 day basically. You have to figure in your travel time from the train stations to either castle. Marksburg has a 30 minute climb to the top if you're in good shape and that's after you've gotten from the station to the entrance. Day 2 you're departing Oberwesel in late a.m. for Rothenburg and will depart early a.m. for Fussen. Is this just a stopover to spend the night on your way to Fussen? From Bacharach, it's a 4 1/2 hour trip to Rothenburg. That's if you don't miss a connection. Walking from the train station to find your hotel puts you there at about 4-4:30.Rothenburg to Fuessen is another 5 hour trip. You're basically just riding trains and not really seeing what you came for. I'm not a big Munich fan so I'd just forget Munich and see the Rhine, Rothenburg and Fussen this time.

Thank you to everyone for all the suggestions and comments about train travel and tickets. We've made our decisions and now just have to wait to board the plane!!

As for the itinerary comments, I know that everyone has opinions as to what is too much, too little, what should be skipped, added, etc. and we appreciate those as well. We've done ALOT of research to create a soft itinerary around places we have to be for different reasons (thus the sleeping arrangements). But we are completely flexible about what we do in each place. That was the reason for the original question (German pass versus P2P).

I didn't want you all to think that we are commando travelers, just marking places off on a map. We like to be prepared with options and have things we'd like to do, but even our must-dos one day sometimes go by the wayside another day. We like to allow for spontaneity as opportunities arise and sometimes we end up doing nothing at all except sit and watch the world around us. Of course, half the fun is research before we go!

I'm sure that we will be back with more questions but for now, we got what we came for! Thanks again!!