It pays to think about saving on your ground transportation costs before you even arrive in Germany. In this article, we’ll show you four simple ways to cut the cost of your rail travel dramatically.

1. Book early on the Bahn website.

The only sure-fire method of saving money on German trains is to book your travel as early as possible directly through the website of the German railway, Deutsche Bahn (bahn.de).

You can score deals as low as €19 on long-distance or international connections, if you are among the first to make reservations. When you are certain of your travel dates, there is nothing to be gained by waiting. As time passes and the cheapest tickets sell out, each further contingent costs €10 more for the exact same trip.

If you allow a certain amount of flexibility in your travel times, you may find, for example, an early morning connection that is available at a lower price, so it is worthwhile to search various times of day before booking. The downside to this method: you are stuck with a specific train time and route and these tickets are generally non-refundable.

Related: Why you should book your own train tickets, rather than using an agent.

If you will be traveling by train frequently, consider a BahnCard 25. Photo: Namics

2. Research a BahnCard

If you plan to make at least two full-price train trips within Germany, purchasing a BahnCard 25 may well save you money, as it gives you a 25% discount on every trip you book.

However, before buying a card, consider these points:

1. Do the math yourself. Do the savings on your tickets outweigh the cost of the BahnCard at all? A trial BahnCard 25 (valid for three months) is currently available for €15. If there is no trial card available, an annual card costs €62. For the former, you save once your total ticket purchases per person have surpassed €60, but for the latter, you must spend over €248 to see any savings.

2. Be prepared to cancel. The BahnCard is a subscription service, meaning that it automatically renews and is billed to you if you do not cancel it in time (typically six weeks before it is due to expire). At the time you purchase your BahnCard, you should also submit a cancellation notice through the online customer service forms of the DB website. You can find a detailed German description of the process here, including the cancellation request text in German, which you can simply copy and paste into your message. Be sure to include your BahnCard number and use the email address associated with your DB registration.

Related: Is Germany’s “Rail & Fly” a good deal?

3. Buy “group tickets” and save.

Groups of travelers will have their savings amplified by traveling on group ticket offers which utilize regional trains rather than high-speed (ICE) trains. This method is most profitable and least tedious for travel within one German state or region—such as a group day trip from Munich to Salzburg, Austria (€43 for 5 people) on the Bayern-Ticket or from Berlin to Szeczin, Poland (€29 for 5 people) on the Berlin-Brandenburg-Ticket. You can find full details of the regional ticket offers for the states you’ll be visiting here.

If your travel includes more than one state, you’ll likely have to buy a Quer-durchs-Land-Ticket for weekday travel or a Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket for weekend travel. These tickets are valid from 9 am to 3 am the following day for any regional train in the entire country. The QdL ticket starts at €44 for one traveler, but less than double that for up to five people—a five-person group spends around €15 per person to ride the rails. The weekend ticket has better conditions for less money: The price starts at €40 for a single traveler, but five people pay just €12 euros each for travel from midnight of the day of travel until 3 am the following morning.

That said, you should be clear that regional trains have neither the speed nor the service standard of IC/EC or ICE trains. For example, compare the following travel times:

Berlin-Hamburg
ICE: 1:45 hrs. on ICE with o transfers
Regional: 3-4 hrs. with up to 3 transfers

Berlin-Munich
ICE: 6 hrs. with 0-1 transfers
Regional: 9:30-11 hrs. with 3-6 transfers

Berlin-Frankfurt
ICE: 4:15 hrs. with 0-1 transfers
Regional: 8:15-9:15 hrs. with 3-5 transfers

You should consider carefully whether the price difference alone justifies losing most of a valuable travel day to slower trains. If you go for it, don’t forget to pack yourself and your crew enough reading material, food, and drink for the entire length of your journey!

4. Get a refund if you arrive late.

Consumer protection laws in Germany require the Deutsche Bahn to refund part of your ticket costs if your train is delayed over an hour. For any train arriving more than 60 minutes late, you are entitled to a refund of 25% of your ticket price; for trains over 120 minutes late, you are entitled to 50% of your ticket price.

When you arrive at your destination, have your late arrival “verified” (i.e., stamped on your ticket) by the train station service personnel. If it’s not too late, fill out the required refund form (available from train service personnel or at train station service counters), and turn in your ticket for an immediate cash refund.

If you need your ticket for return travel, turn everything in at any other train station service counter later in your trip. While you officially have six months to request your refund, getting your money back becomes more complicated once you’ve left the country, so take care of it prior to your departure back home.

Travel alternative: Hit the road

If train travel is still too expensive, consider hopping on Germany’s newest travel trend: long-distance buses. See how you can travel across the country for just a few euros in our article on riding the budget bus lines in Germany with fares from €5.

The post 4 easy ways to save on train tickets in Germany appeared first on EuroCheapo's Budget Travel Blog.

A great weekend bargain in Germany

On the weekends, for example, travelers can roam the length and breadth of Germany by local and regional trains using the Schönes Wochenende Ticket (SWT), which allows unlimited travel for just €37. And the beauty of the SWT is that you can take along up to four other travelers without having to pay an extra cent.

We have friends who last Sunday traveled from Aachen (on the Belgian border) right across Germany to Salzburg using the SWT, effectively paying €7.40 each for a journey of over 500 miles that took in the Rhine gorge and much more fine scenery. The SWT can even be used to selected stations beyond Germany’s borders (i.e. Salzburg in Austria, Schaffhausen in Switzerland, Wissembourg in France and Szczecin in Poland).

Cheap regional tickets in Germany

While the German SWT is a weekend-only deal, regional tickets in Germany give the freedom to roam within a more limited area on any day, but only after 9 a.m. Mondays through Fridays. These tickets are named after the federal states (Länder in German) in which they are principally marketed. These tickets are typically priced at €20 for one person or €28 for a group of up to five people traveling together.

Roaming Germany’s Baltic coast

The Länder tickets are often valid for substantially larger areas than the federal states after which they are named.

You might expect the “Schleswig-Holstein” ticket only to be valid in the state of Schleswig-Holstein. Think again. This ticket also covers the German states of Hamburg and Mecklenburg-Vorpommern, not to mention selected cross-border stretches of railway into Denmark and Poland. This validity area thus covers Germany’s entire Baltic coast and offshore islands (several of which have causeways carrying railways to the mainland). So devotees of branch lines can use the Schleswig-Holstein ticket to travel very cheaply along rural rail routes from Padborg in Danish Jutland to the Polish town of Swinoujscie.

Similarly, the Sachsen ticket is valid far beyond the borders of Saxony. It can be used over a huge area that encompasses part or all of five German states, two cross-border routes into Poland, and one through the Czech Republic.

As with all Länder tickets, and with the Schönes Wochenende Ticket (SWT), just buy the ticket at the ticket machine before hopping on your first train. You can book a ticket online, but there is really no need to do this. The online tickets are no cheaper than those sold at station ticket machines.

Criss-crossing borders

In many border areas of Europe,  special rail passes are available, even to non-residents, to promote mobility in frontier regions. These are superb deals, often covering not merely the immediate border region but substantial areas well beyond the frontier.

The following are particularly good bargains for one-day tickets:

1. The Euregio Bodensee Tageskarte gives unlimited travel around Lake Constance (called the Bodensee in German) including ferries and selected rail routes in Austria, Germany and Switzerland: €28

2. The Euregio Maas-Rhein Tageskarte permits rail and bus travel throughout parts of eastern Belgium, the Limburg area of the Netherlands and over the German border to Aachen and beyond: €15.50

3. The EuroNeisse Ticket covers a large part of northern Bohemia (Czech Republic), part of Silesia (Poland) and eastern Saxony (Germany) and affords unlimited travel on trains, buses and trams: €10

All the passes mentioned in this post give travelers the chance to really explore a region or make longer hops at a bargain price. Local trains with frequent stops along the way often give a sense of engaging with landscape and communities in a way that is less possible on fast express services.

The post Exploring Germany: Rail passes for local train services appeared first on EuroCheapo's Budget Travel Blog.

Plan ahead: Rail travel for next year

Rail travelers can still take a while refining their travel plans for summer 2009, for although many of the schedules are now becoming available, tickets do not generally go on sale until two to four months prior to travel.

The extension of the Europa-Spezial scheme to encompass many more countries means that canny travellers can now plan long treks across Europe with rail fares that greatly undercut even the lowest air fares.

Europa-Spezial: Great value for money

Europa-Spezial fares can be booked online at the German Railways website. Tickets generally go on sale 90 days prior to travel, so bookings can already be made for January 2009.

Choose your trains carefully and you can travel from Budapest to Cologne for just €39 one way – and you can include stopovers on the way (each for a maximum of 48 hours). We chose a Budapest – Prague – Berlin – Cologne routing, with en route stops for two nights in both Prague and Berlin, and found plenty of availability for mid-January 2009 at the lead-in €39 fare.

Other gems there for the taking are €29 one-way from Hamburg to Vienna (via Prague), €39 from Paris or Copenhagen to any station in Germany, and a €39 fare that will take you from any station in Belgium or the Netherlands to Basel on the Swiss border or to Salzburg in Austria.

First class options: Worth considering, even for Cheapos

If the lowest fare for your selected route is already sold out, you can still buy a Europa-Spezial ticket, but it will be priced at a higher tariff tier (e.g. €49, €69, and up). Europa-Spezial fares are also available for first class, and these are really worth checking.

Berlin to Vienna (either direct or with a one or two night stopover in Dresden) for €49 first class sounds almost too good to be true. If you find little availability for Europa-Spezial fares in second class, just have a look to see if the cheapest first class option is still available. First class sells out less quickly, and we have found many examples of journeys where remaining first class availability is cheaper than heavily-booked second class.

The great thing about these Europa-Spezial fares is that, subject to availability at the time of booking, you really can use them on the fast express services. The only real snag is that you must commit yourself to date and time of travel, but at such rock bottom fares that is scarcely a burden.

The new Europa-Spezial fares, along with long-standing promotions like discounted TGV fares in France, might really tip the balance as you weigh up whether it is worth buying a rail pass for 2009.

The post Bargain trains: Cheap rail fares across Europe for 2009 appeared first on EuroCheapo's Budget Travel Blog.