Deutsche Bahn Tickets

[Masbroughlad]

In Germany for 10 days next week and thought I'd ask on this site for some tic advice. There will be 2 of us.

Dusseldorf Airport to Cologne Hbf (Monday)
Cologne Hbf to Valkenburg return (Weds)
Cologne to Bonn return (Thurs)
Cologne to Hannover one way (Saturday)
Hannover to Dortmund one way (Monday)
Dortmund to Wuppertal return (Tuesday)
Dortmund to Dusseldorf Airport (Weds)

Any cards or offer available?

Thanks in advance.

 

[30907]

Most of those journeys are in one or other of the Regional Tariff Organisations (Verkehrsverbuende) and for day return travel on Regional trains (not IC/ICE) there will be some form of zonal day rover (Tageskarte) which for 2 together is likely to be best value.
VRR (Rhein-Ruhr) and VRS (Rhein-Sieg, for Cologne) are the relevant ones,
and anything else local- will be within the NRW Nordrheinwestfalen region.
Best bet for the journeys to/from Hannover is a Sparpreis (Advance) ticket, but you could use a Quer-Durchs-Land national day ticket (again Regional trains only, but it's not impossibly far).
Valkenburg is presumably within the scope of the local 3-countries tickets (EURegio or similar). IIRC the Aachen area tarif has now been absorbed into NRW, but it doesn't include any cross border element.
Edit: corrections to last para.

 

[dutchflyer]

V'burg(limburg, there is another such place near to leiden, a former military airport)-if you only go there for their heavily kets in about any major town in that period. BTW: how can your week be 10 days long?
ONLY K to H and H to DO are longer trips where prebooking might work out the cheapest and use the shiny white ICE. Most other trips are NOT DB_tariff and can even be without any real DB-train, but other contractors.

 

[30907]

....their heavily kets in about any major town in that period

Think something has got lost in the auto-correct here?

 

[paddington]

You can try buying local tickets on the VRS app. I tried to use it in December 2018 and it was unusable, but I tried again in October this year and it was very "handy" this time.

Using the app you get a discount on the TVM price, but it also lets you buy a ticket from a different origin, whereas at ticket machines the origin point is always where you currently are.

I'm not sure this really helps with your planned itinerary, but for example if you were arriving at DUS Monday evening, staying in Cologne, going to Bonn and back Tuesday, then going to Wuppertal Wednesday, you could get a 48 hour ticket for 2 people with origin Koeln which would be good for all these journeys. (I was told with the origin of Koeln, you would need to buy the ticket with sufficient time for a theoretical journey from Cologne to DUS before it would be valid on your first real journey starting at DUS.)

Anyway my tickets have never been checked on regional transport in NRW so I have no idea whether anyone would have a problem with what I did.

 

[Masbroughlad]

In the end, we went to an incredibly helpful DB Reisezentrum advisor at Cologne HBf. He recommended a Bahn Card Probiere 25.

Saved us money and will definitely do again.

 

[30907]

In the end, we went to an incredibly helpful DB Reisezentrum advisor at Cologne HBf. He recommended a Bahn Card Probiere 25.

Saved us money and will definitely do again.

That's well worth noting. EUR19.90 for 3 months and - which I didn't realise - applies to the NRW regional tariff not just fares set by DB.
Be interested to know which trips it was cheapest for - did that include the local ones? Koeln-Bonn would be an example where for the same train you could IIRC choose NRW fares or DB national ones in preference to local VRS fares (with no discount).

 

[paddington]

Remember you have to cancel the BahnCard or else DB will send debt collectors after you - happy to be corrected if this is not the case with the Trial

 

[riceuten]

Remember you have to cancel the BahnCard or else DB will send debt collectors after you - happy to be corrected if this is not the case with the Trial

I was on the verge of buying one as it would have saved me more than the purchase price, but read that you actually have to cancel the BahnCard, otherwise they will automatically extend it ! And apparently, it's not that easy to cancel. Sharp practice, definitely

 

[duesselmartin]

I was on the verge of buying one as it would have saved me more than the purchase price, but read that you actually have to cancel the BahnCard, otherwise they will automatically extend it ! And apparently, it's not that easy to cancel. Sharp practice, definitely

A letter 3 months in advance to cancel it.
Is it consumer friendly,? No.

 

[ricohallo]

When I bought it at the ticket office they immediately offered to cancel it again for me. So it's definitely worth to ask if you can buy one and immediately cancel it again.