Special collection: A guide to the German rail system

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Confused over the sometimes maddening German rail system? Yeah, so was I, the first time I visited too. For those who don't know, Germany has the most pervasive of the already extensive rail systems found throughout western Europe; Germans, in fact, still take great personal pride over how large and efficient their particular rail system is. Unfortunately this results in an alphabet soup of train types, most of which are unintelligible for the average American, as well as a full timetable that's the size of a damn phone book. Other, better guides have already been written about how to decode German timetables (I personally recommend Rick Steves'); I thought, though, since I've never seen one myself, I'd write a little guide to the different types of German trains you find there, where they go, what they do, and which are appropriate for tourists in which situations. I've illustrated my guide with photos from my most recent trip to Germany.

Okay, so the first thing to know is that Germany's rail system is run by two different groups - Deutsche Bahn (DB), the national rail company, is in charge of all the trains that run between metropolitan areas, while individual cities are in charge of their metropolitan train systems. The absolute most basic level of these systems is the "tram" (also known sometimes as the Strassenbahn, or "street train"), which you can think of exactly like a city bus - it travels on the same streets that cars do, costs very little money, and makes stops every three or four blocks, albeit these electric and running on tracks, versus buses being diesel and running on tires. (This particular one above is from Amsterdam, but the German ones look exactly the same.)

Trams are a fantastic way to travel short distances within large German cities, and are also surprisingly great for simple sightseeing - a euro and a half will get you the same hours-long panoramic tour of the city that an overpriced bus tour will, but without the cheesy announcer and some whiny kid from Nebraska screaming in your ear the whole time. It's sometimes hard to justify the tram ticket price when you're traveling only short distances, which is why I recommend buying a Tageskarte (dayticket) when you get into town - for one price (4,70 euros in Frankfurt in 2004, for example) you get unlimited access to every U-Bahn, S-Bahn, tram and bus within the entire metropolitan area, usually until midnight of the day of purchase but sometimes a full 24 hours after your first validation. The other advantage of the dayticket is that you never have to screw around with those insane Fahrkarten (farecard) machines again.

So, the next stop up from the tram is the U-Bahn (think of the 'u' as standing for 'underground,' which most of the U trains are). This is the same type of basic light-rail system as you find here in America: Chicago's el, New York's subway, San Francisco's BART, Washington DC's Metro, etc. Like America, most German U-Bahn systems are comprised of 5 to 20 lines, covering a wide area of the city but usually not extending past the closest suburbs. U-Bahn systems are designed so that stations are usually half a mile to a mile apart, relying on the buses and trams to carry people shorter distances; there is almost always a tram station at each U-Bahn station, which makes it easy to transfer from one to another. Don't forget that U-Bahns frequently become 'A-Bahns' (that is, aboveground) once they hit the edge of the city; they're still called U-Bahns, though, so it can sometimes be a little confusing.

Yet another shot from a U-Bahn.

The final train in the metropolitan transit system is the S-Bahn (think of the 's' as standing for 'suburban'). These are the transition between metropolitan light rail and national heavy rail; S-Bahns are almost full-sized trains but not quite, and are kind of slow and clunky but also kind of light and fast. They serve primarily to get people in the suburban metropolitan area into the city, usually for job-related purposes. Like many American cities, most German transit departments split their metropolitan area up into zones, with tickets costing different amounts depending on how many zones you are travelling through on your particular journey. (Almost all U-Bahns cover only the areas in zone 1, making variable ticket prices not really a factor.) Don't forget, with a dayticket you don't have to deal with any of this; just hop on and off any train you want, and never have to worry about which zone your destination is in and at which zone you started. Once in the city, S-Bahns share stations with U-Bahns, but just stop at a whole lot less of them; tourists for the most part can ignore them, unless needing to travel across a large section of the city in a short period of time, or for any day trips to outlying cities in the region.

These trains travel just far enough to have First and Second Classes, but not far enough to have smoking sections or cafe cars. By the way, in case you didn't know, First Class is for suckers; Second Class seats are just as nice, big and comfortable as the First Class ones. In fact, the main benefit of First Class is not seat quality at all, but rather the fact that you can reserve specific seats, which you can't do in Second Class; many daily commuters find the extra cost worth it in order to ensure a dedicated seat during busy rush hours. I'm told that this perk of First Class travel can be a real relief to backpackers sometimes as well, especially those who are travelling in the peak of the tourist season. Don't forget, though, that you are effectively doubling your railpass price by bumping up to First Class, so buyer beware; unless you're planning on travelling on constantly packed trains with no open seats, there is no real reason for tourists to purchase First Class tickets.

Okay - now that we're at the edge of a metropolitan area, how do we get to the next one? That's where the DB comes into the picture. There are a whole mess of different train types the DB operates, but in reality 95 percent of their trains fall either into the R/RE category (Regional/RegionalExpress) or the IC/ICE one (InterCity/InterCityExpress). The R/REs are the slower, clunkier ones of the two; the rinky-dink trains that locals use on a daily basis to get from one town in their region to the other. (Americans, think of an Amtrak line stopping at Joliet, Peoria, Springfield and Champaign on its way from Chicago to St. Louis.) R/REs are significantly cheaper than IC/ICEs, but also significantly slower; for a tourist, though, they can be impossibly romantic, and your ticket to viewing a lot of the everyday local life of area residents. This particular shot is of the older style of R/RE train, which still comprises 70 to 80 percent of the fleet; they are laid out in the older 'compartment' style of seating, where four to six travellers will share a communal circle of space, often with a little table in the middle. All older R/REs have an entire car where smoking is allowed; some have cafe cars as well and some don't, depending on the journey length of the particular train you're taking.

And a shot of the newer R/REs, which you're starting to see pop up more and more among German rail lines. These are much nicer, and feature "commuter" style seat layouts; unfortunately the new R/REs have completely eliminated smoking from all cars.

And finally there are the IC/ICEs - the flagships of the DB fleet, and sometimes those freaky 'bullet trains' that can travel as fast as an airplane. IC/ICEs are really nice - bucket seats, extremely spacious leg room, closed-circuit music that you can access from your armrest, live plants on most of the cars, a complimentary DB magazine, a full cafe car, usually a full sit-down restaurant as well, a smoking car, special 'quiet' cars (where cellphones aren't allowed), special 'receptor' cars (where extra equipment has been installed to actually help you with your cellphone calls), special 'video' cars (where you can watch closed-circuit original DB programming from the seat rest in front of you), even payphones you can use with your regular Deutsche Telekom phonecard.

IC/ICEs can be an extremely wonderful way for tourists to get from one side of the country to the other; after spending five hours on one from Frankfurt to Munich, for example, you may be tempted to not even get off. Locally, though, the IC/ICEs are turning out to be somewhat of a failure, simply because they're so expensive; individual tickets most often cost the same as actual airplane tickets, so most locals just skip the ICE altogether and simply fly when they need to get across the country. It's too bad, because it really is a great way to travel long distances, without the leg cramps, two-hour security queues and nasty attitudes found at most airlines; it's a shame they don't lower the price so that normal citizens could be using them more.

By the way, here is a picture of the Tourist's Best Friend - your railpass. GET A RAILPASS BEFORE YOU LEAVE YOUR HOME COUNTRY, because you wouldn't believe how much cheaper it is: in 2003, for example, I spent 300 euros (US$330) on a pass that gave me unlimited travel for ten chosen days out of a 30-day window; adding up the individual ticket prices afterwards for all the trains I took, I realized that the same itinerary for a German would've cost over 2,000 euros. Get yer railpass, man!

Copyright 2004, Jason Pettus. All rights reserved. Although this material is presented here for your enjoyment free of charge, it is still illegal to repost this material without my permission, and especially so if you charge others money to see it. I am usually happy to let others reprint my work in the context of a free artistic publication, so please don't hesitate to contact me at ilikejason at hotmail dot com if you are interested in doing so.