The sun never shines in Seattle, it never rains in Southern California, and The German trains run like clockwork. All are things people say that aren't exactly accurate.
Today we traveled from Bielefeld to Flensburg. It was our longest train journey on this trip with 2 transfers. This is a photo of me before I knew what the journey would end up being. The journey was to look like this...
We woke up in the morning and had coffee and lounged around. I checked our train schedule early and everything looked good, but when I checked it about 1.5 hours before our scheduled departure, everything looked bad. Our first train was late and that would cause us to miss our connection.
We had prepurchased our tickets because advance purchases are about 2/3rds the cost of day before purchases. It's all done through the DB app, which is really good.
We rushed over to the station which was about a 3 minute walk and worked with the Customer Service there to get suggestions. The agent was very helpful and printed up, what may be, a quicker route than the app was suggesting. This route included 2 regional trains and 1 express train rather than 2 express trains and 1 regional train and we weren't able to reserve seats. If you book early enough, you can reserve seats for 5.50 Euros, which is well worth it. Billing for the trains is also interesting, if the route you choose is compromised, you can get there anyway you want. You are really just paying for your starting point and your end point.
This was the actual route we were taking.
We hopped on our first regional train which started in Bielefeld, so we had an easy time getting seats together.
This took us to Osnabrück where we were to transfer to our "express" train. Turns out our express train was late but not as late as the same express train scheduled for an hour earlier than the train that we were waiting for. That train that was supposed to be an hour ahead was 2 hours behind so it was scheduled to arrive 10 minutes after the train we were waiting for.
Lots of text so here is a photo of the, "How is our bathroom? Leave us feedback" kiosk that is unplugged and not working. I guess they don't want our feedback.
While waiting for our express train, I went and checked with customer service to see if we could book seats on the train arriving slightly after the one we were targeting. He said no so I asked if there was anyway to tell which one was more full. He said no and suggested that we just get on the next train.
The platform was full of people so we assumed we weren't sitting together for this 1.25 h trip. We luckily posted up right where the doors for the car were going to be and aggressively boarded after people disembarked.
I took a photo of all the stops so we could determine what seats were available.
The seat rows have a little readout in the shoulder of the seat telling the rider if the seat is reserved. If the readout is blank, the seat is available until the end of the line. We luckily found 2 available seats within an row of each other. We sat quietly and texted each other. A 2nd stroke of luck had my seat partner leaving at the 1st stop so Donna and I were able to sit next to each other the rest of the journey to Hamburg, our next transfer point.
Hamburg HBF is really pretty and really huge. We used the app to tell us what platform and what zone our train was going to arrive at. We studied the arrival board and since we had luggage, a station agent assumed we were not familiar with our trip and approached us to help. I thought we had it all together but we listened anyway. Turns out that was a good plan because our local train was splitting in half part of the way to our destination with half the train going where we wanted to go and half the train going where we hadn't intended to go to.
We got on the correct car and had seats together so our journey turned out just fine even though we would arrive a few hours after our intended arrival.
Our journey took us over this amazing bridge, the Rendsburg High Bridge, that you can't really see in the photo.
You can see the bridge curving out ahead of us.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rendsburg_High_Bridge
We ended up curving around and then under the same bridge to get to the station that serves Rendsburg. The trip over the bridge was awesome in a train and there is a trip under the bridge via a suspended transporter bridge for cars and pedestrians. I would definitely try to do this if we return to the area. As awesome as it was, I was still able to find a hilariously bad review for it on Google.
When we arrived in Flensburg at 7pm, instead of our original 5:45pm we visited customer service again and made sure we got a refund of 11 Euros for our reserved seat that we didn't get to use. We did get refunded which was great. During that time I got a phone call from our hotel asking if we would be there by 8pm. I assured them we would make it.
Our walk to the hotel was mellow and check in was easy. We were only in our room for a few minutes and then we were off to our dinner.
We were told all about the Flensburg Pilsner by Spencer. He said there were signs for it all over northern Germany and if Flensburg is representative, he's right! Sadly the brewery isn't a dinner location.
We made our way to Hansens Brauerei instead, where we had a fantastic dinner with fantastic drink.
They have a unique beer that is really good. It's called Opa Marczak Urtyp. Untapped calls it a Pilsner but they don't mention that it's a Pilsner. Here is their description, "A bottom-fermented beer specialty, full-bodied, easy-drinking, with a subtle hop note."
After dinner we headed back and watch some pinball on YouTube. It's been a few hotels now since we have been able to watch YouTube on the TV.
If I had to sum up my thoughts on the Deutsche Bahn experience, it would be that it works way way way better than Amtrak. If your plan doesn't work out, there are other routs you can take. The trains are clean and run fast when you are on them. I highly recommend a reserved seat for the low price and the peace of mind, if your plan actually works out. Another thing that mystifies me is that we paid for 2 express trains and 1 regional train and we got 1 express train and 2 regional trains for the same price. Our tickets were only scanned on the express train so the regional trains have no idea we rode them so how do the regional trains get their share of our fare? I asked Spencer about his transit pass and he, along with many others, buy a monthly 63€ pass that is good for all regional and local public transportation across Germany. This may be why we never got scanned because most people have a transit pass.
That's a lot of words and few pictures for this post, but it may be helpful for you future German tourists. Here is a photo of Francis taken by my sister who is sitting him for 3 months to reward you for reading all of this.
