Book early and save: Yes
Online bookings open: 6 months ahead of the travel date
RESERVATIONS:
Book 1st class ticket journey tickets on DB Bahn and your seat reservation is included - but they're optional when booking 2nd class tickets, or if you will be travelling with a 1st or 2nd class rail pass.
Opting to reserve is particularly recommended if you will be travelling at business hours and/or during the day on Fridays and Sundays.
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FINDING TICKETS:
When making an online booking, check that you’re looking at booking info for the direct trains.
On the DB Bahn booking site look for journeys that have:
(i) 0 in the Chg. column
(ii) ICE (and only ICE) in the Products column.
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Trains departing at different times can be cheaper than others leaving on the same day, so you may need to look through the day's departures to find the cheapest fares.
Our step-by-step guide to booking train tickets (and reservations) on the DB (German national railways) website is available HERE.
There's also a guide to booking with an independent ticket agent.
Though this is a journey on which you can often save money (more than €20), if you're happy to change trains in Koln and avoid these direct services.
Ticket Provider | Approximate Cost | |
---|---|---|
DB Bahn | from €35.90 | |
B-Europe | from €35.90 | |
Omio | from €35.90 | |
Happyrail | from €35.90 | |
Happyrail | from €39.90 |
Final Destination: Bruxelles-Midi/Brussel Zuid
All trains also call at: Frankfurt Flughafen/Airport; Koln/Cologne; Aachen and Liege
Most trains also call at: Bruxelles-Nord
This route showcases high speed train travel at it's finest - the journey between Frankfurt Flughafen and Seigburg/Bonn in particular can fuel adrenalin!
The video was taking on a train travelling in the opposite direction, but it gives a sense of what a thrill this train ride can be - this is a journey when its especially obvious that you're travelling on a high speed train!
That's because on that part of this journey you'll be travelling on Germany's fastest high speed line.
These trains will also use another high speed line between Aachen and Leuven (west of Liege) and for virtually all of the rest of the journey, they will be travelling on tracks which have been made faster.
This route showcases high speed train travel at it's finest, the journey between Frankfurt Flughafen and Seigburg/Bonn in particular can fuel adrenalin!
For virtually the entire train journey from Koln to Bruxelles the trains, will either be travelling at up to 290 km/h on purpose built high speed lines, or up to 200km/h on section of railway, that has been re-engineered to allow trains to travel faster.
It is a journey of eight distinct phases:
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This is one of more than 1000 journey guides available on ShowMeTheJourney, which will make it easier to take the train journeys you want or need to make. As always, all images were captured on trips taken by ShowMeTheJourney.