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Enhanced ICE routes to popular tourist destinations
The Rhine Gorge, the island of Rugen and Austrian Alpine resorts all gain enhanced services of long-distance express trains
Simon HarperShare
German national rail operator DB isn’t introducing many entirely new ICE routes on the timetable for 2022, which commences on December 12th, though a new daily Aachen ↔ Berlin service will provide multiple industrial towns in the Ruhr conurbation with a direct rail link with the German capital.
Munich and Austrian alpine resorts
New Saturday only ICE services to/from Munchen/Munich are likely to be of more interest to visitors to Germany, as they will connect Bavaria’s largest city with Alpine resort towns and villages in Austria.
The trains will operate during the winter sports season and at the height of summer, one will depart Munchen hbf at 14:27 and head to Feldkirch with station calls which include Otzal (for Solden and Orbergurgl and St. Anton, while the other will head to Schwarzach St Veit at 15:20 and will call at multiple resorts including Hopfgarten, Kirchberg, Kitzbuhel, St Johann and Zell-am-See.
Note that the departure times of these trains allow for connections in Munchen hbf to be available when travelling from most other cities in Germany including Berlin, Frankfurt and Koln/Cologne.
Additional links between Austria and The Rhine Gorge
Wien/Vienna, Linz and Wels are three other Austrian cities which will benefit from an enhanced service of ICE trains.
On the current timetable two daily services link these Austrian destinations with The Middle Rhine Valley and the Ruhr conurbation, with calls in multiple German locations including Mainz, Koblenz, Bonn, Koln and Dusseldorf, but on the new timetable the number of these services will double to four per day.
In effect two of the daily trains which currently only travel to and from Frankfurt (Main) will have their journeys extended so that they can also serve destinations in north-west Germany.
To the Isle Of Rugen
Germany’s most popular location for coastal holidays is the island of Rugen and on the new timetable it will be more easily accessible by long-distance trains, with two new services which will call at Bergen-auf-Rugen and Osteebad Binz.
A daily ICE service will depart from Munchen at 08:55 and Nurnberg at 10:02 and from Leipzig at 12:10.
Another service, (an IC train) will depart Koblenz at 06:05 and make multiple station calls including Koln hbf (07:09); Dusseldorf (07:34) and Bremen at 10:18.
So this will be a highly useful link for those who want to combine The Rhine Gorge and Rugen on a German travel itinerary.
Simon Harper
I wanted to share my passion for train travel and explain how anyone can take the fantastic journeys I have taken.
This is one of more than 100 train travel 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.
