Duesseldorf Airport - Bremen

Hi, I'm staying in Bremen early August but the only cheap practical flights were to Duesseldorf. I therefore need to make my way to Bremen by public transport, preferably by train. To be honest I know what trains I probably want, though would like some flexibility on my arrival in case of the flight being delayed, though can commit to a train coming back. I've sorta figured out the basic fare structure, I take it 'Flexpreis' is like an anytime return, Supersparpreis seems like an advance, only more restrictive in that it can't be amended. Sparpreis is basically like our advance with a 'City Ticket'. Am I missing anything?

Was tempted by the Supersparpreis but don't want to risk it if my flight is late. Any advice for good value fares?

Leaving Duesseldorf Airport ca. 1900 on Monday 5th and want to arrive back at about 1100 on Friday 9th. Hope this helps.

Also how is ticket delivery done? Would using a British credit card be an issue, if it's like ours with ToD? Is print@home an option?

Your understanding is largely correct. Sparpreis and Supersparpreis are categories of advance which are restricted to specific trains for the IC/EC/ICE elements of the journey. Sparpreis is refundable up to one day before (less a €10 fee), Super is not refundable at all. Flexpreis is an anytime ticket, there isn’t really a peak/off-peak distinction in Germany (outside of some rover type tickets).

Sometimes savings can be made by sticking to local services but the sparpreis fares significantly undercut these for your journey. Using local services also extends the journey time by around an hour and means you may not make it that same night if your outward flight was delayed.

Personally, I would book the cheapest advance based on your flight being an hour late and just linger at the airport if everything runs to time (there is an excellent viewing area on the roof). If the flight was even later then I would just take the hit of having to buy a new ticket on arrival. That is very unlikely though and insurance may cover it.

mikeg said:

Hi, I'm staying in Bremen early August but the only cheap practical flights were to Duesseldorf. I therefore need to make my way to Bremen by public transport, preferably by train. To be honest I know what trains I probably want, though would like some flexibility on my arrival in case of the flight being delayed, though can commit to a train coming back. I've sorta figured out the basic fare structure, I take it 'Flexpreis' is like an anytime return, Supersparpreis seems like an advance, only more restrictive in that it can't be amended. Sparpreis is basically like our advance with a 'City Ticket'. Am I missing anything?

Was tempted by the Supersparpreis but don't want to risk it if my flight is late. Any advice for good value fares?

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That's pretty much it. Unlike an advance ticket, a Sparpreis ticket can be cancelled altogether up until the day before.

mikeg said:

Was tempted by the Supersparpreis but don't want to risk it if my flight is late.

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My personal rule of thumb is to allow for up to an hours delay to the flight, and if I end up missing it then tough, I have to buy another ticket. It depends on your estimation of the reliability of the airline, and the relative price of the tickets though.

mikeg said:

Any advice for good value fares?

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For €20 you can get a discount card which provides 25% off all train tickets for 3 months. If the tickets have a high enough price, and if you intend to travel around more within Germany or visit Germany again, this could be worth it.

mikeg said:

Also how is ticket delivery done? Would using a British credit card be an issue, if it's like ours with ToD? Is print@home an option?

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There is no ticket collection system in Germany. Your options are a print at home ticket, or using the Deutsche Bahn app. In fact you can do both with the same ticket. All that matters is that you have the barcode to show to the conductor somehow.

Download the DB Navigator app in English. This gives you prices and alternative journeys and the ability to also buy local fares as mentioned by Superjohn.

Navigator will also alert you to delays and acts as a diary and alarm.

You can book with UK credit card and it stores your tickets electronically which are read by the conductors device. In Germany paper tickets are the exception

JonathanP said:

Your options are a print at home ticket, or using the Deutsche Bahn app.

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You can also choose to get physical tickets by snail mail, but DB charge a handling fee for this.

JonathanP said:

All that matters is that you have the barcode to show to the conductor somehow.

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It's important to note that, should you decide to use a digital ticket, power sockets aren't available everywhere in Germany. Fernverkehr trains usually have power points located under each pair of seats (barring some old stock which is on the way out), but many Regionalverkehr trains (RB/RE) do not have this at all. Don't get caught with an empty phone battery.

Mobile phone reception isn't universally available, either. The DB app itself is perfectly capable of working offline, but just make sure that you have your ticket on your device before boarding the train. It's just a hassle if the guard comes along and wants to see you ticket, while you still have to download it while going through a poor coverage area.

If you think you might want to catch the 1930 EC (nice Swiss stock and restaurant car) then pay full whack; your ticket is then valid on a later train even if the Flexpreis is higher (it's a peculiar system - Flexpreis can flex!), and will cover you for the Bremen trams that night.
If you will definitely wait for the later train, then Supersparpreis is fine (unless you think you might cancel the whole trip, in which case Sparpreis is partly refundable - but it's not worth it for the Cityticket addon alone).

The Skytrain from the airport to the station is not included in your fare. A ticket from the S-Bahn station Flughafen Terminal costs no more, and you can go via Hbf with it

Thanks for the suggestions and information. My flight is scheduled to arrive at 1755 and have looked up its history and is usually early/seldom more than 15 minutes late. I suppose the golden question then is how long does it take to get off the plane and to the S-bahn station? I'm travelling hand luggage only so there's a time saving there. Flight BE1495. I honestly still don't know whether to get a Flexpreis or Supersparpreis, but take it I'm best going from the terminal station given that it'd be included in the fare and is just under the arrival terminal? Sorry haven't used a train in Germany in 11 years, I have UK train booking down to a fine art - also I don't fly very often. To be honest, I'm tempted just to pay full whack. I've bought a Probe Bahncard 25 as it was about break even with the Supersparpreis so will definitely save money if I go for the Flexpreis.

Düsseldorf airport is usually quite efficient, the non-Schengen areas are at the ends of piers, and generally only one non-Schengen flight is being processed at any one time on each pier. As we'll still be in the EU, with doors open at 1755 and HBO I would estimate you are likely to be able to catch the 1824 S11 departure unless you are last off the plane. If the flight is delayed a bit then I think you would still make the 1844. I often make it to the Skytrain within 10 minutes of my flight arriving.

Doing a search on bahn.de for 5 August, there is an option leaving at 1801 which you have no chance of catching, then the next option offered is the 1904 S11 to Düsseldorf Hbf where you connecting to the EC6 at 1932. Personally I would just book the Sparpreis for this option at €33.90 (not sure if the Trial Bahncard gives discounts on that).

This binds you to the EC6, but not to the S11 so you are free to get an earlier one if no delays, and have a look around the station, maybe get some food. If you do manage to catch the S11 at 1824 you'd have nearly an hour which is just about enough to wander up to the city centre, better than hanging about at the airport.

The Sparpreis (not the Super Sparpreis) looks like it gives you City Tickets for Düsseldorf and Bremen. My understanding is that the airport Skytrain is included in the City Ticket so if you wanted to, instead of the S11 you could even take that to Flughafen Bahnhof from where you can take any S or RE train to Düsseldorf Hbf, and take the U-bahn into the city (but check the U-bahn timetable if you want to do this, plus leave ample time for getting between platforms).


The ticket is a barcode, so you can print it out or save the PDF on your phone, no need to install the DB app unless you want to. There are no ticket barriers in Germany and you generally won't see any staff when travelling on local transport. I disagree that paper tickets are the "exception" for local transport (though most people will have seasons) but on long distance journeys I do think most people book online. I have never had my ticket checked on Düsseldorf local transport in about 5 different trips there, but it is always checked on long-distance trains.

Good point about the City Ticket including Skytrain - and as paddington says, DUS is a pretty civilised airport.

In which case a Sparpreis at €39.90 (not SuperSP) on the EC arriving Bremen 2217 is safe option - if your flight is punctual you can go via Hbf, if not use the Skytrain and pick up the EC at Duisburg.

(PS Not sure whether I misread the fares last night or they really have changed dramatically.)

If you get a long distance ticket from the Airport station to Bremen, it will include any local train to Duisburg where you will pick up the IC/ICE/EC service.
You can get an e-ticket and either print at home or download to your device using bahn.com or the app, no need for paper post or buying at a station.
Have you thought of flying to Hamburg and backtracking to Bremen?
Nice and cheap on EasyJet, at least from Manchester.

mikeg said:

I suppose the golden question then is how long does it take to get off the plane and to the S-bahn station? I'm travelling hand luggage only so there's a time saving there. Flight BE1495.

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I've used that self same Flybe flight from LBA over half a dozen times in the last few years and the only time it was substantially late was due to a very late inbound arrival of what should have been our aircraft. Generally arrivals have been early, 20 minutes early on one occasion.
Bare in mind though that the arrival times that you'll see on flight history sites isn't the time you'll reach the terminal as this flight doesn't get a stand actually at the terminal so there's the fun of a mystery bus tour to get there.
Having said that, DUS is pretty good for arrivals and with just hand luggage I've been at the Flughafen station via Skytrain 15 minutes after reaching the terminal. You'll need a ticket for Skytrain which was 1.60€ last time I bought one; there are English speaking ticket machines in the terminal, and it's worth it as a time saver and for the experience of riding on one of only 4 schwebebahnen in Germany. You could also consider paying 2.70€ for a ticket that will also get you to the Hauptbahnhof where there is a better choice of eating places than at the airport but check the ticket prices as that's what I was paying last year.

The following tickets are accepted for the SkyTrain:

• valid VRR and VRS tickets
• special DB tickets, such as City plus, NRW-, Schöne-Reise-, Schöne-Fahrt- and the Schöner-Tag ticket
• Flughafen Düsseldorf GmbH and "Parkvogel" (a brand of SITA Airport IT GmbH)car park tickets for up to 9 persons
• Tickets for the observation deck at Düsseldorf Airport (Terminal B) on the day of use

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What's a VRR or VRS ticket? It says City plus, presumably this is not the same as a city ticket?

mikeg said:

What's a VRR or VRS ticket?

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Transport association tickets for local and regional transport. For local and regional travel entirely within the VRR or VRS areas, VRR or VRS tickets apply. The VRR covers the Rhein-Rhur conurbation and VRS covers the Cologne/Bonn area. DUS is within the VRR area, however VRS tickets are also valid in an overlapping area including DUS airport.

mikeg said:

It says City plus, presumably this is not the same as a city ticket?

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If you've already bought a ticket, it should be marked '+City' for the appropriate city, 'Düsseldorf+City' for example . As far as I'm aware, DB only do a City ticket add on, I've never head of a City ticket plus.

In the end I booked the Supersparpreis as I'm not going to cancel and reading the city ticket conditions it appears it's for the destination (could be wrong?) but in either case the 'K' fare for the Skytrain is cheaper than booking an inclusive city ticket. Which means I've precisely broken even on the Bahncard anyway. Thanks for all your help! I'll risk my flight being delayed.

If you are looking at the zone/price tables on the VRS web site, the 'K' fares are for journeys in Köln. You need to look at the VRR site (www.vrr.de only in German).
A ticket for Skytrain will cost you 1.70€ while one to the Hauptbahnhof, via Skytrain or direct on SBahn is 2.90€.
The City ticket provided with a Flexpreis ticket covers local travel at both ends of the journey provided that those cities are part of the scheme. Düsseldorf and Bremen are included.

Hi I'd obviously misunderstood then. Either way I think I'm relatively safe. I've actually booked my ticket from the airport station with a change at Duisburg. It's only an ec service between Duisburg and Bremen

SUPERsparpreis are the cheapest advance and do not include the free +city options.
Alltogether it seems a bit strange to me, as BRemen airport (HB=hansestadt bremen) is mostly served by that cheapest of all, RYAnair, incl many UK-airports. or is that not proper flying?
Note that htis main line has in the summer many work-spots and reroutes going on-chances your booked train is late are probably much more as a late plane. If your booked train is announced with more as 20/30? mins. delay you can then choose any train going in your direction without penalty-conductors checking have this on their handy. Thats something Uk-rail-operators could also copy!

As far as I can see Ryanair only serve Bremen from Stansted, so no use to us in the north.

I did Manchester-Dusseldorf on Flybe a few years ago, or rather tried to, as it was cancelled because of a faulty aircraft.
Luckily Lufty (actually Eurowings) had a flight to Dusseldorf within half an hour and Flybe rebooked me on that.
I still made my DB connection on to Hamburg, but it was a close shave.

I also expected the IC train to call at Bremen Hbf, but that week there was engineering work and the train therefore stopped in the western suburbs for connections, and avoided Bremen Hbf on the freight avoiding line.
The same thing happened in Hamburg (the train went on to Rostock, missing HH Hbf), but this diversion was already in the timetable - the Bremen diversion wasn't.
I ended up on a Metronom double deck local train to reach Hamburg Hbf.

I have had the situation where, when a flight was delayed, the ticket office endorsed my ticket for a later train without further charge, although she would have been within her rights to charge me. Saying please and speaking a little German probably helped

Nothing wrong with saying please

Struner said:

Nothing wrong with saying please

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Or indeed "bitte". I caught a much delayed Regionalbahn from Trier to Saarbruecken and I was going to miss my connection to Pirmasens by 5 minutes. After many "bitte, bitte, bitte"s (what a young child would say when requesting an ice cream), the conductress radio'd ahead and they held the connection.

Apparently not only is my flight to be operated by a stand-in firm, the flight will depart 50 minutes later than scheduled so beginning to look a bit desperate. Any aviation experts here - it was booked for one of those Dash 8 turboprop things, now it will be a jet made by BAE - am I correct in thinking at least jets tend to be slightly faster than props?

Based on what Flight Radar's flight history for BE1495 (https://www.flightradar24.com/data/flights/be1495) is telling me it looks like you'll be getting a BAe 146-200. You might get an extra 100 knots out of one of those with a decent tail wind!

I'm on the same flight from LBA in early September so it'll be interesting to see what turns up and when.

mikeg said:

Apparently not only is my flight to be operated by a stand-in firm, the flight will depart 50 minutes later than scheduled so beginning to look a bit desperate. Any aviation experts here - it was booked for one of those Dash 8 turboprop things, now it will be a jet made by BAE - am I correct in thinking at least jets tend to be slightly faster than props?

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To be brutally honest with you, the time taken for such a short flight is unlikely to be effected more than 5-10 minutes by the use of a jet rather than a prop plane. I frequently fly to Luxembourg with a Dash 8 and have also flown with Airbuses and 737s and the flight times are more or less identical.

Ah okay. Now looks like I won't make my train. Am booked on the 1930 from dusseldorf Airport changing on to the 1953 at Duisburg. Is it like the UK where if you get on the wrong train with an advance you can buy a flexpreis ticket? Or would this be hideously expensive or illegal? Should I therefore buy a new ticket at Duisburg?

What time is your plane due at Dusseldorf? 1755 ? Even with a 50 minute delay, that's going to be 1845 when you land. You still have a fighting chance to catch a train from the airport within 45 minutes. The good news is that your ticket is valid for any regional train, not just the one you have been booked on. What happens next depends on how late you are. You could potentially try for a taxi to get you to Duisburg Hbf (though I don't recommend it, as it's likely to be quite expensive - no harm in asking, though). The train is coming from Interlaken and is already 5 minutes late! You have an Eurobahn train at 1955 to Dortmund, where you have 30 minutes to wait for an ICE train to Bremen, getting there at 2317.

I recommend you go straight to the DB ticket office at the airport and explain your predicament, they may take pity on you and reissue you with a ticket - they may also make you buy a new ticket If the ticket office is closed, then buy a ticket for the Eurobahn to Dortmund and try again at the ticket office there.

If you want any help later on, post on here and I will do what I can for you.

I'm assuming that you are travelling today?
I see that FlyBe are estimating an arrival in DUS at 19:50.
What I would do is go to the travel center (Reisezentrum) at the Flughafen station explain the situation and see what they say. They may exchange your ticket for one valid on a later train at no cost.
If they insist that you buy a new one or pay the difference, if that difference is more than 44€ you could buy a Quer-durchs-Land-Ticket.
That ticket isn't valid on EC, IC or ICE services but there is a connection to Bremen on other trains, the downside being that it will be after 1AM when you get there.

Düsseldorf Flughafen dep 20:55
Gelsenkirchen Hbf arr 21:28

Gelsenkirchen Hbf dep 21:53
Münster(Westf)Hbf arr 22:50

Münster(Westf)Hbf dep 23:03
Osnabrück Hbf arr 23:39

Osnabrück Hbf dep 23:52
Bremen Hbf arr 01:07

Those are all regional trains and the Quer-durchs-Land-Ticket is valid 'til 3AM the following day.

There is a faster service at 20:12 getting there just after 11 o'clock involving an EC (which I note from DB's travel planner is already running late enough to miss the connection in Dortmund!) and an ICE but you might be struggling to make that anyway.
For my trip in September I'm glad I'm having a night in Düsseldorf.
Good luck!

Supersparpreis tickets can't be exchanged or refunded, so if you can't make it to your booked train you'll have to buy a new ticket I'm afraid. The good news is that you can use your ticket on all Regionalverkehr trains (RB, RE, S-Bahn, ERB), as the Zugbindung only applies to the long distance trains.

You don't necessarily have to buy a new Flexpreis ticket - a few years ago DB changed until when Sparpreis tickets are available... until they run out. It's very well possible that you can buy yourself a new Sparpreis tickets minutes before boarding the train.

OK thanks. So I can get regional trains with my supersparpreis ticket as per the itinerary above? I might be a cheapskate and do this. And yes I'm travelling today. Thanks for all your help so far.