Crisscrossing Germany by rail for only €49

This week’s Mediahuis/INM Irish regional newspapers’column.

Michael Commane

Over the years I’ve travelled here and there. I lived in Italy and Germany, which meant flying backwards and forwards relatively regularly.

Back home, living in Ireland, I lost interest in foreign travel. My sights instead were fixed on West Kerry.

I was beginning to wonder why so many people were taking to the skies, especially for short visits to crowded cities all over the world. Then came Covid, which means it must be seven or eight years since I sat in a plane.

Some weeks ago two friends and I decided we’d take flight. After work on the Thursday of the May Bank Holiday weekend we met at Dublin Airport to take a Ryanair flight to Nuremberg in the southern German State of Bavaria.

I could not believe my eyes when I saw the milling crowds at the airport. It was a different world from the airport I remember of the 1960s, ’70s, even ’80s. I can recall my parents dropping me at the airport and leaving the car outside the main entrance door.

 

Home now and thinking about the wonderful few days we had, I can’t believe there is not a direct rail service to the airport, which saw 400,000 people go through its doors over the May Bank Holiday weekend.

Getting off the plane at Albrecht Dürer Airport in Nuremberg I felt a great sense of being back in Germany, back to a country where I’ve always felt at ease.

 

It seems everything in Nuremberg is called after the famous engraver, Albrecht Dürer, who was born the city in 1471. His friendship circle included Leonardo da Vinci and Emperor Maxmilian I.

We did many of the touristy things, including a four-hour walking tour of the city. We visited the infamous place where Hitler held his rallies. I cannot believe what I saw there: a newly married couple using the remaining structure, which was a memorial for the war dead, as a backdrop for their wedding pictures. 

The world is indeed, a strange place. And then my mind took a detour and I was thinking of the war in Ukraine and the lives being lost and ruined for ever.

We travelled by rail to nearby Regensburg. On our return that evening we took a regional train, which happened to be a double-decker. When I told my two friends it was most likely a train from the former East German Railway, they laughed, suggesting it could not be so old, as it looked in pristine condition. 

Our stop was the train’s destination so I cheekily went up to the locomotive and asked the driver. He assured me I was correct. All four of us ended up having an animated conversation about trains, his workload, even to the point where he produced his roster sheet and showed us how many hours he worked that day.

 

From May 1 German Rail is offering a €49 monthly unlimited ticket across the German network on all its regional trains.

The highlight of the holiday? Certainly chatting with the train driver was high up on my list.

Thank you to my two friends. That €49 rail ticket is an added incentive to return. And soon.