On December 7, 1835, a locomotive called the Adler pulled nine carriages the six kilometers (about four miles) from Nuremberg to Fürth in roughly nine minutes. That was the first German railway run under steam. It was not the first on the continent (Belgium beat us by seven months). And for a while the Ludwigsbahn alternated between the locomotive and horses, because coal was expensive and horses were not.
Today that network runs to about 33,400 km (roughly 20,800 mi) of track and 5,400 stations, and it will take you almost anywhere in the country.
What follows is how to use it without paying too much or missing your connection.
One correction before anything else, because it appears in a lot of old guidebooks. Deutsche Bahn was never privatized. It became a joint-stock company in the 1994 reform that merged the West German Bundesbahn with the East German Reichsbahn. The federal government still owns 100 percent of it.
A stock market listing was planned and then dropped in 2008.
The Letters on Your Ticket
German trains are sorted by how often they stop, and the abbreviation tells you which kind you booked.
- ICE (InterCityExpress) is the high-speed service between major cities. An ICE Sprinter is the same train with fewer stops on the busiest routes.
- IC (InterCity) and EC (EuroCity) are the older long-distance trains. Slower than an ICE, often cheaper, and the EC crosses borders.
- RE (Regional-Express) covers medium distances and skips the smaller stops.
- RB (Regionalbahn) stops at everything. This is the one that gets you to the village with the castle.
- S (S-Bahn) is the urban and suburban network inside and around cities.
The split that matters for your wallet is between the first two categories and the last three. ICE, IC, and EC are long-distance services with their own fare system. RE, RB, and S-Bahn count as regional transport, which is why the Deutschlandticket covers them and not the fast trains.
About the speed, since every article on this subject leads with it: the ICE 3 and the newer ICE 3neo are built for 300 km/h (about 186 mph), but the ICE 4, which carries more passengers than any other model in the fleet, tops out at 250 km/h (about 155 mph). And top speed only happens on the handful of purpose-built high-speed lines. On ordinary track you are doing 160 to 200 km/h (about 100 to 125 mph), which is still quick, just less cinematic.
Sparpreis or Flexpreis, and Why It Matters
Long-distance tickets come in three flavors, and the difference is not really price. It is whether you are tied to a specific train.
Super Sparpreis and Sparpreis are the cheap advance fares. Both bind you to the exact long-distance train printed on the ticket. Miss it and the ticket is dead, with the one mercy that regional legs before and after your booked train stay flexible. The Flexpreis costs a great deal more (Berlin to Munich runs close to 150 euros) and lets you take any train that day. Break the journey, and finish the next morning if you feel like it.
Booking opens twelve months ahead, and the cheap fares go first. If your dates are fixed, book early and take the Sparpreis. If your plans are loose, the Flexpreis is not extravagance, it is insurance.
Get the DB Navigator app before you arrive. It sells tickets, holds them, shows real-time platform changes, and tells you which car your reserved seat is in. Ticket machines and staffed Reisezentrum (travel center) counters still exist in stations, but the app knows about the delay ten minutes before the announcement does.
The BahnCard Question
A BahnCard is a discount card you buy once and use all year. The BahnCard 25 costs 62.90 euros in second class and takes 25 percent off both flexible and advance fares. The BahnCard 50 costs 244 euros and halves the Flexpreis.
Now the part people get wrong: the BahnCard 50 also gives only 25 percent off Sparpreis tickets, exactly the same discount as the card costing a quarter as much. So the expensive card is worth it only if you actually buy flexible fares. If you book in advance like most travelers do, the BahnCard 25 is the better deal, and it is not close.
For a two-week visit, neither usually pays off. Run the numbers on your actual planned trips before you buy anything.
Seat Reservations Are Optional, Until They Are Not
Unlike in France or Spain, a German long-distance ticket does not include a seat. Reservation costs 5.50 euros in second class and 6.90 in first, and it is bundled into first-class Flexpreis tickets.
Skip it on a quiet Tuesday midday. Buy it for Friday afternoons, Sunday evenings, the start of school holidays, anything routed through Frankfurt or Cologne, and any journey where standing for three hours with luggage would ruin your day. The booking screen shows an expected-occupancy indicator, and it is reasonably honest. Regional trains have no reservations at all, so on those it is first come, first seated.
When the Train Is Late, Which It Often Is
Here is the number that ends the clockwork myth: in the first half of 2026, 58.7 percent of long-distance trains arrived on time, where “on time” means less than six minutes late. Regional services did far better at roughly 88 percent. And the statistic flatters the railway, because canceled trains are not counted as late trains, they simply drop out of the calculation. Around one long-distance train in twelve was canceled in whole or in part over that same stretch.
Yes, this drives us crazy too.
The reason is not mystery, it is arithmetic. The network carried decades of deferred maintenance while traffic kept growing, and the repair program now under way closes major corridors completely for months at a time. More than forty routes are on that list, and the work runs into the middle of the 2030s. Check your route before you book, because “Hamburg to Berlin” occasionally means a replacement bus for part of the way.
You are not helpless when it happens. Under EU rules you can claim 25 percent of the fare back if you arrive 60 to 119 minutes late, and 50 percent at two hours or more. Since June 2023 the railway can decline to pay when the cause was truly outside its control, such as storms or people on the tracks. But a strike by its own staff does not count as an excuse.
The EU passenger rights page has the claim form. Keep your ticket.
About That Eurail Pass
Almost every American planning a European trip reaches for one, so let me be useful rather than polite. The Eurail Pass (Interrail if you live in Europe, same product) covers 33 countries and is a fine thing when your itinerary crosses several of them over a couple of weeks.
For a trip inside Germany alone, it is usually the more expensive choice. Advance Sparpreis fares undercut it on most domestic routes, and every day you spend in one city is a pass day you paid for and did not use. Price your actual route both ways before you commit. I have no stake in which one you pick. :-)
Night Trains and the Competition
Germany gave up its own sleeper services years ago, and the Austrians picked them up. ÖBB Nightjet now runs overnight into and out of German cities toward Austria, Italy, Switzerland, and the Netherlands, and the Dutch-Belgian European Sleeper has added routes of its own. Reservations are mandatory on all of them. A real berth costs extra even with a pass, and waking up in another country beats a 6 a.m. airport run.
Deutsche Bahn also has competition on its own tracks. FlixTrain runs long-distance services on a handful of busy corridors at low fares, with fewer departures and no DB ticket integration. Worth a price check on the routes it serves.
Timetables, fares, and live departures all live on the English version of bahn.de. For the wider picture of how the trains fit against driving and flying, see traveling through Germany. If you want the road instead, the German Autobahn is its own subject entirely.