10 ms·

They had a "High Speed" line before, but it was on old tracks, and they had to use tilting trains. I took it a few times when I lived in Berlin. It was somewh

They had a "High Speed" line before, but it was on old tracks, and they had to use tilting trains. I took it a few times when I lived in Berlin. It was somewhat slower than driving. Still, the ICE is an excellent train. It's very punctual (Germans will complain when it's five minutes late), it's smooth, it's clean, the seats are comfortable, you can get a seat with a table if you want, there are power outlets, and if you get hungry, you can go get a snack, a beer, or a full dinner. It's just just a civilized, pleasant way to travel. The Internet, either through the DB system, or my normal 3G/4G tethering was a bit spotty, but I was nearly as productive on the train as I would have been at the office. At six hours Berlin-Munich, it was much nicer, less stressful, and more productive en-route than an airplane, but somewhat slower. At four hours, the train is a no-brainer. Air travel is the king of hidden time fees. They say that it's an hour from Berlin to Munich, but you have to show up at the airport an hour before the flight, it takes 15 minutes to get off the plane and get out to the curb, even if you didn't check a bag, it takes 40 minutes to get to the airport, and another 40 minutes to get from the airport to the city center. By the time you add it all up, 4 hours is how long it takes on the plane, and most of that is annoying stressful walking from one place to another, waiting in one line after another, cooped up in a tiny seat, and for maybe 30 minutes of the whole 4 hours, you can use your laptop and do something useful.

jakobegger 8y ago
I also love working on trains -- train rides are perfect for a few hours of distraction free coding. The best thing about trains is that you end up right in the city center, and you can often just walk wherever you need to go.
- GordonS 8y ago
  Glad it works for you, but I feel really nauseous after an hour or so of coding or reading while in a moving train, bus or car. I think this is quite common.
  - jakobegger 8y ago
    What kinds of trains are you talking about? Coding on the bus or in a car makes me nauseous as well, but the train routes I usually take are an incredible smooth ride and don't induce nausea at all. (I'm in Austria, and we have the Railjet, which is similar to the German ICE)
    - GordonS 8y ago
      Good point - I'm in the UK, and our trains are shit.
soperj 8y ago
I've had conversations with people on planes, I've never had groups of conversations though like I've had on trains.
- holgerfunter 8y ago
  You make it sound like it's a good thing.
  - coldtea 8y ago
    Yeah, god forbid we interact with other human beings. We might learn something, or feel something!
    - holgerfunter 8y ago
      It was a tongue-in-cheek comment. Thankfully, the internet is here, everready to explicit things for those who might have, heaven protect us, misread it :)
      - coldtea 8y ago
        >It was a tongue-in-cheek comment Heaven forbid someone invoke Poe's law!
- secure 8y ago
  This heavily depends on who you meet and your personality. I’ve had multiple conversations on German trains (and also in planes).
- t-sauer 8y ago
  My experience is the other way around. I would assume it is just luck where you meet the type of people you start a conversation with.
- gpvos 8y ago
  Night trains are especially good for conversations, at least if you have a few hours before the seats are converted to beds.
ptaipale 8y ago
True about hidden time fees, though if you don't depart from center and arrive at center (where train stations are), you'll also add substantial hidden time when travelling by train. I've got <20 minutes by car to airport, about an hour by public transport to central train station - even though the train station is closer as the bird flies, and this is Europe with "good" public transport.
- kayoone 8y ago
  True, for me in Berlin its about 25min to go to the Train Station and 30-40Min to either Airport, so not a big difference. But, considering i would arrive at the airport 90Min before take-off and it takes another another hour (including walking) to get from the Munich Airport back to the City Center (where the Train Station is), the difference is still small and I fully agree that a train (as long as its not overcrowded) is the more pleasant way to travel.
rurban 8y ago
In Germany you now take the bus, which is about 20 eur for this direction, and with the same speed as the "high-speed" train, and faster than the plane. Only with the car is faster, but you cannot work in the car. A ticket to Amsterdam is even 14 eur, but this takes 10hrs, compared to a 2hrs flight.
- kayoone 8y ago
  How would a Bus do Berlin - Munich in under 4 hours like this highspeed train ? Even by car it is over 5 hours. Bus is an okay low cost alternative, but just very slow.
- sveme 8y ago
  Flixbus takes around seven hours, traffic jams on that heavily-travelled route notwithstanding. Another example: Hanover -> Munich is ten hours by bus last I checked and 4.5 hrs by train. Bus is only usable for the price-conscious, i.e., no business travellers.
- jsilence 8y ago
  In some asian countries like myanmar there are very comfy airconditioned night busses. are there similar offerings in the bus system in germany?
  - fritkot 8y ago
    There are buses that travel at night, but they're not comfy. i.e. they are not designed to be comfortable night-mode travel. In general, distances are too small to consider overnight trips. Since there aren't many good roads in Myanmar, trips take forever, which makes overnight travel sensible.
  - majewsky 8y ago
    I used a bus to go from Dresden to Wien (and back) overnight a few years ago. This experience convinced me to never ever do something like that again. 1. I absolutely could not sleep on a bus that makes frequent turns on country roads. 2. On the way back to Germany, we got stuck for 2 hours in a passport check, because customs found a Bulgarian family on the bus that had previously been extradited, and there was a long argument before they left the bus.
kayoone 8y ago
Isn't arriving one hour before the flight already pretty tight since boarding closes 30-40 Minutes before. If there is some kind of queue at security you will have trouble getting in. For me it's usually 1 hour before boarding closes.
- thesumofall 8y ago
  And for the regular travelers among us it’s 40min before departure - using the fast lane and knowing that boarding won’t close earlier than 15min before take off
  - isostatic 8y ago
    Depends how much you trust the trip to the airport. I used to be a 7 minute taxi/30 minute walk away, so I'd leave home at t-45, if the taxi didn't turn up I'd still have time, if it did turn up I had time for a coffee in the lounge. Now I live further away it's much more variable. If I'm travelling from Heathrow T5 you have to be into security at t-35, so off the train at t-40, so out of Paddington at t-62, add a bit of leeway means leaving Paddington at t-80 to t-90 depending when the trains are due. If it's a long haul where there only one flight a day I may well push it out to plan to arrive at an airport as early as t-75, which while excessive, is just in case there are problems like punctures or whatever.
- dmitriid 8y ago
  Boarding closes 10 minutes before. If you only have your carry-on luggage, and if you're lucky with lines at metal detectors, it takes ~20-30 minutes from the time you enter the airport to get to the plane (YMMV for some of the larger and busier airports).
- taejo 8y ago
  IME the "boarding closes" time is usually the time that boarding opens in reality (at least on budget airlines in Europe).
odiroot 8y ago
Myself living in Berlin I'd still take the flight (and I did usually). First of all, it's nearly legendary how unreliable the trains can be here during winters and hot summers. Second, flying is actually cheaper (I rarely fly with a big luggage). Finally, it takes me 15 minutes to get to Tegel airport. All the security and boarding procedures are highly optimised there. I usually leave my flat around an hour to the boarding time. Then the flight to Munich is an hour or less. In the end (with the train to the city center) it takes less than 4 hours. On the other hand I wouldn't mind taking a long distance overnight international train provided I had a bed there.
- hh3k0 8y ago
  The CO2 emissions of trains are significantly lower, though. You might want to reconsider if slightly more convenience is worth ~80-90% higher emissions.
  - cup-of-tea 8y ago
    The government should be enforcing this. Nobody should be expected to make a personal sacrifice to do the right thing.
    - Certhas 8y ago
      You speak as if you were a toddler. Every intelligent person should be expected to do the right thing. And the state should help us by making the right thing easy. But this goes in the other direction, too. In democracies you need to build majorities (or at least growing minorities) first before you get policy. If enough of us decide it's a good idea to behave ethically it makes it a lot easier to pass laws that mandate ethical behaviour. So no, you do not get a free pass by voting green.
      - cup-of-tea 8y ago
        I'm simply being pragmatic. If that worked, if every intelligent being did the right thing we wouldn't have any problems at all, would we? Most people know that driving a single occupant car to work every day is silly. But what can they do? Completely change their lifestyle while everyone else continues to operate as normal? Make a personal sacrifice for the benefit of those making no sacrifice at all? It will never work from the bottom up even if everyone agrees what the right thing is.
baxtr 8y ago
As a frequent MUC-TXL traveler, I’d say that now the train connection is finally en par with flying. It’s has now become a real alternative. The hidden times you mentioned depend heavily on where you live and what your destination is. Going to the train station can be painful in the first place. Another thing to consider: I regularly feel sick when I work on trains not so when flying. That’s why I prefer a long plane flight to a train ride.
- samsonradu 8y ago
  I experience exactly the opposite, never sick in a train when reading/working and from what I’ve heard it is the same among the people I know. Flying is way more bumpy and the pressure changes don’t help. Lack of space in planes makes some people uncomfortable also.
leifg 8y ago
They tested the difference between flight and train from city center to city center on German television (sorry clip is in German: https://youtu.be/KyYNqndtCSk https://youtu.be/KyYNqndtCSk). The flight ended up being 3 minutes faster. But because I‘m super paranoid about missing my flight I would never show up at an airport „just in time“. So I‘d definitely go by train for this route.
- isostatic 8y ago
  Why aren't you super paranoid about missing a train? Arriving at an airport - even last week in Moscow where's there's convoluted immigration, security, and I was checking a bag, more than an hour before take off seems crazy. An extra hour a flight adds up to days of wasted time hanging round at airports.
  - cup-of-tea 8y ago
    > Why aren't you super paranoid about missing a train? There is no need. You just turn up at the platform before departure time and get on.
  - lis 8y ago
    For me, there are two reasons: 1) The trains go every 30 minutes to Munich, so I don't have to wait that long. 2) The price structure of trains vs planes. The standard DB train ticket is flexible, i.e. you can use any train at the given date. Booking a flight on the same day is very expensive (and might be impossible if all seats are taken). There are discount tickets that are not flexible, but the price of the flexible ticket doesn't increase to enormous sums just because I book it on the same day - it's always the same.
    - gpvos 8y ago
      On the other hand, in my experience the cheaper inflexible advance tickets stay cheap for longer for flights than for trains. I guess it depends on whether you travel for business or leisure.
  - fyfy18 8y ago
carlob 8y ago
> Still, the ICE is an excellent train. It's very punctual (Germans will complain when it's five minutes late)... I've personally never been on a German train that was on time. Of course this is anecdata, but still...
- gpvos 8y ago
  Actually, of the long-distance trains in Germany, only 78% is on time (less than 6 minutes late). Local trains are a lot better.[0] [0] https://www.citymetric.com/transport/are-german-trains-really-better-british-ones-rail-nationalisation-deutsche-bahn-3972 https://www.citymetric.com/transport/are-german-trains-reall...
jillesvangurp 8y ago
This came just too late for me to benefit from. I was doing a project in Munich last year and traveling back and forth when Air Berlin went bankrupt (I was on their second last flight) and Lufthansa flights became a combination of stupidly expensive and unavailable. Door to door the plane took about 3.5 hours, which is pretty good. Most of that is waiting, dealing with security, and public transport, etc. The flight itself is less than an hour typically. So, I took the old ICE a couple of times which took over 6 hours and indeed never really gets anywhere near it's maximum speed. They had a particularly slow variant taking nearly 7 hours. The new one should be a bit under 4 hours. So, the new line is very competitive with air travel and I'd prefer it over taking a plane. It's a much more relaxed way of traveling. German trains are pretty comfortable. They could improve things further by eliminating stations from the route and improving the track. https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ has a nice visualization of the speed limits on different routes. There are only a handful of segments where trains can go full speed in Germany. If you look at the Berlin-Munich track, it only goes full speed about half of the route. IMHO, Berlin-Munich could get to about 2.5 hours but it requires a lot of investment. Faster if they get proper high speed trains. Compare this to France, which has proper high speed tracks and trains ride at 300 km/hour there.
- Tomte 8y ago
  Eliminating stations is nearly impossible, for political reasons. There are ICE stops that are widely known to be just because an influential politician lives in that town. That‘s also what happened with this new Berlin-Munich connections. The route makes little sense when you want to connect both cities as fast as possible. The detour only makes sense if you understand that the route needed buy-in from the states in goes through, and it was galling to state governments not to have their biggest cities connected, as well. But it‘s not just influential elites. When Deutsche Bahn recently mulled killing the IC stop (not ICE - a category lower) stop in my town I was very unhappy. Fortunately they decided against it. But just from the plain numbers I can believe that it shouldn‘t have an IC stop.
  - theyinwhy 8y ago
    Afaik most european train companies get their biggest share of money from the cities the trains stop at. Without this they would make big losses.
l5870uoo9y 8y ago
The downside is the price, Berlin-Munich costs ~100€. The same will cost you ~25€ with bus.
- majewsky 8y ago
  Yeah, because Flixbus knows that they can only compete on price. Trains tend to be more comfortable, and connections tend to be way faster because a train can enter and leave cities faster than a bus can. Bus really only wins for me when it's a rather short and direct connection, otherwise the long journey times kill it for me.
sonium 8y ago
I agree that the ICE is an excellent train, but people in Germany are looking at the French counterpart, the TGV with envy. Where a ICE rumbles quite consiberably at speed 300kph the TGV is still as smooth as the ICE at 100kph. Not to mention the greater overall comfort and better food.
- williamdclt 8y ago
  I didn't know our TGV was envied! I never really thought about it, but this train is impressively smooth for a metal beast moving at 300kph. The food is known to be quite expensive and not great thought, I wouldn't recommend it
EdwardDiego 8y ago
> Air travel is the king of hidden time fees Especially if you're flying into Berlin. I spent an hour in the air from Munich to Berlin, and then an hour waiting for my baggage to be unloaded and placed on the conveyor...
eweise 8y ago
From what I've seen, flying is cheaper in Europe.
eggie5 8y ago
The cool thing about the ICE trains and NS trains (Netherlands) is that you can get to the station and just walk on the train. Unlike in Spain where there are long security X-ray lines.
deleted 8y ago
[deleted]
Tharkun 8y ago
In case anyone was getting their hopes up: food on ICE trains is about as bad as airline food. You've been warned.
- woodpanel 8y ago
  As a frequent user of both: I can't echo that. On a scale from 1 to 10 (being the best), airplane food ranks -5. ICE restaurant brings home a solid 0. ICE's bigger cooking compartments (relative to the everything cramped airplanes) allow for better options. Plus, you have real tables to eat from and elbow space. The ratio of "unrelated diners engaging in conversation with each other" vs. "unrelated diners engaging in conversation with each other because of the ridiculousness of the food" is way higher in ICEs than in planes. Long story short: In an ICE you have to know what to order. Most meals will be optimized for their type of kitchen (stews; the most ordered item must be Chili con Carne). At least ICE meals don't shy away from their humble origins of being heated-up like airplane food does ("Sansibar Airplane Currywurst...").

jakobegger 8y ago

I also love working on trains -- train rides are perfect for a few hours of distraction free coding. The best thing about trains is that you end up right in the city center, and you can often just walk wherever you need to go.

GordonS 8y ago
Glad it works for you, but I feel really nauseous after an hour or so of coding or reading while in a moving train, bus or car. I think this is quite common.
- jakobegger 8y ago
  What kinds of trains are you talking about? Coding on the bus or in a car makes me nauseous as well, but the train routes I usually take are an incredible smooth ride and don't induce nausea at all. (I'm in Austria, and we have the Railjet, which is similar to the German ICE)
  - GordonS 8y ago
    Good point - I'm in the UK, and our trains are shit.

soperj 8y ago

I've had conversations with people on planes, I've never had groups of conversations though like I've had on trains.

holgerfunter 8y ago
You make it sound like it's a good thing.
- coldtea 8y ago
  Yeah, god forbid we interact with other human beings. We might learn something, or feel something!
  - holgerfunter 8y ago
    It was a tongue-in-cheek comment. Thankfully, the internet is here, everready to explicit things for those who might have, heaven protect us, misread it :)
    - coldtea 8y ago
      >It was a tongue-in-cheek comment Heaven forbid someone invoke Poe's law!
secure 8y ago
This heavily depends on who you meet and your personality. I’ve had multiple conversations on German trains (and also in planes).
t-sauer 8y ago
My experience is the other way around. I would assume it is just luck where you meet the type of people you start a conversation with.
gpvos 8y ago
Night trains are especially good for conversations, at least if you have a few hours before the seats are converted to beds.

ptaipale 8y ago

True about hidden time fees, though if you don't depart from center and arrive at center (where train stations are), you'll also add substantial hidden time when travelling by train. I've got <20 minutes by car to airport, about an hour by public transport to central train station - even though the train station is closer as the bird flies, and this is Europe with "good" public transport.

kayoone 8y ago
True, for me in Berlin its about 25min to go to the Train Station and 30-40Min to either Airport, so not a big difference. But, considering i would arrive at the airport 90Min before take-off and it takes another another hour (including walking) to get from the Munich Airport back to the City Center (where the Train Station is), the difference is still small and I fully agree that a train (as long as its not overcrowded) is the more pleasant way to travel.

rurban 8y ago

In Germany you now take the bus, which is about 20 eur for this direction, and with the same speed as the "high-speed" train, and faster than the plane. Only with the car is faster, but you cannot work in the car. A ticket to Amsterdam is even 14 eur, but this takes 10hrs, compared to a 2hrs flight.

kayoone 8y ago
How would a Bus do Berlin - Munich in under 4 hours like this highspeed train ? Even by car it is over 5 hours. Bus is an okay low cost alternative, but just very slow.
sveme 8y ago
Flixbus takes around seven hours, traffic jams on that heavily-travelled route notwithstanding. Another example: Hanover -> Munich is ten hours by bus last I checked and 4.5 hrs by train. Bus is only usable for the price-conscious, i.e., no business travellers.
jsilence 8y ago
In some asian countries like myanmar there are very comfy airconditioned night busses. are there similar offerings in the bus system in germany?
- fritkot 8y ago
  There are buses that travel at night, but they're not comfy. i.e. they are not designed to be comfortable night-mode travel. In general, distances are too small to consider overnight trips. Since there aren't many good roads in Myanmar, trips take forever, which makes overnight travel sensible.
- majewsky 8y ago
  I used a bus to go from Dresden to Wien (and back) overnight a few years ago. This experience convinced me to never ever do something like that again. 1. I absolutely could not sleep on a bus that makes frequent turns on country roads. 2. On the way back to Germany, we got stuck for 2 hours in a passport check, because customs found a Bulgarian family on the bus that had previously been extradited, and there was a long argument before they left the bus.

kayoone 8y ago

Isn't arriving one hour before the flight already pretty tight since boarding closes 30-40 Minutes before. If there is some kind of queue at security you will have trouble getting in. For me it's usually 1 hour before boarding closes.

thesumofall 8y ago
And for the regular travelers among us it’s 40min before departure - using the fast lane and knowing that boarding won’t close earlier than 15min before take off
- isostatic 8y ago
  Depends how much you trust the trip to the airport. I used to be a 7 minute taxi/30 minute walk away, so I'd leave home at t-45, if the taxi didn't turn up I'd still have time, if it did turn up I had time for a coffee in the lounge. Now I live further away it's much more variable. If I'm travelling from Heathrow T5 you have to be into security at t-35, so off the train at t-40, so out of Paddington at t-62, add a bit of leeway means leaving Paddington at t-80 to t-90 depending when the trains are due. If it's a long haul where there only one flight a day I may well push it out to plan to arrive at an airport as early as t-75, which while excessive, is just in case there are problems like punctures or whatever.
dmitriid 8y ago
Boarding closes 10 minutes before. If you only have your carry-on luggage, and if you're lucky with lines at metal detectors, it takes ~20-30 minutes from the time you enter the airport to get to the plane (YMMV for some of the larger and busier airports).
taejo 8y ago
IME the "boarding closes" time is usually the time that boarding opens in reality (at least on budget airlines in Europe).

odiroot 8y ago

Myself living in Berlin I'd still take the flight (and I did usually). First of all, it's nearly legendary how unreliable the trains can be here during winters and hot summers. Second, flying is actually cheaper (I rarely fly with a big luggage). Finally, it takes me 15 minutes to get to Tegel airport. All the security and boarding procedures are highly optimised there. I usually leave my flat around an hour to the boarding time. Then the flight to Munich is an hour or less. In the end (with the train to the city center) it takes less than 4 hours. On the other hand I wouldn't mind taking a long distance overnight international train provided I had a bed there.

hh3k0 8y ago
The CO2 emissions of trains are significantly lower, though. You might want to reconsider if slightly more convenience is worth ~80-90% higher emissions.
- cup-of-tea 8y ago
  The government should be enforcing this. Nobody should be expected to make a personal sacrifice to do the right thing.
  - Certhas 8y ago
    You speak as if you were a toddler. Every intelligent person should be expected to do the right thing. And the state should help us by making the right thing easy. But this goes in the other direction, too. In democracies you need to build majorities (or at least growing minorities) first before you get policy. If enough of us decide it's a good idea to behave ethically it makes it a lot easier to pass laws that mandate ethical behaviour. So no, you do not get a free pass by voting green.
    - cup-of-tea 8y ago
      I'm simply being pragmatic. If that worked, if every intelligent being did the right thing we wouldn't have any problems at all, would we? Most people know that driving a single occupant car to work every day is silly. But what can they do? Completely change their lifestyle while everyone else continues to operate as normal? Make a personal sacrifice for the benefit of those making no sacrifice at all? It will never work from the bottom up even if everyone agrees what the right thing is.

baxtr 8y ago

As a frequent MUC-TXL traveler, I’d say that now the train connection is finally en par with flying. It’s has now become a real alternative. The hidden times you mentioned depend heavily on where you live and what your destination is. Going to the train station can be painful in the first place. Another thing to consider: I regularly feel sick when I work on trains not so when flying. That’s why I prefer a long plane flight to a train ride.

samsonradu 8y ago
I experience exactly the opposite, never sick in a train when reading/working and from what I’ve heard it is the same among the people I know. Flying is way more bumpy and the pressure changes don’t help. Lack of space in planes makes some people uncomfortable also.

leifg 8y ago

They tested the difference between flight and train from city center to city center on German television (sorry clip is in German: https://youtu.be/KyYNqndtCSk https://youtu.be/KyYNqndtCSk). The flight ended up being 3 minutes faster. But because I‘m super paranoid about missing my flight I would never show up at an airport „just in time“. So I‘d definitely go by train for this route.

isostatic 8y ago
Why aren't you super paranoid about missing a train? Arriving at an airport - even last week in Moscow where's there's convoluted immigration, security, and I was checking a bag, more than an hour before take off seems crazy. An extra hour a flight adds up to days of wasted time hanging round at airports.
- cup-of-tea 8y ago
  > Why aren't you super paranoid about missing a train? There is no need. You just turn up at the platform before departure time and get on.
- lis 8y ago
  For me, there are two reasons: 1) The trains go every 30 minutes to Munich, so I don't have to wait that long. 2) The price structure of trains vs planes. The standard DB train ticket is flexible, i.e. you can use any train at the given date. Booking a flight on the same day is very expensive (and might be impossible if all seats are taken). There are discount tickets that are not flexible, but the price of the flexible ticket doesn't increase to enormous sums just because I book it on the same day - it's always the same.
  - gpvos 8y ago
    On the other hand, in my experience the cheaper inflexible advance tickets stay cheap for longer for flights than for trains. I guess it depends on whether you travel for business or leisure.
- fyfy18 8y ago

carlob 8y ago

> Still, the ICE is an excellent train. It's very punctual (Germans will complain when it's five minutes late)... I've personally never been on a German train that was on time. Of course this is anecdata, but still...

gpvos 8y ago
Actually, of the long-distance trains in Germany, only 78% is on time (less than 6 minutes late). Local trains are a lot better.[0] [0] https://www.citymetric.com/transport/are-german-trains-really-better-british-ones-rail-nationalisation-deutsche-bahn-3972 https://www.citymetric.com/transport/are-german-trains-reall...

jillesvangurp 8y ago

This came just too late for me to benefit from. I was doing a project in Munich last year and traveling back and forth when Air Berlin went bankrupt (I was on their second last flight) and Lufthansa flights became a combination of stupidly expensive and unavailable. Door to door the plane took about 3.5 hours, which is pretty good. Most of that is waiting, dealing with security, and public transport, etc. The flight itself is less than an hour typically. So, I took the old ICE a couple of times which took over 6 hours and indeed never really gets anywhere near it's maximum speed. They had a particularly slow variant taking nearly 7 hours. The new one should be a bit under 4 hours. So, the new line is very competitive with air travel and I'd prefer it over taking a plane. It's a much more relaxed way of traveling. German trains are pretty comfortable. They could improve things further by eliminating stations from the route and improving the track. https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ https://www.openrailwaymap.org/ has a nice visualization of the speed limits on different routes. There are only a handful of segments where trains can go full speed in Germany. If you look at the Berlin-Munich track, it only goes full speed about half of the route. IMHO, Berlin-Munich could get to about 2.5 hours but it requires a lot of investment. Faster if they get proper high speed trains. Compare this to France, which has proper high speed tracks and trains ride at 300 km/hour there.

Tomte 8y ago
Eliminating stations is nearly impossible, for political reasons. There are ICE stops that are widely known to be just because an influential politician lives in that town. That‘s also what happened with this new Berlin-Munich connections. The route makes little sense when you want to connect both cities as fast as possible. The detour only makes sense if you understand that the route needed buy-in from the states in goes through, and it was galling to state governments not to have their biggest cities connected, as well. But it‘s not just influential elites. When Deutsche Bahn recently mulled killing the IC stop (not ICE - a category lower) stop in my town I was very unhappy. Fortunately they decided against it. But just from the plain numbers I can believe that it shouldn‘t have an IC stop.
- theyinwhy 8y ago
  Afaik most european train companies get their biggest share of money from the cities the trains stop at. Without this they would make big losses.

l5870uoo9y 8y ago

The downside is the price, Berlin-Munich costs ~100€. The same will cost you ~25€ with bus.

majewsky 8y ago
Yeah, because Flixbus knows that they can only compete on price. Trains tend to be more comfortable, and connections tend to be way faster because a train can enter and leave cities faster than a bus can. Bus really only wins for me when it's a rather short and direct connection, otherwise the long journey times kill it for me.

sonium 8y ago

I agree that the ICE is an excellent train, but people in Germany are looking at the French counterpart, the TGV with envy. Where a ICE rumbles quite consiberably at speed 300kph the TGV is still as smooth as the ICE at 100kph. Not to mention the greater overall comfort and better food.

williamdclt 8y ago
I didn't know our TGV was envied! I never really thought about it, but this train is impressively smooth for a metal beast moving at 300kph. The food is known to be quite expensive and not great thought, I wouldn't recommend it

EdwardDiego 8y ago

> Air travel is the king of hidden time fees Especially if you're flying into Berlin. I spent an hour in the air from Munich to Berlin, and then an hour waiting for my baggage to be unloaded and placed on the conveyor...

eweise 8y ago

From what I've seen, flying is cheaper in Europe.

eggie5 8y ago

The cool thing about the ICE trains and NS trains (Netherlands) is that you can get to the station and just walk on the train. Unlike in Spain where there are long security X-ray lines.

deleted 8y ago

[deleted]

Tharkun 8y ago

In case anyone was getting their hopes up: food on ICE trains is about as bad as airline food. You've been warned.

woodpanel 8y ago
As a frequent user of both: I can't echo that. On a scale from 1 to 10 (being the best), airplane food ranks -5. ICE restaurant brings home a solid 0. ICE's bigger cooking compartments (relative to the everything cramped airplanes) allow for better options. Plus, you have real tables to eat from and elbow space. The ratio of "unrelated diners engaging in conversation with each other" vs. "unrelated diners engaging in conversation with each other because of the ridiculousness of the food" is way higher in ICEs than in planes. Long story short: In an ICE you have to know what to order. Most meals will be optimized for their type of kitchen (stews; the most ordered item must be Chili con Carne). At least ICE meals don't shy away from their humble origins of being heated-up like airplane food does ("Sansibar Airplane Currywurst...").