#(gonna tag this so ican add it to the masterpost later)

[thatwasthenightthingschanged]

hii! i will be travelling to germany for the eras tour and i have a few questions regarding my trip, i was wondering if you could maybe help. i will be attending to one of the hamburg shows, and then we want to travel to berlin and stay there for a couple of nights. i thought trains would probably be the best mode of transport, feel free to disagree. but if so, when would you recommend that i book our tickets? should i do it now, in advance, or would it be better to get them from the station on the day for example? and i'm not entirely sure where should i book them, any trustworthy sites you could point me to?

yes, of course, ask away!

I'd recommend taking the train, too! another option would be flixbus (a bus travel company) but although they're cheap, I personally had bad experiences with them so I wouldn't recommend it (though other friends of mine have used it frequently & found it was just fine - if you are really tight on money I'd probably choose that option after all)

so there are two types of trains that might be of interest to you: REs (regional trains) and ICs/ICEs (intercity trains/intercity express trains). here are the main differences, advantages & disadvantages:

ICEs:

- are the fastest way to get from one city to another

- get really expensive the longer you wait with booking them so you should book them well in advance if possible!

- you can book a specific seat there for 5€ more

- if you're noise-sensitive like I am you can book a seat in one of the designated "silent" wagons (which just means people are not allowed to talk/make loud noises there) but if you're traveling in a group like you are another wagon might be best!

REs:

- take longer & you have to take multiple trains (e.g. from Hamburg to Berlin you'd have to take at least 2 different REs)

- if you buy the 49€ ticket for July though, you can not only take the REs to get to Berlin, you can also take all public transportation within the cities themselves! the only thing that ticket isn't valid for are ICs/ICEs

- and therefore you're a lot more flexible concerning which specific train you can take!

I'd add that the chances of missing a train if you take the RE route is higher, but tbh the German train system is so bad that I had really bad delays with both the REs and the ICEs akgsgk

and the site everyone uses to book the tickets is bahn.de / the DB navigator app!

hope that helps!