“Desire to travel” is hardly an adequate translation of Wanderlust. The splendid German word resonates with roving and roaming (in a non-telephonic sense) where your heart takes you. And this summer Wanderlust is powered by the best bargain in railway history.
Thanks to the benevolence of Germany’s hard-working taxpayers, you can wander where your moods and dreams lead around the heart of Europe for a flat fare of €9 – a single ticket covering each of the months of June, July and August.
The “9-Euro-Ticket” (as it is termed by German Railways) covers all but the fastest trains, plus U-Bahn and S-Bahn networks in the cities, as well as trams, most buses and even River Elbe ferry services in Hamburg.
Nicky Gardner and Susanne Kries, editors of Europe by Rail, sum up the opportunities crisply: “Criss-cross Germany at will, discover rural byways and explore distant cities.”
You are unlikely to wander lonely as a cloud on the rails of the federal republic this summer, though. The ticket went on sale last month. I boarded a suburban train in Cologne shortly after midnight on 1 June, the initial day of the deal, along with 100 others. Over the first couple of days I watched the crowds grow as I progressed through Dusseldorf and Dortmund to Hamburg and onwards to lovely Flensburg on the Danish border.
“It’s certainly been popular,” says Mark Smith, the international rail guru known as The Man In Seat 61 – adding: “There have been a few grumbles with overcrowding.”
Weekends have proved especially busy, and German Railways now warns passengers: “If you are returning home after a trip, do not wait until the last train as it is likely to be very busy.”
Five weeks on, though, things are settling down. Many people are using the €9 ticket as an alternative for journeys they would otherwise have made by car – the fundamental aim of the ticket.
A smaller number of determined, budget-minded travellers are covering long distances. Any cross-country journey is perfectly feasible using a series of “Regional Express” trains.
I realised early on, though, that investing in an express or two can improve your journey: €29 (£25) may have been more than three times the cost of the original ticket, but it was well spent on a 2h 20m trip with the private operator Flixtrain from Münster in Westfalia to Hamburg, when the alternative for the 175-mile journey was to change trains twice and double the journey time.
(Incidentally, in a complex corner…
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