"Paul" schrieb im Newsbeitrag
m...
We need some advice from someone with experience of German railways
and their fare structure. Hopefully someone on the newsgroup can help.

We need to travel from Frankfurt Airport to Villingen (Schwarz) with a
24hr stop in Heidelberg. We've checked out the trains on the excellent
German Rail website and found a suitable service for our purposes, and
also the price of the ticket. What we don't know is: Would the price
be the same if we just turn up at the airport station and buy the
tickets there, or am I getting a special deal on-line?

The price for normal (open) tickets are the same.
Only if you buy return tickets online in advance (min. 3 days) and for fixed
booked trains (!) you CAN get a discount of 25% or 50%.

Our date of
travel is three weeks away. The advantage to arriving and buying the
tickets is if our plane is late in which case we could miss our booked
train. However, if it's cheaper to buy the tickets on-line I'll do
that and risk the plane being on time. (They always are unless you
really need them to be...)

By the way, the service I'm looking at is the regional service via
Mannheim, and the on-line price one way for two adults is E55.20

The price with using the ICE from Frankfurt Airport to Mannheim and IC from
Heidelberg to Villingen would be 68,40.

You can buy these tickets online (and print them on your printer) as these
are all normal tickets. Valid 2 days and you can use any train of the
covered train types on this route.
If you buy online seat reservation is included for free, however only
possible for the ICE and IC trains - not for the regional ones.

My suggestion.
Direct ICE train from Frankfurt Airport to Mannheim. Change there for
Heidelberg.
EUR 33,- for 2 adults 2nd class.
With other trains you have to travle first to Frankfurt Hauptbahnhof (main
railway station).
ICE is also nice, esp. if you've never travelled with a high speed train
(not really that high speed on this part).

Heidelberg - Villingen
a) Mo-Fr past 9am
Baden-Württemberg Ticket EUR 21,-
All local trains in Baden-Württemberg from 9am on till 3am next day.
http://www.bahn.de/d_regional/view/m...ike/baw/11.pdf
Valid for up to 5 people travelling together.
Also valid for public transport (trams, buses) in Heidelberg (VRN).
http://www.vrn.de/karten_plaene/lini...heidelberg.pdf
and in Villingen (VSB/VGVS)
http://www.vgvs.de/liniennetzplan.jpg
You can buy this ticket from any VRN or DB ticket machine in Heidelberg.

b) Sa, Su
HappyWeekendTicket EUR 28,-
Same, except it's valid from midnight on and valid for whole Germany.