Prague to Western Germany over land?
 

Hello all,
I will be in Prague at the end of August and will be travelling to visit some friends in Bielefeld, Germany. I wanted to do this by train, but the only price I can seem to get for the trip is 114 euros. Alternatively, a flight from Prague to Dortmund (the closest airport to Bielefeld) is only £22 - a much better deal. But I had my heart set on doing the trip over land. Does anyone have any ideas for cheap, over-land travel for this trip?
Thanks. :)

German trains aren't cheap, though sometimes you can get better fares. If you have to take an intercity or ICE train, you are going to pay more. Check the Die Bahn website www.diebahn.com for train fares on different connections. Look for the RB and RE routes (Regional bahn and Regional express) for longer but more economical options.

Is there anywhere your friends could pick you up? Sometimes the way the routes go, this is a cheaper, quicker option. For instance, to get from Frankfurt airport to our village took about 3 - 3.5 hours depending on the route, and cost 71 Euros. Taking the train to a town 25 minutes' drive away took two hours and cost 34 Euros. Check with your friends about the best train route and check out that website as well.

:tumbleweed:

Germany has quite a few car pooling websites too, where you can organize rides with other people going on the same route. I went from Rostock to Berlin this way and it only cost me 10 Euro. That's the way I would do it for sure.

A cheap way to do train tickets is a special deal they have. I think its only on weekends, but you can buy a ticket that can be used by up to 5 people. If you get 5 people it ends up being like 30 euro for the ticket per person. I did this with 2 friends and then we ended up meeting two more people at the train station going on the same route as up so we ended up being able to split it 5 ways.

So yeah...there's two cheaper ways to get across Germany :)

Have you tried bus? Bus tickets are usually half the price of train tickets and German roads are top class so it might not take that much longer.

I don't know why but the price of trains is through the roof. You'd think it should be the cheapest form of transport especially in countries like Germany, France and Spain where all the trains are electric and modern.

Thanks for all the great info, everyone. :)