It is perfectly feasible to take your bikes on the majority of German trains, we have used it several times. There are some exceptions such as the superfast ICE (Inter City Express) trains. With a bit of forward planning it is not too traumatic and we found that most of the information & ticket offices in the stations were quite helpful.

Tickets

You will need to purchase a separate ticket for your cycle from the ticket office. Prices are not as cheap as in Britain but reasonable.

Problems

Most of the stations that we used had good access to the platforms for heavily laden touring cycles i.e. ramps & lifts etc. and there are special places reserved for cycles on the trains, these are clearly marked by cycle symbols on the doors.

BUT when it came to getting on the some of the local trains !!!! (see picture left).

As you can see from the picture there is a massive 3 steps up to the carriage from the platform!

This is very much hernia inducing and back wrenching stuff so unless you wish to do yourself a mischief think about unhooking those panniers before the train arrives, the DB recommends that you remove luggage from your cycles to conserve space inside the carriages anyway.

If you are really lucky and your train is a Intercity or a Regional Express train like the one that we traveled on from Frankfurt Oder to Hamburg, it was simplicity itself as the doors are at the same level as the platform and you could wheel them in fully loaded with no problem.

For more information on trains in Germany visit the Deutsche Bahn website.