After you have entered postal addresses and started the search, our information system will provide you with complete 'door-to-door' itineraries. These include the route on foot or by taxi - depending on the distance - from the address given as starting point to the first station, and also for the last leg of the journey, i.e. from the last station to the address given as destination. In the 'Connection Views', you can click the texts beside the icons for walking or taxi route. This takes you to the page 'Route Description' where you will find descriptions and maps of the routes on foot or by taxi. In most cases, an estimate of the taxi fare is also given for taxi routes.

Our information system includes all Deutsche Bahn stations as well as many other stations throughout Europe. It takes into account a total of approx. 50,000 stations throughout Europe and more than 180,000 public transport stops in Germany.

Thanks to successful cooperation with many national, regional and local transport companies and transport associations, the system also includes timetables for transport services offered by third parties. This means that customers have access to an extensive data pool which is constantly updated and covers virtually the entire public passenger transport services available throughout Germany and rail transport in many parts of Europe.
In addition to railway stations and public transport stops, the system also covers many addresses as starting point or destination. These data records are purchased by Deutsche Bahn and linked with the transport stations and stops.

The advantage of searching door-to-door itineraries is that people who are not familiar with the destination do not have to go through the tedious process of studying the public transport system to find the nearest stop. All they need to know is the address of the individual starting point and destination, and the information system can determine their personal itinerary from door to door.

The Travel Service already knows well over 50,000 points of interest, most of which are in large cities or conurbation areas, organised into the following eight categories:

Do not be disappointed if you do not find the point of interest you are looking for. The Travel Service already features far more than 50,000 items and that figure is steadily rising.

Click the button 'My Profile' at the bottom of the Travel Service start page to save your own personal preferences as 'cookies'. These entries are automatically included in any new inquiry.

This allows you to alter standard settings permanently, so that any future searches automatically include BahnCard, for example, or 1st class coach, when calculating the fare.
A particular advantage is that you can save the last starting point and destinations you have entered, which means you do not have to enter complicated addresses for each new inquiry. The next search shows the last input stations/stops, addresses, points of interest (roughly ten) in a list box. To obtain this feature, tick the box 'Save last starting point/destination input & advanced settings'.

A further advantage of this option is that you can save your own distance settings as cookies: to determine these, click the button 'Advanced' beside 'Route to / from the station'. The next search automatically includes the maximum distance you have specified for journeys to and from the station to be made on foot, by taxi, bicycle, or your own car.

Before you click 'My Profile', you can enter individual settings for your car costs in the Mobility Check window. If you then change to 'My Profile', you can permanently store the data for your car class by clicking the button 'Submit'.

NB: Please remember that these advanced settings will affect the results of every future search. If you no longer want to have them taken into account, you can reverse or alter the settings again by clicking "Route to/from the station / Advanced" and also reverse or alter the car cost settings on the Mobility Check page.

The start page of the Travel Service offers the option 'Select transport mode'. Click the first list box and select either 'without ICE', 'without ICE/IC/EC' or 'local traffic only'. You can also include or exclude individual transport modes by clicking the 'Advanced' button to the right. You can also make the selection for the return journey and state whether you wish to search only connections which allow carriage of bicycles.

Click 'Other options' to specify whether you wish the search to include only direct connections, with sleeping coach or couchette if appropriate. This allows you to determine which transport modes are to be taken into account.

If you wish to use a different transport mode for the return journey and delete the mark in front of "use same transport mode for return journey", after you have searched and selected the connection for the outward journey, a new window will appear to enable selection of all transport modes for the return journey.

The Happy Weekend Ticket and the Länder-Tickets (valid in the individual federal Laender) are only valid on Deutsche Bahn local trains, i.e. for S-Bahn [rapid transit] (S), RegionalBahn (RB), RegionalExpress (RE) and InterRegioExpress (IRE), for 2nd class travel without any kilometre restriction. In many regional/local transport associations, these tickets are also valid on buses and trams.

Simply click the first list box under 'Select transport mode' and select the option 'local traffic only'.
This also ensures that you do not confuse IRE (InterRegioExpress, the top-class train used on local services) with the IR (InterRegio is a long-distance train). The IRE is not indicated separately under 'Advanced' but is included in the group marked 'RE'.

To select connections for the Happy Weekend Ticket or Länder-Ticket under 'Advanced transport mode selection', simply remove the mark underneath or in front of ICE, EC/IC and IR.

In the Date and Time section of the start page, enter the relevant date and time of travel in the 'outward journey' box. Enter the date as DD.MM.YY, and the time as HH:MM. Select either Departure or Arrival as appropriate. The default setting is always Departure.

Then complete the Date and Time boxes in the Return Journey section. The default setting for these boxes is always empty, as these are optional entries only. Once again, the default setting is Departure.

Then click the button 'Search connections', which takes you to the page Your Connections (outward journey). Click the connection you wish for the outward journey, in the 'outward journey' section. This activates the system and takes you to the next page of Your Connections (Return Journey). In the Ticket section, click on 'Book' to book the return journey of your choice. This takes you to the page Your Connections, where you can also purchase the ticket if you wish.

Even if you have only entered the date and departure / arrival time for a single journey on the start page and have therefore left the boxes for the return journey empty, you can still start a search for return connections. To do so, click the second button "Change" at the top of the page Your Connections. This takes you to the start page where you can enter the details for your return journey.

Please note that any taxi fares quoted serve as rough guidelines only, which are based on various calculation criteria.

After you have searched the connections, the system will show several suggestions.

In the 'Time' section, you can request earlier or later connections if required.

If you click on the 'Zoom' icon in front of a connection, detailed information about that connection will be shown under the list of suggestions. You can also click the buttons 'Details of selection' or 'Details of all'. The detailed views provide useful information to facilitate your journey, such as platform numbers, names of train or bus services. Information on the distances to be covered on foot is particularly useful for passengers with a lot of luggage, for the elderly, or for passengers with restricted mobility.

You can also have all the "Via stations" shown for one or all connections.

After your connection has been searched, the Travel Service offers a box 'Information and booking options at your destination' underneath the list of suggested connections.

Simply click the icon for Hotel, Car Rental or Event. This will show you, for example, the nearest car rental station and allows you to reserve a rented car in advance online. You can also see what's on at your destination and book tickets for an event there. You can also find and book the hotel room of your choice at your destination.

Although the Travel Service database includes all connection data for the railway and those regional/local transport associations with which we cooperate throughout the whole of Germany and sometimes even across the border into neighbouring countries, there are nevertheless still some transport systems, private railway routes (such as mountain railways) and other transport companies who unfortunately do not supply Deutsche Bahn with reliable and up-to-date fare information. We are consequently unable to include such transport companies in our Travel Service.

Nor is the cooperation between European railways so far advanced that we can exchange all the fare data for Europe between the railways' central computers every hour, so that we cannot provide reliable and up-to-date fare information for complete itineraries involving travel in other countries.

That is why the Travel Service sometimes states the fares for a part of the route only, which Deutsche Bahn AG knows to be reliable and up-to-date. Fare inquiries for international connections can show only the fares for the route segments inside Germany.

Click the section "Fare information only available in part" to obtain the fare information for the DB part of the route.

The Travel Service takes a number of saver fares into account, such as Sparpreis (Saver Ticket) and Schönes-Wochenende-Ticket (Happy Weekend Ticket) and automatically shows the cheapest offer for the suggested connections.

However, there are a number of other offers which you can also book directly online at www.bahn.de, such as BahnCard (railcard), Länder-Tickets (for the individual federal Laender), DB Autozug (motorail), monthly and annual tickets for the entire DB network, gift vouchers, InterRail passes, tickets for some regional/local transport associations and even travel insurance.

These offers can be booked online through our ticket shop at www.bahn.de, which you can access by clicking 'Tickets'.