Cheap Travel: Britain to Germany
Cheap Tickets on Flights, Trains, and Buses from London, England
Low-cost airlines, trains, and buses offer cheap tickets, discounts, and low fares for travel from London in Britain to Germany (Cologne, Frankfurt, Munich, and Berlin).
Traveling from Britain to Germany is increasingly easier and cheaper as low-cost airlines compete with trains and buses on popular routes such as London to Cologne, Frankfurt, Munich, Stuttgart, Hamburg, and Berlin. Flying is usually the fastest option but despite fierce competition between British, Irish, and German budget airlines not necessarily the cheapest way to travel between England and Germany.
Cheap Flights from London and the UK to Germany
Low-cost airlines such as Ryanair, easyJet, airberlin, and Germanwings have in recent years dramatically increased the number of flights and routes available to travelers from Britain to Germany. Good deals are often available but as many potential travelers have found, finding widely advertised pay-only-the-taxes fares is hard when leaving on a Friday evening and returning on Sunday afternoon. Public transportation is similarly troublesome for cheap flights leaving at 5 am or landing after midnight.
- A major problem with cheap fares is the high taxes and charges. On flights on popular routes such as say London-Stansted (STN) to Cologne/Köln Bonn (CGN) taxes and charges add €32/£26 to the ticket price while the return flight requires €24/£19 in compulsory fees.
Some Irish and British low-cost airlines impose further luggage fees for any checked bags while German airlines are still shying away from this practice. Transportation costs from remote airports such as Stansted and Hahn can also add significant costs to a “cheap” ticket.
- The further away from London journeys start, the better deal flying becomes.
Cheap Train Tickets from London and the UK to Germany
The standard fares on trains are not particularly cheap but in peak demand times, the prices do not spiral endlessly upwards similarly to plane tickets. Standard fares are also fully flexible allowing for changes and refunds usually without any service charges.
Discount fares on trains are more transparent than for flights and it is worth pursuing options as savings over standard fares can be enormous. On Deutsche Bahn trains, receiving discounts (Sparpreise) of 25 and 50 percent are not particularly difficult for leisure travelers. These discounts often apply to journeys starting in Brussels and Paris as well.
- Special return fares from London to Cologne can be as cheap as €100/£80.
- Return fares from London to Berlin, taking into account all readily available discounts and restrictions, can be as low as €160/£130 for daytime trains and €125/£100 if the Deutsche Bahn City Night Linter sleeper trains are used from Brussels or Paris to Germany.
Most online reservations systems cannot reserve tickets from London to Germany in a single booking. Until Railteam launches its promised one-stop shop website in 2009, it will usually remain necessary to buy the Eurostar (London to Brussels or Paris) ticket separately from the onward journey to German cities. (Travel agents and station ticket counters can usually process the booking in a single transaction.)
- An advantage of separate reservations is that travelers can use special fares that may only be available on parts of the journey. However, when discounted tickets are reserved separately, delays on the first leg may completely invalidate the ticket for the onward journey.
Cheap Bus Tickets from London to Germany
Taking a motor coach from England to Germany is often the cheapest way to travel during peak travel periods. However, traveling times can be long with the bus taking from London to Cologne 13 hours, Frankfurt 15 hours, Munich 19 hours, and Berlin 18 hours.
Scheduled bus services between London and Germany are operated by Eurolines in cooperation with National Express, Deutsche Touring, and Berlin Linien Bus. Standard one-way bus fares are from London to Cologne €60/£48, Frankfurt €77/£62, Munich €88/£70, and Berlin €90/££72. Return fares usually give a discount of around 12%. Taking a leave from British low-cost airlines, checked luggage on many buses requires a small fee (€1.50/£1.20) payable at boarding.
- Early reservations can ensure discounts of more than 50% while students, seniors, and children receive discounts on most journeys.
Trains can compete with low-cost airlines both on price and time on the London to Cologne (Köln) route but to other German cities such as Berlin and Munich, ground transportation is significantly slower than flying. Similarly, travelers to and from British cities other than London need to add the time, expense, and inconvenience of transiting through London when traveling by train of bus to Germany.
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