Tag Archives: DB

How to consistently get London-Brussels or Brussels-London Eurostar tickets for €49 single

I’m a regular traveller on Eurostar, and I often travel onwards from Brussels to Germany by train, so much in fact that I am used to booking tickets of DB’s website. In the past I happened to discover that through tickets from Germany to London were cheaper than tickets booked from Belgium to London. It seems DB is muscling in on the Eurostar business before liberalisation of the channel tunnel is due in 2013.

Here then is a guide to how to get the cheapest Eurostar tickets on the London-Brussels route, using DB’s website rather than Eurostar.com. The standard price is €49.00 single, sometimes a saving of 50%. Continue reading →

Email This Post Print This Post

A knock on the door telling you to get off in Dortmund – not the best rail comms

By popular demand here’s the story on my return from Billund (getting to Billund is here).


It all started fine. I waited for the bus to Kolding at a freezing cold bus stop outside Lego HQ but the bus arrived, departed, and got me to Kolding with enough time for a pizza before the train. All day Friday there was no more snow, but nothing melted either, and an impressive firework display of sparks from the pantograph lit up the sky as the locomotive arrived in Kolding and left on time.

Continue reading →

Email This Post Print This Post

Brussels-Billund – everything goes wrong and I arrive literally 2 minutes late

I knew my Brussels-Billund train journey would be an interesting story (it’s prompted a previous blog entry already), but yesterday I actually was on the rails of Europe, at a time of some of the heaviest snowfall in early December for many years. There was snow on the ground the whole way, and it was snowing for the majority of the journey as well.

So what happened on the trip?


Continue reading →

Email This Post Print This Post

Köln-London €66.50, or Bruxelles-London £121, booking today on exactly the same trains – odd, no?


Above are screenshots taken within the last twenty minutes (i.e. between 0900 and 1000 on 18th November). The first is for prices for a ticket between Bruxelles Midi and London St Pancras, second class, non-flexible, for the morning of Saturday 4th December. The second is from the ticket I booked – Köln Hbf through to London, changing in Bruxelles Midi onto the very same Eurostar on the same day. DB prices are from their website, and Eurostar prices are from Eurostar.com. All this follows the complications of the outward journey that I’ve blogged about here.

The shocking thing is the price.

Köln-London is €66.50* and Bruxelles-London is £121 (€142.38). Even if the Eurostar ticket were part of a return journey it would still be £86.50 (€101.79). The inflexible through ticket from Köln is less than half the price, AND includes the extra journey from Köln to Bruxelles!

So if I want to book cheap single tickets from Bruxelles to London, should I at the same time consult DB to see if their options are cheaper, and simply disgard the Bruxelles-Köln part? Will that even work, as the barcode on the DB ticket is different to a regular Eurostar barcode? Whichever way something is very odd here, and I’ll report further once I’ve taken this trip in December.

* This price contains a BahnCard 25 reduction. Without BahnCard the price is €69.00 – i.e. BahnCard reduction seems to not apply to Eurostar.

Email This Post Print This Post

Bruxelles Midi (Belgium) to Vejle st (Denmark) by train


I need to get to Billund in Denmark for work in December, and as I’m trying to be green this year I’m going to take the train. I’m in Brussels the day before, so will leave from there, and I need to get to Vejle, the town closest to Billund that has a mainline railway. I have a whole day, a Thursday, in which to make my journey.

So then, how do I do it?

Continue reading →

Email This Post Print This Post

An interesting fortnight for cross-Channel rail travel plans, but we haven’t heard the end of this yet

Eurostar e320 launch - CC/Flickr

Eurostar e320 launch - CC/Flickr

On October 7th Eurostar announced a £700 million investment plan to purchase 10 new 16 car e320 trains from Siemens that will run from 2014, and from 2011 onwards upgrade the interiors of its existing 28 trainsets. Following that DB showed two ICE3 trainsets at St Pancras on 19th October, and ran an evacuation test in the tunnel using a 200m long trainset, and plans to run trains from the end of 2013. Full coverage from Railway Gazette of the Eurostar and DB plans.

So the future of cross channel rail travel is looking bright? Yes, I would say, but I would bet it’s not going to be all as smooth running as the presentations from either company would have you believe. Here are a few points that I wished a few journalists had thought to cover.

Continue reading →

Email This Post Print This Post

Rail payback

ICE Train - CC / Flickr

ICE Train - CC / Flickr

I’ve had a nightmare winter on the rails of Europe – stranded 3 days thanks to Eurostar (and missing a friend’s wedding as a result), delays with SNCF, and mess with a journey to Germany.

Yet today, back home in Brussels, everything looks just a little better.

Almost 2 months ago I booked a train ticket for €60 for Berlin-Brussels for Monday 19th April. Little did I know at the time how sensible a choice that was. The Berlin-Köln ICE was standing room only from Berlin Spandau but with my reserved seat I was happily sat by the window watching the plains and wind turbines of eastern Germany roll by. At Köln things were a little messier – DB decided at the last moment to change the platform of the train – not a good idea to get 200+ people through a narrow underpass and stairs. Then security had to be called to get passengers without reservations off the train. Once more I was OK with my reservation, while a British guy next to me who had travelled overnight from Split in Croatia, no doubt at exorbitant cost, was turfed off.

So next time when friends of mine laugh about my devotion to the train (particularly Marko) then remember the effects of the volcanic cloud!

In the meanwhile I’ve given some more thought to how rights of rail passengers can be better protected in Europe, a matter first raised in this post. The first fruits of the work are now at RailRights.eu

Email This Post Print This Post