On New Year's Day, after finding the Goethe Institute, I went about setting myself up for the month. Tip number one, take a very good look around the Deutsche Bahn (German Rail) site (www.bahn.de) or even better, find a German who uses the Bahn a lot and can help you find what you need. Deutsche Bahn is, on face value, very expensive. But this is only if you purchase tickets one-by-one at the station at the time of departure. There are myriad ways to make rail travel in Germany super-affordable.
- The easiest way to save cash is to book the tickets online. There is a standard price for every trip, but on certain days and at certain times of day when the Bahn is less busy, you can get some pretty hefty discounts just by being flexible about when you travel. Tip: traveling in the middle of the day seems to be cheap, before and after work hours, not so much. - I have a 15-day Pass. That means I can travel any distance on any train in Germany for free for 15 days within a single month. It's expensive (500 euro) but if you are going to do a lot of traveling, or any considerable distances it pays for itself quite quickly. - The S-Bahn is amazing. If you are traveling as a group you can purchase a Group Day-Ticket. These are ridiculously cheap and the more people you have, the cheaper they are. The S-bahn trains generally stop at most stations, so if you are going long distances you need to plan ahead as it can take a while. If you happen to be travelling on a weekend, 35 Euro will get you a Weekend Pass. With this you can travel on any S-Bahn in Germany for 48 hours, and it is valid for 5 people. Again, it's not the quickest, but if you are on a budget or otherwise just don't care, it is incredible value for money. - The other one I'd highly recommend is the "Probe 50". For 79 Euro you can buy the 'Probe 50' and then you get any ticket you buy for the next 3 months at half price. A return ticket to Munich from Mannheim is 184 Euro, with the Probe 50 it is 92 Euro. Plus the 79 it cost to buy = 171 Euro. It pays for itself in one decent sized trip. (Warning, this card automatically renews after 3 months. So if you do not want to pay for it again, make sure you tell the cashier when you buy it to opt-out of the automatic renewal process. You need to fill in an opt-out form and sign it). There are so many ways to save money with the Deutsche Bahn that it is actually quite complicated to figure out which one is the best for you. If you are travelling with a bunch of students, S-bahn, group tickets, all day, every day. But after that my best tip is that you find a German friend, buy them a reasonable quality Hefeweizen and ask them to help. I also got myself a local SIM card here in Mannheim. It is much simpler than trying to negotiate the overseas roaming charges of your Australian provider. I paid 20 Euro for unlimited calls and texts within Germany and 5GB of data, valid for 30 days, then you renew it online. It has a 5 Euro set-up fee including the SIM. Just look for the 'Lyca Mobile' anywhere. If you are in Mannheim, there is a nice Eritrean bloke who has a store across from the Hauptbahnhof (main train station) in between the Subway and the Dönner shop. Just look for this sign. He speaks both German and English quite fluently, and I assume also Amharic if that's your jam.
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