This is one of Europe's longer railway journeys on which the train will be whizzing along a high speed line
Final Destination: Bruxelles-Midi/Brussel Zuid
All trains also call at: Frankfurt Flughafen/Airport; Koln/Cologne; Aachen and Liege
Most trains also call at: Bruxelles-Nord
7 x trains per day
However, due to ongoing technical problems with the international type of ICE trains used on this route, many of the departures by ICE train are currently experiencing short notice cancellations.
On the majority of dates until mid April, due to maintenance works on the railways around Frankfurt (Main), these trains will be commencing their journeys in the station a Frankfurt Flughafen / Airport, so direct journeys won't be available.
Connecting ICE trains should be departing around 20mins before the usual departure time of these trains.
Book early and save: Yes
Online bookings open: 6 months ahead of the travel date
When making an online booking, check that you’re looking at booking info for the direct trains.
On the DB Bahn booking site look for journeys that have:
Trains departing at different times can be cheaper than others leaving on the same day, so you may need to look through the day's departures to find the cheapest fares.
Though this is a journey on which you can often save money (more than €20), if you're happy to change trains in Koln and avoid these direct services.
Reservations:
Book 1st class ticket journey tickets on DB Bahn and your seat reservation is included - but they're optional when booking 2nd class tickets, or if you will be travelling with a 1st or 2nd class rail pass.
Opting to reserve is particularly recommended if you will be travelling at business hours and/or during the day on Fridays and Sundays.
Ticket Provider | Approximate Cost | |
---|---|---|
DB Bahn | from €35.90 | |
B-Europe | from €35.90 | |
Omio | from €35.90 | |
Happy rail | from €35.90 |
It can be worthwhile looking up your final destination in Bruxelles/Brussels because Midi/Zuid station lives up to its name with a location that's to the south of the city centre.
If you'll be heading to the areas adjacent to Bruxelles-Central station; or Bruxelles-Schuman station, the journey will be quicker if you make a connection at Bruxelles-Nord station.
This route showcases high speed train travel at it's finest, the journey between Frankfurt Flughafen and Seigburg/Bonn in particular can fuel adrenalin!
For virtually the entire train journey from Koln to Bruxelles the trains, will either be travelling at up to 290 km/h on purpose built high speed lines, or up to 200km/h on section of railway, that has been re-engineered to allow trains to travel faster.
It is a journey of eight distinct phases:
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This second version of ShowMeTheJourney is exciting and new, so we are genuinely thrilled that you are here and reading this, but we also need your help.
We’re striving not to let anything get in the way of providing the most useful service possible, hence a facility has been set up with DonorBox which can be used to support the running costs and make improvements.
Instead of advertising or paywalls, your financial support will make a positive difference to delivering an enhanced service, as there’s a lot of ideas which we want to make happen.
So if you have found the info provided here to be useful, please consider saying thank you.
This is one of more than 100 train travel guides available on ShowMeTheJourney, which will make it easier to take the train journeys you want or need to make. As always, all images were captured on trips taken by ShowMeTheJourney.