Look up a journey from Salzburg to Cologne on a ticket booking service and most of the options will involve making a connection in Munchen hbf (the main station in Munich) into an ICE train on to Köln / Cologne
Not only is it fairly frequent it's also the fastest option, but take care that Koln hbf and not Koln Messe/Deutz is the station that you will be arriving at.
However, there is one daily option for taking a direct train from Salzburg to Koln/Cologne, which can get lost amidst the alternatives, hence it being singled out.
It also takes a much more scenic route!
There are no direct overnight trains on this route.
This train is usually scheduled to depart from Salzburg at 12:00 (noon).
Final Destination: Munster or Dortmund
1 x direct train per day
Book early and save: Yes
Online bookings open: 6 months ahead of the travel date
Seat reservations:
Reservations are highly recommended for this journey , If you book a First Class ticket on DB your seat(s) will be assigned, but OBB will charge a reservation fee for First class tickets, as they are otherwise optional on this train.
You will have to pay to add a reservation when booking second class tickets, no matter which ticket agent you use.
Reservations are optional, but recommended if you will be travelling with a 1st or 2nd class rail pass.
Finding tickets:
When looking for tickets to Köln on DB Bahn type ‘K or COLOGNE‘ into the ‘To‘ box and not ‘Ko‘.
When making an online booking, check that you’re looking at booking info for the direct EC train, which departs from Salzburg at around 12:00.
It's usually worth targeting this direct train - in this direction from Austria to Germany it can be much cheaper than the journeys that involve a change of train.
It can also be particularly worthwhile comparing prices on the national ticket agents for this journey - when the cheapest tickets have sold out on the DB (German railways website), they can still be available on the OBB (Austrian railways website) and vice versa.
Ticket Provider | Approximate Cost | |
---|---|---|
DB Bahn | from €39 | |
OBB | from €39 | |
Trainline | from €39 | |
Omio | from €39 | |
Happy rail | from €39 |
The train will reverse direction on departure from Munchen Hbf AND Stuttgart Hbf.
The initial memorable views come when the trains travels through the hills between Ulm and Stuttgart.
Though what had been a highlight of this part of trip, the views over the town of Gelsenkirchen, have now been obscured by barriers, which protect its no doubt grateful citizens from the sound of the trains
Though the best views on this route come towards journey's end;
After Bingen there are some fabulous views of The Rhine Gorge from the right of the train, when facing the direction of travel.
After Boppard the train will travel right by the river for the final part of the journey all the way to Koblenz; the views of the valley aren't quite as spectacular north of Boppard, but they're still fabulous!
This part of the journey is a delight, you can't miss the endless parade of boats travelling up and down the river and look out for the multitude of castles perched on top of the hills.
The video clips were filmed from trains travelling in the opposite direction.
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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.