Taking a train with a bike in Germany and Italy

But now for some tips on how to take your bike on a train. First in Germany.

Traveling with the Deutsche Bahn in Germany

First of all. If you travel more than once, I would get a Probe BahnCard. For the trial I would likely get the 50% one. For more permanent use, I always get the 25% one.

BahnCard50 is great when you want to be flexible. You'll always get 50% discount. Which is great when you quickly need to book a trip. This might be especially the case when you're traveling with your bike.

BahnCard25 is great when you can plan a bit in advance. By default you'll get 25% discount, but you can get a lot more too. Just recently I got a ticket that is usually 100 Euros for 12.90 Euros. But I booked it two weeks in advance.

German trains are very expensive without any discounts, so it's pretty much worthwhile to get a Probe BahnCard when traveling in Germany. You can use it immediately and it's valid for three months, you just need to make sure that you cancel it in time.

Prices, rules and regulations can be found here: https://www.bahn.com/en/offers/bahncard

Second, get the DB app. I'm sure there are some haters out there, but I find it actually pretty good. You can find and book trips, manage the tickets and later see as well where your coach is.

There are two things to be aware of though. Firstly, it happened to me several times. For example, I booked in the morning a ticket from Berlin to Hamburg. Going back I was in a hurry and somehow thought that the app would be smart enough to offer me the return ticket. It doesn't. Maybe it's me, but I at least booked three times the wrong direction. I always went to the conductor and explained the situation. Always worked. Once I even got an upgrade to first class (so that their colleague would not control me). I can be charming at times.

Second, but more importantly. Before you are searching for a connection you need to set who you are and what you're looking for. I. e. you need to state whether you have a BahnCard, want to go by bike and possibly want to have longer transfer times. Only then you'll find trains who carry bikes (most of them do) and make a reservation for your bike.

A reservation for your bike is mandatory in all ICEs. In ECs as well, in ICs not sure as I never take them. They're usually quite slow and I'm not really sure why we still have them. ECs are usually connecting two European countries.

In regional trains you don't need a reservation (or actually won't get a reservation), but you need a day ticket for a bike. Be aware though that in peak times these can get crowded and there might be too little space for bikes. That usually happens on weekends nearby bigger cities.

Once you found your connection, you can easily add the option for bike reservation. At least for most trains. Recently I wanted to make a reservation for an EC from Munich and Bologna. That didn't work out online so I had to go to a train station and get the reservation. Might be because it's connecting two or three different train companies.

A word of caution for transfers. Set them to higher than usual, I usually set it to at least 45 minutes. You never know what you'll find. There might be no or busy elevators, the train might be a bit delayed or you simply don't know your way around. I personally don't like stress.

Once you're at the platform you can open the app. On your ticket will be an up to date coach order. The number of your coach is on your ticket. Quite handy, you don't want to push the bike through a train.

Getting into ICEs and ECs is not always easy. There are stairs and the entrance is quite narrow. I usually ask somebody if they could help me. For getting in when nobody is there I pull through and don't remove the bags. It's easier to get up. But I would not necessarily recommend that for everybody. The other day I got quite stuck in the middle of the stairs. Getting out, I usually remove the panniers. It's easier to fall down the stairs than up. Getting into regional trains is a lot easier. Depending on the train station you can usually just roll in and out, the entrances are pretty wide.

Once you're in, you can simply put the bike into the stands, lock it and move your bags somewhere overhead in the coach. I personally never make reservations in trains for myself. There are small seats at the bikes. If you're fine leaving your bike alone, which I think is not a problem, specially if locked, you can easily find your way to the restaurant. More space than in first class, you get drinks served and it's usually good for people watching. (Note: restaurants are only in ICEs)

And that's it. Very straight forward. On the train to Bologna I had a great experience with the bike. They had a special coach for the bikes, see picture below. With an extra entrance and somebody to help. I was the only one with a bike, so it was all easy. In high season that might be a lot more chaotic to get in and out, not sure how they do it then.

Traveling with TrenItalia in Italy

I have much less experience with the Italian trains. So be aware, but I'm sharing what I learned so far.

I got the TrenItalia app as well, even though it's pretty useless for booking travel with anything else but regional trains. But for regional trains it's good. Two things that are a lot better than at Deutsche Bahn. Prices. So much cheaper. And you can easily change your dates when you travel. It's as well possible at the DB, but mostly only for the most expensive tickets.

You can ignore all the fast trains, at least to my understanding. They only take folded bikes, but then free of charge.

Intercities can be booked with bike reservations on their desktop website. The interface is cumbersome and it took me several attempts. I think these were glitches as they were following no logic, but if you stick to it, you might succeed.

Regional trains you can book on the app. So far I have not booked a ticket for the bike with them. On the website it says that I would need one, but couldn't figure out how to get one, even on the on spot ticket machines. The other day I asked some conductors outside the train and they said it's for free. I went into the train and told the conductor that I had a bike with me. He made a movement like I should not bother, so I thought it was all good. He came back though. Used his machine and all and I thought that I would need to pay. He gave me the ticket and it said 0 Euros. Not sure about that exercise, but he was friendly.

Update: I went to an actual counter and booked a ticket for me and my bike. I did have to pay a small fee for the bike.

In terms of accessibility to the platforms, I found it a lot worse than in Germany. Reason might be that I went mainly to smaller towns. There were no ramps or elevators. Sometimes even no stairs. Once somebody helped me to get my bike down, but I had to get it up again. Meant that I needed to completely unpack it. Today in Taranto I was close to doing the same again, but looked around and saw two train employees walking comfortably over the tracks. Followed them, was easy. Maybe just have a look around whether you find something similar if you don't want to carry the bike up and down.

Boarding of older regional trains and ICs is similar to Germany. Painful. But the new ones are great. Inside they had even chargers for electric bikes. Really cool!

That's it. I hope some of the information is helpful. If you find anything that is wrong, please let me know, happy to correct it. I did not mention any prices on purpose, these might change over time. If you have any questions, just ping me and I'd be happy to help where possible.