The cheap fares are limited and popular, so my strategy is to use the booking sites to find out the earliest date the trip can be booked. Different sites often give different prices, so try them to see which gives your trip the best price. This guide covers DB (German railways) and how my wife and I travelled to Copenhagen from London in first class at low cost. You can often add a stop over into the schedule; you can experiment to add anything from an overnight stop to a few days stay. The journey actually travelled. London – Brussels (overnight stop) – Cologne (Change trains) – Hamburg (Two nights) – Copenhagen DB http://www.bahn.com Have special fares between London and Germany from 59 Euros and Germany to and from other European Countries from 39 Euros for second class, first class starts at 109 Euros from London and 69 Euros for other countries. First class travel on Eurostar includes a nice meal, and drinks wine with your meal if you wish. First class in Europe will allow you to use DB first class lounges in major stations, this includes free drinks and light snacks. The search form is here. http://www.bahn.com/i/view/GBR/en/index.shtml The Journey was split into 2 sections, London to Hamburg & Hamburg to Copenhagen. London to Hamburg Use the link to open the DB page the click the Further search options to get the full range of options Notice it offers you the chance to put in additional stopovers, For my journey I used Brussel Zuid for a stop over You may need to experiment with times for example I changed the stop over to 18 hours Note this is the same trains as my wife and I used on our October 2014 trip. We had a civilized trip from London to Brussels, stayed in the IBIS hotel opposite (not the cheapest in the area but based on reviews on tripadvisor). 69 Euros (I think it was 59 when we travelled) from Hamburg to Copenhagen, a very nice ICE train, our own compartment to ourselves for the whole trip. We also had coffee in the Hamburg DB lounge for free before we started our journey. So 178 Euros from London to Copenhagen with stop overs in Brussels and Hamburg. Breaking the Journey into 2 parts would enable you to get similar prices to many European destinations. We travelled from Brussels to Cologne on a Sunday. There were engineering works, some of the other choices gave an overall faster journey, but I think the connection could have been missed due to late running. We also enjoyed free refreshments in the DB first class lounge in Cologne. The train to cologne was a very nice ICE train, coffee served at our seats in china mugs (not free but not expensive). The second part of the Journey the train was older but we had the compartment to ourselves for about half of the trip. This type of fare could be used to get you to any major German city. We spent Monday touring Hamburg, Tuesday Hamburg to Copenhagen, one train, its mad the whole train goes onto the ferry! First class again 69 Euros (I think it was 59 when we travelled) from Hamburg to Copenhagen, a very nice ICE train, our own compartment to ourselves for the whole trip. We also had coffe in the Hamburg DB lounge for free before we started our journey. So 178 Euros from London to Copenhagen with stop overs in Brussels and Hamburg. Breaking the Journey into 2 parts would enable you to get similar prices to many European destinations.
I always thought of DB as being equitable, but not cheap. The fact that (as I remember it) Return tickets were twice as much as singles as they were based on the kms travelled made sense to my lizard brain, and seemed a nicer way of doing things compared with the 17,000 options available for British Rail tickets at the time. Of course, now in the internet age, everyone is able to search for deals and make the comparison before they purchase. Well done, Dave. Interesting journey.
Generally, these tickets go on sale 92 days before travel, in the early morning. The cheapest ones can be gone by lunchtime on popular routes, and certainly by about 90 days before travel, so set an alarm if you want one of the real bargains like Munich or Berlin! You can book them from DB directly, eg on their bahn.de website, but also from the two "decent" independent sites. loco2.com sells the tickets priced in GBP, and captaintrain.com in Euros. Avoid Rail Europe like the plague...
