With the nine-euro ticket, you can use local and regional transport throughout Germany for one month, regardless of whether you get on a regional train (RB), a regional express (RE) or in all vehicles of urban public transport. It is to be expected that many day trippers will use the Pentecost offer for a trip to the surrounding area, including people with children, dogs and/or bicycles. We answer the most important questions.
Anyone under the age of six does not need a ticket and travels free of charge. Older children, on the other hand, need their own nine-euro ticket or their own different ticket. The railway regulation, well known to many families, according to which children up to the age of 14 travel free with an accompanying person, does not apply to the nine-euro ticket. This rule is intended for long-distance traffic, but the nine-euro ticket is an offer for local and regional traffic.
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Dogs are taken on many excursions, but a nine-euro ticket cannot be bought for the animals. Whether you need a separate ticket depends on the respective network. At the VBB in Berlin and Brandenburg, for example, the following applies: A reduced ticket must be purchased for every dog, provided the animal is not small and is transported in a “suitable container”.
The same applies in Baden-Württemberg, with the local transport portal bwegt.de referring to the size of a cat as a guide for dog owners: If the dog in the state is no larger than a house cat, it can be taken in a closed container that is under the seat or fits on the luggage rack.
Passengers with a nine-euro ticket cannot always take their bike with them free of charge. As with dogs, the respective local regulations must also be observed here. For Berlin and Brandenburg, this means that you have to buy an extra ticket for each bicycle. In Baden-Württemberg, on the other hand, you only have to pay to take bicycles with you at certain times: Monday to Friday between 6 a.m. and 9 a.m. and on exceptional routes.
A special case can be student, trainee or semester tickets. They now count as 9-euro tickets and if they allow bicycles to be taken along, these can continue to be valid. In any case, this is the case for the corresponding tickets in Berlin and Brandenburg – but not throughout Germany, but in the respective spatial area of application.
Bicycles are not allowed on all trains. Wheelchairs, walkers and prams always have priority and there is no right to take them with you. Instead, the laws of physics apply as usual: When it’s full, it’s full. Whereby these laws are traditionally interpreted more generously in some regions, such as Berlin, than in others.
It will most likely be full. Buses and trains are busier at Pentecost anyway – and the nine-euro ticket sold well even before the start. The ticket had been purchased seven million times by May 31st. Deutsche Bahn is therefore pointing out full trains for the entire period in which the nine-euro tickets are sold: From June to August, the recommendation is to rent a bicycle at the exit station instead of taking your own bike into the compartment squeeze – or not get on the train at all.
Deutsche Bahn offers its own bike rental service, also via an app. It’s called Call a Bike and, according to the company, can be used in 80 cities and municipalities.
