Paris-Cologne: Bus or Train
 

Hi,

Following the advice of other FT'ers here, I am now looking at more "local" sites to book transportation. Yet, at this point I haven't had any luck finding any good deals for Paris - Cologne by train (looked at sncf.fr and db.de mainly).

I did find what seems to be a good deal on Eurolines (the bus company), at 36 EUR/person (we are 5 people travelling). I have a couple of questions:

1) How comfortable is bus travel in Europe compared to standard train?
2) How far is the station (Paris/Gallieni)?
3) Is Cologne Koln in French? (I assume it is, since it is Koeln in German, but I want to be sure before buying the tickets and find myself in a completely different city.)

Being somewhat familiar with this route, my advice would be to book first class on the Thalys train if reasonable prices are available. The Thalys is TGV based so coach pitch can feel quite uncomfortable for taller or heavier passengers. As for the buses, Western European highways are subject to a steady stream of heavy truck traffic from East to West and North to South and vice versa. So please remember that unexpected delays can occur due to accidents and/or traffic jams.

Btw, shops at the Gare du Nord, where the Thalys trains to Brussels and onward to the Netherlands and Germany depart from, have very reasonably priced Foie Gras on offer if you're into that sort of thing.

I second mosburger's recommendation - Thalys from Gare du Nord.

Bus travel in Europe is O.K., but it's a long drive.

Yes, Cologne is Koeln! The station in Koeln is next to the cathedral, near "Old Koeln".

I could find the following prices for the dates I'm travelling:
Thalys 1st class: 500 EUR all in
Thalys 2nd class: 320 EUR all in
Bus: 160 EUR all in

Considering that Thalys 1st class is almost 3 times as much as the Bus fare, do you think paying this prime is worth it?

Also, Usafan, you said that Koeln is indeed Cologne. But the reason I was asking is that the French bus site I was looking at said "Koln" (no e, no umlaut). I am asuming that it is in fact the same, but I just want to double or triple check :D . Thanks.

1) Eurolines' busses look quite modern, although I have no idea of their seat pitch. In my experience from the 80's, European busses used to have tighter pitch than Greyhound (my bus pitch ratings: Brazil>US>Europe>Japan), but perhaps better than coach on the Thalys. Obviously the train will ride smoother, as the TGV and DB tracks are excellent. Scenery on this flat, partly fog-infested route is, IMHO, forgettable, negating one advantage of the bus.

2) The bus station is in the decrepit 20th arrondissement, porte de Bagnolet, next to the Périphérique ring road. The Métro's line 3, which goes through the center of Paris, ends there (Gallieni station).


[PS: mosburger has reliable insights on gastronomy :) ]

Any chance some of the 5 members of the party are of the same family, or children? European railways usually have good family discounts (e.g. children under 16 travel for free when with both parents, etc.). Also, off-peak trains are priced lower. Avoid early morning businessmen's trains, Friday/Sunday weekender trains, etc.

The French like to spell foreign names their own way :rolleyes: (I am a native French speaker...) . The 'ö' is definitely too germanic for a French website ;)

Thanks monahos. This is very helpful, especially the information about the location of the bus station. It definitely seems that it will not be a very memorable experience to get there. I was planning to travel on June 6, early morning (which is a Monday). Unfortunately, These plans are kind of rigid because of already booked flights and the such.

If you don't mind flying, I suggest Germanwings, a German low-cost carrier. They fly CDG-CGN twice a day, with the morning flight departing at 8:40, arrival 9:45.

At the moment for your date, the first 4 adults would pay €8 base fare plus €30 in taxes each, the fifth €16+30 (enter increasing number of passengers, as many European LCC websites tend to normalize to the most expensive passenger's fare).

Where are you finding these outrageous prices? Are these prices for one or two people?

The most expensive round-trip ticket Paris-Koln for Thalys I'm finding on the Thalys web site is €260 in first class and €166 in second class. And these are full-fare unrestricted fares. There are less expensive excursion fares.

http://www.thalys.com/fr/fr/tarifs?s...H&d=11-05-2005

These prices are for 5 people, actually (3 adult, 2 youth).

Right now, monahos suggestion of flying Germanwings sounds very appealing. The only problem is that I made a mistake in the dates and are actually travelling on June 5th (Sunday). Germanwings is listing EUR55 for that day. I tried finding other LCCs (hadn't tought of this before), but had no luck getting better fares either.

At this point, it seems delaying our trip to use the 8/16EUR Germanwings fare is very likely.

Fortunately, we don't have Umlaute all-over-the-world. The French bus site didn't have Umlaute either....You may remember, Gott-sei Dank, "Herr Adolf" lost the war, so he could not bring the Umlaute to the whole world. :D

Here is an interesting article about Cologne:

http://www.iht.com/articles/2005/04/17/news/trkoln.php

There is no other LCC flying CDG -> CGN

The only carrier left ist Lufthansa, but even those guys can have an intresting price.
When I am going to Paris (living in Cologne) I usually take either train or plane. But when going "privat" I allways prefer the train:

its not much slower (if You include extra pre-Depature time in CDG, time for transportation into CDG and from CGN to Cologne; both Airports are not really in the middle of the City, although the new Subway station in CGN is ready ...)

Its rather nice to ride with the high speed train and drink one or two beers (or a glass of wine (I would recommend to bring Your own)) :)

But IMHO it depends on: How much time do You have and what You are going to do in Cologne.

Have fun .)

We are planning to stay 1 day and 1 night, but still don't know exactly what we will be doing. Any suggestions would be more than welcome!

Thanks

If You are a "firts-timer" here in cologne there are plenty of must sees :) :

The Cathedrel ... big, nice you can also go up one of the towers and have a nice picture of cologne (depending on the weather :) )

directly attached to the cathedrel and rail station are also the old-town wich is nice to walk through and maybe drink a beer, not suggested for eating because its expensive and not very good (i.e. You have to know where to go) ...

There is a shopping mile from the rail station to the "Neumarkt" wich is about 1 mile long (as far as I know the only chance to grap a A&W in NRW ;) )

more tips depend on what You like and what you want to spend (eating out and so on)...

There are lots of options like museum Koenig and the Roman germanic museum, or maybe some nice pubs (some say Koelsch (the feature beer here) is the best of the world, so You could spend at least a week testing all the beers and recovering from testing). So say what You wanna do ;)


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