With a 9-euro ticket to Sylt: I hear the magic word on the overcrowded train

Summer is finally approaching, the corona situation is easing significantly, Pentecost is just around the corner. And it’s been on sale since Wednesday – the 9-euro train ticket, with which you can travel as often as you like for a month on local trains and public transport. The campaign lasts a total of three months, but people want to travel – now. It could be correspondingly chaotic on the trains, especially this weekend. This is especially true for the trains to Sylt.

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FOCUS Online is on the Munich-Sylt route today from 5 a.m. – and reports live for 15 hours from seven local trains via Nuremberg, Leipzig, Magdeburg, Uelzen, Hamburg and Elmshorn to Westerland.

9-euro trains are overflowing – in Leipzig I hear the destination “Sylt” for the first time

Regional train 13 between Leipzig and Magdeburg, 3:07 p.m.: I’m already 2 hours late on my trip to Sylt. In order to even have a chance of making it to Sylt today, I have to catch the connecting train to Magdeburg in Leipzig with many other travelers. There are only 25 meters as the crow flies between the arrival and departure platforms. But an almost complete crowd makes this a difficult task. At least the regional express 13 with six or seven wagons is twice as long as that from Nuremberg to Leipzig.

But that doesn’t help us much: in front of the doors there are large crowds of people who all want to take the train. There isn’t a single seat left, and there’s no standing room either. “I’ve never experienced anything like that,” says Friederike, brown curls, gorgeous freckles. I’m delighted when I hear where she’s going: to Sylt. The magic word.

When I’m happy to finally share my ordeal with her, I’m disappointed: she just boarded in Leipzig. A 9-euro ticket torture greenhorn then! But she is almost a real Sylt resident: “I did my training as a hotel manager on Sylt and lived there for two years,” says the 23-year-old. She doesn’t have to worry about a place in a hotel: she visits friends. The question is whether we can still do it today.

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Delighted despite travel chaos with 9-euro ticket: “Would pay 30 if it always existed”

Naumburg, 1:21 p.m.: My trip to Leipzig in the direction of the final destination Sylt is dragging on. The temperature in the compartment is summery. Despite the delay and the fact that he didn’t sleep last night because of the 9-euro ticket, Julien Schillinger is euphoric. “Yesterday I drove from Leipzig to Munich to a start-up congress,” says the 24-year-old founder. “The first stage took six and a half hours, but everything went smoothly, it was really great. I saw a whole range of pretty places from the train that I would probably never have passed otherwise,” says the young managing director.

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He didn’t sleep because he “wanted to fully enjoy the 9-euro ticket” with friends, as Schilling explains on the regional train on the way to Leipzig. “Yesterday evening, after the congress, we took the regional train from Munich to Augsburg and stayed up all night. It was a dream,” said the 24-year-old. At 5 o’clock we went to Nuremberg, then he got on the train, in which I am also sitting.

He is enthusiastic about the 9-euro ticket. “I will also buy it in July and August. I won’t miss it.” He has already planned further trips. And he would pay more for that. “I would also easily pay 30 euros a month for it.”

“Father in prison, mother dead, child in the home”: fateful stories on a 9-euro ticket tour

Lichtenfels, 11:19 a.m.: The 9-euro ticket tour across Germany from Munich to Sylt has already become an odyssey – without making a long journey. A good six hours after the start in Munich, I’m still in Bavaria – in Lichtenfels near the border with Thuringia. Because of an accident on the railway line, a rail replacement bus brought me here. After all: I’m sitting in a regional train again.

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Despite the looming delay of at least two and a half hours and some initial bullying from individual passengers, the bus quickly calmed down. That weather is great, the temperature pleasantly warm, Pentecost is just around the corner. Most of them put up with the delay and don’t want to let their spirits spoil. “Think of the poor people who were injured on the railway line in the accident,” says an invisible guest somewhere in the compartment.

About a dozen passengers had to stand in the bus on the route from Bamberg to Lichtenfels. Many got up well before dawn. Like a 60-year-old gentleman who lives in Wiesbaden and spent a night at the train station in Frankfurt/Main to visit his family after Grimma.

While several travelers were trying to sleep, a lady in her 60s and a young woman were deep in conversation. The older one talks about a relative’s child: “The father is in jail, the mother is dead, the child is in a home.” someone hits you: are you going to get a gun?” “No, the young woman replies, who later identifies herself as a doctor, emphasizing quietly: “I’ll hit the sofa with my fists very hard.” When both women start spluttering, one or the other guest cannot help but smile.

It’s already over in Bamberg

Bamberg, 8.38 a.m.: A bang for the 9-euro ticket tour to Sylt: the route between Bamberg and Lichtenfels in the direction of Leipzig is “closed for an indefinite period of time”, snarls from the RE42 loudspeakers. Reason: “An accident with personal injury on the track”. It takes less than five minutes for the first messages to pop up on the mobile phone on the Bahn app. Helpless faces everywhere. “Oh shit, we can forget about Berlin,” exclaims an angry young guest. And also in front of the train, frustration against the train erupts here and there. “Hey, once, just once I wanted to take the train without delay. And now this…” But in this case, the frustration will certainly hit the wrong person, because the train can’t really do anything for this trip interruption.

Some consider going back to Nuremberg, but the idea is immediately rejected almost everywhere. “We won’t be able to catch up,” says a Berlin excursionist next to his girlfriend, “and the express trains are really expensive.”

Then there is a bit of hope: In front of the station forecourt, a bus is to drive to Lichtenfels as a “rail replacement service”. 20 minutes later, around 200 passengers are standing in front of the station. At first there was no trace of the substitute traffic. But in the end I got a seat. But will I make it to Sylt today?

The regional train is already jam-packed in Nuremberg

Nürnberg, 7.38 Uhr: The second regional train also leaves on time – on the way to Leipzig. But as soon as I got off the starting train from Munich, it became clear to me: the railway idyll is probably over now. There is already an unusually lively crowd at Nuremberg Central Station. And the image of the guests has changed abruptly: the majority is wearing light holiday clothing and has trolleys or medium-sized backpacks with them.

The fact that this day can be a crazy one for the regional trains becomes clear to me at the latest when boarding on platform 4: If you want a seat in the three or four carriages, you have to position yourself well at the edge of the platform. Because everyone who looks around will notice: there could be a shortage of places.

When the train rolled out of the station a minute late, one thing was clear: the train was already jam-packed on the first section to Fürth. All seats are occupied, even in the aisles there is only a little space left. And this despite the fact that this section lasts more than four hours and the train stops at numerous stations until it is due to arrive in Leipzig shortly before 12.

Big day for Felix and Julian: for the first time in a double-decker train

Munich, 5.01 a.m.: At the cozy dead end station in the Bavarian state capital at 5 a.m. in the morning before this first Pentecost weekend with a 9-euro ticket: normal operation. The regional train to Würzburg on platform 25, the first stage of the 9-euro Sylt trip across Germany, is already relatively well occupied. But judging by the clothes and the small bags, the majority of the passengers are more likely to be commuters.

Three already (or still) noticeably tipsy twenty-somethings with cropped hair and a bottle of Tegernseer Pils in their hands cheerfully board the train on their way to Berlin, where they look forward to “Atze und Keule”, which they wanted to visit anyway – and clink glasses to the 9-euro ticket.

On the other hand, the Munich father Florian (54) and his two boys Felix (10) and Julian (8), who are only sitting in the regional train because of the 9-euro ticket and are currently studying the timetable together, seem much more like a short vacation. “We’re going to Bonn over Pentecost, where we’re going to visit family,” says the 54-year-old. Normally they would take the ICE for the route, travel time: three hours. “But because of the 9-euro ticket, we decided differently today and take the regional train, which takes nine hours.”

For the two boys, this is an adventure in two respects. On the one hand, because their parents officially took them out of school for a day – “otherwise, if you’re unlucky, you’ll even have to pay a fine if the police stop you,” says Florian with a grin. And on the other hand, the two boys are now sitting on the upper floor of a double-decker compartment for the first time. “Cool,” the two confirm, grinning behind their masks.

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